A new report by the Education Policy Institute, funded by the Law
Family Educational Trust, uses new data on the length of the
school week to examine how long pupils are spending in school in
England.
It finds that the majority of schools (four fifths of
primary schools and three quarters of secondary schools) are
delivering a school week that is 32.5 hours or more – meeting the
expectation set by the previous government for all schools to be
delivering by this term.
It also finds that additional hours of schooling have a small
positive effect on attainment at the end of primary and secondary
school. In secondary schools, an additional hour of
weekly school time is estimated to be associated with a 0.17
grade improvement in one GCSE subject.
This new report builds on a literature review published earlier
in the year, which showed the importance of what was happening in
any additional time in influencing any future attainment
benefits.
Key Findings:
In 2023/24, four fifths of primary schools and three
quarters of secondary schools had school weeks that were 32.5
hours or more, as per the previous government's expectation for
this term.
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Free schools have longer school weeks than other types
of school: In 2023/24, free schools had on average
almost an additional hour (primary) and over an hour
(secondary) of school time per week compared with the average
school. This is potential due to the greater flexibility
free schools have over their school days.
-
Academically selective secondary schools have longer
school weeks: Academically selective secondary schools
have on average, a school week that is almost one hour longer
than non-selective schools.
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Schools rated ‘Outstanding' by Ofsted and those in
London tend to have longer school weeks: ‘Outstanding'
schools have school weeks that are between 10 and 20 minutes
longer, and pupils attending secondary schools in London have
over half an hour extra time in school a week, when compared to
the typical school.
Additional time in school is associated with a small, yet
positive, effect on overall attainment at the end of both primary
and secondary school.
-
The magnitudes of the associations at secondary school
were found to be slightly smaller compared to primary
school. An additional hour of weekly secondary school
time is associated with a 0.17 grade improvement in one GCSE
subject.
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The associations with English/reading test scores are
slightly larger than for maths: Differences are small
– an additional hour of school a week in primary schools is
associated with improvements in Key Stage 2 scaled scores of
0.053 and 0.066 for maths and reading, respectively.
-
At secondary, an additional hour has a substantially
larger association with attainment in language
subjects: An additional hour of school a week at
secondary school is associated with a 0.063 grade improvement
in language GCSEs, much larger than the estimated 0.018 grade
improvement in English, 0.014 in maths, 0.016 in science, and
0.017 in humanities GCSEs. It is plausible this larger
association with respect to languages is due to factors we
cannot observe in the data, given the available measures of
prior attainment and relatively low take-up of language
subjects.
Today's analysis follows a literature review we published earlier
in the year, which found that the effects of increasing time in
school are typically found to be modest in other country specific
and cross-country studies. It showed the importance of what was
happening in any additional time in influencing any future
attainment benefits.
Louis Hodge, Associate Director for School System and
Performance said:
“These new findings show promising effects of extra
time in school, which government and policymakers should build
on. To maximise the benefits of extra time, further consideration
should be given to what activities take place in this additional
time. More broadly, given the constraints (cost and otherwise) on
increasing time in school further, it is important to better
understand which mix of activities during the school day deliver
the best outcomes for pupils.”
Background:
In its 2022 white paper 'Opportunity for all: strong schools with
great teachers for your child', the previous government proposed
a minimum threshold of 32.5 weekly hours (6.5 hours per day on
average) of school time for all state-funded mainstream schools.
To help ensure schools deliver the new 32.5-hour week
expectation, three mechanisms have been put in place. First,
schools are now required to publish their total weekly hours on
their websites. Second, Ofsted will start to monitor the length
of school days as part of their inspections and, where relevant,
require schools to justify not meeting the minimum expectation.
Finally, the Department for Education has now started collecting
data on the total compulsory time pupils spend in school per week
through the spring school census.
Our analysis uses this new data collection in January 2023 and
January 2024, linked to other data available in the National
Pupil Database (NPD). This is the first time this relationship
has been studied in England. Historically there has not been any
systematic collection of data from schools on the length of time
pupils spend in school each week in England. Previous studies
have focused on either cross-country comparisons or policy
changes in other countries around the world.
