All schools here in the UK start at 9.

Why would you start your schools at 6am, I wouldn't take a job that made me start at 6am every day? I would just slowly get tired and less effective.

Not true, we certainly have those that start at 8. Consider a ~45m commute and time to get ready, and waking up at 6 something is not unheard of. (I personally had to wake up at 5:45 to catch a bus to a school over an hour away).

What is not true? I'm just going off of what the gpp mentioned.

Now I don't quite understand what you have written here because you just say "we", but assuming you mean work colleagues then I think there is a bit of a difference between someone starting at 8, and making kids catch a bus at 5:45 so that they can start school an hour later at 6:45? That's not waking up at 6, that is out of the house before 6, and while you survived, it really shouldn't be necessary in a 1st world country.

While you did it, there is plenty of evidence that you could have done even better if you weren't subjected to it.

My k-8 years started at 06:42, 9-12 started at 07:30. I guess the logic was that we got older we didnt need our parents to dress us. I made a deal with most of my 9-12 teachers: I wouldn’t show up and make their lives hell but I would get A’s on all of the tests.

My parents trusted me so they accepted this. I sort of stayed out of trouble, my teachers’ average test scores weren’t impacted negatively and I spent my days coding and hacking (so I got arrested twice .. sue me).