• Question: When is the best time to have school exams?

    Asked by anon-188905 to Rachel, Petrina on 3 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Rachel Sharman

      Rachel Sharman answered on 3 Nov 2018:


      Hi! This is exactly one the questions I am trying to answer with my research.

      At puberty the biological clock delays by 1-3 hours. This happens to a number of mammals too! This means that asking a teenager to sit an exam at 9am would be like an adult sitting the exam at 6am. Something I really wouldn’t want to do!

      The problem we have is that everybody has slightly different bioloigcal clocks and sleep timing preference (chronotype). You can take a quiz to see what chronotype you are. Chronotype is genetically coded but is heavily influenced by the environment too.

      What we know is those students with morning chronotypes do better at school than those with evening chronotypes. We also see this difference in things like sports teams, teams made up of more evening chronotypes do better in later matches!

      The problem with making exam times later means that although the evening chronotype students may do better we could end up making the morning choronotype (larks) students do worse. We are looking at ways to help the evening chronotype students feel more alert in the morning.

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