The news that lucky teenagers at 100 British schools are to be given a lie-in as part of a scientific experiment will cause jubilation among those concerned, both the children and their parents. I know from bitter experience that getting a grumpy, monosyllabic, growling 14-year-old out of bed in the morning is extraordinarily painful.

I blame social conditioning. Somewhere in the recesses of our mind we still harbour a fantasy that our children will leap out of bed at 6.30 every morning, full of good cheer, ready to tackle the challenges of the day with aplomb. Early rising, or “scraping the ice off the windscreen on a winter’s morning”, as David Cameron put it in his uninspiring speech about hard work at the Tory party conference last week, is meant to be a good thing.

This fantasy of being up with the lark is precisely that though: a fantasy. As Jerome K Jerome wondered back in 1889, towards the end of the supposedly hard-working Victorian era: “Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of a Sunday-school ‘tale for boys’, who ever gets up willingly?”

No, we are all slumberers. But the utilitarians out there have generally tried to make the snoozers feel bad. The great thing, though, about this new experiment is that it’s all in aid of science and a booming economy. The reason the boffins are giving teenagers an extra hour in bed is not because they think the teenagers will enjoy it, but because they reckon it will make them do better in their exams. Yes, it is as simple as that. Recent studies in the field of neuroscience – ie brain scans – suggest that sleep improves brain power.

More sleep equals economic growth: that is the extraordinary equation that we’re nearing. Which is great. If we can somehow convince the authorities, with the help of science, that sleep is good for productivity, then we’re on to a win-win situation.

And it really is happening. In June this year a report in the journal Science linked braininess and sleep. Researchers compared two groups of mice. One group of mice was deprived of sleep, while another was allowed to doze as long as they wanted. The sleep-deprived mice appeared to be considerably more stupid than their well-rested fellows. “Sleep helps neurons form very specific connections on dendritic branches [ie brain cell connectors] that may facilitate long-term memory,” concluded the researchers. “Different types of learning form synapses on different branches of the same neurons, suggesting that learning causes very specific structural changes in the brain.”

And a recent study of African sparrows showed that the hard workers died earlier, or as researcher Dr Andrew Young put it: “Our findings suggest that the unequal sharing of workloads may leave the hardest-working individuals at risk of oxidative stress, which could lead to poor health and accelerated ageing.”

You might argue that the Oxford scientists behind the new sleep project are stating the bleeding obvious: “Recent advances in our understanding of the neuroscience of sleep have shown that the body clock of teenagers is delayed,” said Prof Russell Foster.

But we should surely welcome a bit of hard science to prove what we idlers have always suspected: sleep makes you clever. Says Foster: “Our project will be the first … to explore whether a later start to the school day, along with educational programmes regarding the importance of sleep, will have a positive impact upon both academic performance and overall health in the teenage population.”

It’s a bit like that scene in the Woody Allen film Sleeper. Woody’s health-nut character wakes up in the future and is given a cigarette to smoke by a white-coated doctor. “We now know that smoking is good for you,” says the doc. So it will go with the new sleep science: “Previously it was thought that early rising was the key to health, wealth and happiness. We now know that an extra hour in bed in the morning will give you the competitive edge you need in today’s global race.”Which is, as they say, a result.

The thing is, it’s not just teenagers who need a lot of sleep. It’s adults too. But they want to sleep after lunch. I recently interviewed Jeremy Paxman and was surprised to find that he indulges in a postprandial kip every day and is evangelical about the power of a little doze: “Every office should have a nap room,” he declared.

It turns out that brain scientists are in agreement with Paxo: “If we want people to be more creative we need people to be able to do less,” said Vincent Walsh, professor of human brain research at University College, London earlier this year. “Companies should allow naps in the afternoon. They should get rid of the habit of clocking in and clocking out.”

So there we have it: a recipe for success according to the latest science. Start work at 10am and sleep after lunch. If you want to get ahead, take a nap.