This research by the Education Policy Institute explores how much time pupils typically spend in school in England and what the potential impacts of increasing this amount of time could be, particularly with respect to attainment.
In the 2022 white paper ‘Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child’, the government set out an expectation that all state-funded mainstream schools should deliver a minimum length of school week of 32.5 hours, equivalent to 6.5 hours of time in school per day.
This expectation follows a 2021 DfE review of time in school, which suggested that extending time in schools could potentially benefit pupils’ outcomes contingent on how the time is spent. Potential benefits stated included more opportunities for learning, socialisation with peers, and enrichment.
To help ensure schools deliver the government’s expectation, three mechanisms have been put in place. First, 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. Second, 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. Finally, schools are also now required to publish their total weekly hours on their websites.
Key Findings:
- Instruction time is a significant input into a pupil’s education. Recent research findings on the effects of providing additional school time, encompassing instruction time and extracurricular activities, are varied but broadly positive. The diversity in these effects is often attributed to variations in the timing, manner, and nature of the activities during these extended hours. A multitude of studies emphasise the critical need to optimise the structure of any additional time, aiming to yield the most significant educational impact.
- The Department for Education (DfE) in England has initiated efforts to encourage certain schools to extend their school days by establishing minimum hours. The closest international comparison could be represented by the 2014 reforms enacted in Denmark, where the addition of an extra hour was linked to a modest improvement in test scores (0.06 standard deviations).
- The effect of increasing hours varies with the subject being taught. The effect tends to be more pronounced in mathematics than in language-of-instruction lessons. Given the larger learning losses in mathematics compared to language during the pandemic, it could suggest that mathematics skills might be more responsive to practice and exercise than language-of-instruction.
- Extending the school day tends to have a more pronounced impact on the academic outcomes of pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This is likely because they often face more challenges in accessing resources for homework assistance within their home environment.
- The effect of extending the school day, especially through tutoring interventions, is typically larger for pupils in earlier grades, especially in the areas of reading and language.
- Additional time is more likely to have a positive effect if the quality of the classroom environment is high, as measured by criteria such as disruptive behaviour during the class and student-teacher relationships. Conversely, the learning loss caused by a more problematic school environment cannot be alleviated by increasing instructional time.
- Additional time on its own does not guarantee an improvement in academic achievement. Most of the programmes that had the best results saw extra time directed primarily towards instructional time, ensuring that the material taught was consistent with the predetermined curriculum.