Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teaching hours per week, on average, are spent on (a) Maths, (b) English and (c) Sciences for children in Key Stage (i) one, (ii) two and (iii) three.

Information on the school workforce in England, including the curriculum taught in secondary schools, is published in the annual ‘School Workforce in England’ national statistic here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

As at November 2020 (latest information available) around 15% of reported taught teaching hours were in each of mathematics, English and sciences in state-funded secondary schools in England (Table 1). To produce this information, data on subjects taught is collected from a large sample of secondary schools, and this is then weighted and grossed to provide national totals.

Table 1: Hours taught in a typical week in state-funded secondary schools¹ for key stage 3², by subject, number and percentage³

November 2020

Source: School Workforce Census 2020 and Database of Teacher Records 2021

1 - Collected from secondary schools that use electronic timetabling software that can produce data in the format required

2 - Teaching in years 7, 8 and 9.

3 - Percentage of all hours taught.

The information requested is not collected centrally for key stages 1 and 2. Some information is available from the Omnibus Survey (2017). The information collected through this survey provides information on the amount of time, in minutes per week, spent teaching subjects within primary schools (key stage one and two) (Table 2). Information from this survey was published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-voice-omnibus-may-to-july-2016-survey-dfe-questions

Table 2: Minutes per week spent on curriculum subject-specific lessons in primary schools, by subject, median and percentage of time taught

May 2016

Source: Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey May 2016 and Senior Leader booster June 2016

Number of responses = 469

All state-funded schools are required to offer a balanced and broadly based curriculum which promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development; and prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.