Why do children have to go to school so early here?

This week I got up in the darkness each morning, having the kids out the door and myself at my desk by the time the sun rose over Berlin at about 7:45 am.

That’s one reason I count myself among the few people looking forward to the clocks changing this weekend.

I have two children, aged 15 and 11, and for as long as they’ve been going to school I’ve been wondering if it’s really necessary for them to drag themselves in at a quarter to 8 every morning.

It feels a bit much at the best of times. But in late autumn, when the whole process of getting everyone out of bed, finding missing books and assembling lunch boxes takes place against a backdrop of pitch-black windows, it’s almost cruel.

My children are on holiday at the moment, along with kids in Brandenburg, Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt and some other states.

So for the next few days at least, the 11-year-old will bounce downstairs at about 8:30 before the teenager appears – still stretching and yawning – a couple of hours later.

They still have another week without alarm clocks or hysterical parents to look forward to each morning, but then it will be back to getting up in the dark – despite the clocks having gone back in the meantime.

But why do they have to be in school so early in the first place?

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The legacy of the half-day school

When I was at school in England, registration was at 8:50am. My nieces and nephews in the UK seem to have broadly similar schedules today, as do many children across much of Europe and North America.

In Germany, by contrast, schools generally begin between 7:30am and 8am. In Berlin, for example, starting at 7:45am seems to be fairly standard – as is finishing the school day at around 1:30pm.

Anecdotally, the system doesn’t seem to make much sense to newcomers in Germany – but there is an explanation.

During the nineteenth century – according to historians at the German History Museum – schoolchildren used to attend a series of 60-minute lessons in both the morning and afternoon, with a lengthy break in the middle of the day.

The evidence suggests that an early start to the school day is less than ideal, especially for older children. Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

But around 1911, education officials in Prussia apparently decided that 60-minute classes were too demanding for pupils and introduced the now familiar 45-minute lesson. Confusingly, a single school lesson is still called a Stunde in German, which is also the word for an hour.

Simultaneously, the reformers appear to have realised that if they combined shorter lessons with an earlier start, they would be able to fit a full timetable into just half a day and eliminate afternoon lessons altogether.

Other states soon adopted the 45-minute lesson and the half-day model.

Before long, school timetables, public transport schedules and family routines across the country had become organised around the assumption that children would start early and finish shortly after lunch.

More than a century later, the system has proven remarkably durable, even if the reasons for it are now largely forgotten.

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What the science says

There’s lots of evidence that such an early start to the school day is less than ideal, especially for older children.

As children enter puberty, their internal clocks shift, meaning they become tired later in the evening and naturally want to sleep later in the morning.

Or, in other words, they aren’t staying in bed because they’re lazy but because that’s where biology wants them.

One 2022 meta-analysis found that delaying school start times by at least 30 minutes increased students’ sleep duration by an average of around 40 minutes per night, while other studies have linked later starts to better concentration, improved wellbeing and stronger academic performance.

But while pretty much everyone agrees that the current arrangement is imperfect, lots of people also have good reason to leave it well alone.

Bus and train schedules are built around existing routines. Also parents often need children to leave the house before they set off for work. And, arguably, many teachers and other decision makers are simply used to things being the way they are.

All of which to say, I’ll spend the next few days encouraging my kids to sleep in while they can. Because even with the changing of the clocks, it won’t be long before I have to send them off to school in darkness again – entirely confident they won’t take anything in until at least the second Stunde.