How much total lesson time is typical?

[5Foot5]

My DD is at a state secondary. She just came home with a letter from school which said they are having a change to the timetable next year. Currently theit lessons are in units of 60 minutes, from September the lessons will be in units of 45 minutes. The rationale behind this change is that it will allow greater flexibility in the timetable and will make it easier to schedule double or even triple lessons.

At the moment they have five lessons every day - so 5 hours of lessons. In September they will have six 45 minute lessons a day. You don't need to be a mathematical genius to realise that this means they will be getting 30 minutes less teaching every day - 2 1/2 hours a week!

I am a bit at this but I am not sure what is a typical amount of lesson time to expect - are they being short-changed?

There's a statutory number fo hours children have to be taught for - I think it's 25 hours per week for secondary children, so they must intend to make the time up somewhere - ask them!

DS school changed from a 46 x 35 minute periods per week to 32 x 50 minute. So that was a change from 26.8 hours to 26.7 hours.

Losing 30 minutes every day sounds like quite a lot, but if the change will let them have more double and treble lessons, then the amount of "useful" time may not go down, ad there is a lot of faffing about going betwen lessons, settling own, finding the right book, etc.

Do ask the school what the plan is, and how they think they will manage with this much les time - hopefully they've thought it through thoroughly before making the decision.

We have 5 x 1 hr so 25 hrs a week.

Our school has nearly 27 hours per week of teaching time. Our lessons have very little time wasting, so the pupils get 95% of their lesson times as valuable teaching.