The kids have long championed this idea. But their voices alone did not bring about the change. Before implementing the plan, the headteacher, Dr Paul Kelley, took advice from sleep experts, in particular Russell Foster, a professor of circadian (the 24 hour daily cycle) neuroscience at Brasenose College, Oxford.

In his research, Professor Foster has highlighted studies which suggest that teenagers coping with the onset of puberty need more sleep than the rest of the population. As a result, they are likely to be at their peak performance in the afternoon rather than the morning, and continuous interruption to their sleep patterns is likely to have an impact on their health and mental capacity. The tests conducted thus far appear to confirm the idea that students perform better in the afternoons.

Initially, Dr Kelley wanted to make a more radical change to the school's timetable, pushing back the start time by two hours to 11AM. However, a compromise deal saw it changed to 10AM. Lessons carry on for an extra 30 minutes in the afternoons, with the school staying open for study until 5PM.

At the same time, the school still remain open from 8am until 5pm, so that parents with childcare problems, or families in which both partners have jobs, can still leave their child at school before going to work.

Dr Kelley said several schools in Canada and the United States had put back their starting times – but some had abandoned the idea because it was more difficult to fit in sport schedules with schools sticking to traditional timetables.

Hopefully, this "experiment" will continue to flourish and expand. It's so nice when bureaucracies are open to change that can offer powerful benefits to their "constituents."