Senior Subject Specialist, Jenny Fox, catches up with Dr Mike Farquhar and Dr Tom Maycock on updates to The sleep factor, our lesson packs for KS1-5.
Jenny Fox (JF)
So we're here to talk about the update to the sleep factor lesson plans, which is really exciting. First of all, can you tell us a little bit about why you thought developing a lesson for Key Stage 5 students was so important?
Mike Farquhar (MF)
So first of all, we are really grateful to the PSHE Association for the work that you guys have done with Evelina London to develop these sleep lessons together. And I think one of the reasons that we wanted to do a Key Stage 5 lesson is because we had such a great response to Key Stage 1 to 4 and how those lessons were rolled out and implemented and the response to them. So we kind of wanted to complete the set, first of all. But obviously one of the important things about Key Stage 5 is it's that point where young people are really transitioning from school children very much into young adults and looking ahead.
So what we wanted to do with the Key Stage 5 lesson was to have something that helped bridge that kind of jump from school to being a young adult. So first of all, we wanted something that thought a little bit about how they could take the things that hopefully they've learned from lessons, Key Stages 1 to 4, and transition that up into their own individual adult lives. But what we also wanted to start doing was thinking about sleep as a tool on a kind of level above… so that if you're working in a company what are the things that might be important to think about sleep in general that might make a big difference for that. So that's kind of where it came from.
JF
Yeah, absolutely. And the Key Stage 4 lessons were really focused, I remember, on preparing young people for exams in particular, weren't they, around their schoolwork. So it's nice to think about how that can feel more grown up and more sophisticated when we're talking to young adults and people, as you say, who are preparing to go out into the wider world.
Tom Maycock (TM)
Yeah, think the curriculum sort of addresses specific needs and desires at each age group as to what would be relevant and what would be something that they would be really interested in. it's ideal for every age group and it's important for things like maintaining good grades, which I'm sure their teachers will be interested in and also things like competing in competitive sports, good social interactions and relationships and going on to the world of work in university.
JF
Absolutely, and I remember in the Key Stage 3 lesson when we were updating it recently, thinking about all of those wider benefits that are going to be a real pull for those teenagers, thinking about things like sports performance or how they feel about their mental wellbeing and their sort of wider productiveness at school.
MF
That's also one of the themes that I think we did develop in the Key Stage 5 lesson — that when you think about employment and the workplace, there's often a kind of drive to push things like sleep out of contention. There's no time for that. And I guess what we were trying to do was to give young people the information and the ammunition in a way to be able to justify why sleep remains so important and actually it will result in better productivity, better outcomes if everybody gets it right. So yeah, as you say, it hopefully integrates with the themes that we developed earlier on.
TM
Yeah, I think there's even a particular slide in the presentation where they've got the sort of stereotypical quote from the CEO who says, I've run this company on six hours sleep per night, that should be good enough for everyone, right?. And it kind of gives them the information that actually, maybe that isn't quite true, and gives them the advocacy to sort of step up for themselves and prioritise sleep as a matter of their health and well being.
JF
Yeah, I think that's a really common misconception, isn't it, that highly effective people hardly sleep? And actually, yeah, really good to kind of redress that misconception and help young people, as you say, feel empowered with that information.
And so can you tell us a bit more about why it's so important that we keep sleep on the agenda and particularly within the PSHE curriculum?
MF
So I think sleep should always be the agenda anyway, because I think it is really important and fundamental. And I think because sleep is such an important part of the foundation of health for everyone, that the more we kind of give our young people who are stepping into that adult world, work, university, college, all the rest of it for the first time; the more that they understand these principles, the more I hope that then means that we are creating an environment where those ideas are built in from the very beginning. So I think this is always going to be something that's important. But the more that we think about tools to prevent health problems, and think about health prevention, the more I think we should be emphasising sleep. And as we've talked about, at every stage of these lesson plans, there's a really important impact for the individuals themselves, which Dr. Maycock is going to give us a bit of an update on as well.
TM
Yes, absolutely. So we know that sleep is a cornerstone of a good healthy lifestyle and it's well documented that sleep deprivation can be associated with poorer mental health outcomes, increased risk taking behaviours; it has an impact on individual social interactions and it can also affect things that are important to young children, so their academic performance and also how well they perform in sports. So the Key Stage 5 curriculum builds on these ideas that we've had all the way through from Key Stage 1 to 4 and adapts it to what is important for [young people] as they go on to their wider life, to university and to work and into life thereafter.
JF
Thanks so much Mike and Tom for joining us again today to talk all things sleep. It's been a real pleasure to be able to work with you to update the lesson plans and to add on this new Key Stage 5 lesson and we really hope that all of our PSHE teachers enjoy using them. Thanks so much.
