How many hours of maths does your school allocate?

[MsAwesomeDragon]

I'm wondering how much time is given to maths in a variety of secondary schools.

My school currently gives y7 4 hours a week then y8-11 get 3 hrs a week.

Dd's school get 4 hours a week all the way from y7-11.

And a friend's dd gets 5 lessons a week, but the lessons are 50 mins rather than an hour.

My department are currently trying to persuade the SLT to give us more curriculum time to deal with the increased content of the new GCSE.

My DS's school lessons are 50 minutes.

Y7-9 get 4 lessons a week
Y10 and 11 get 5 lessons a week.

DD (Y10) has 7 hours per fortnight.

Maths is still just one gcse... though a terribly important one albeit!! Just remember more time for maths is less time for something else.

More time for maths meant less time for each science. So maths (one gcse) ended up with twice the time for a physics gcse.

That sort of disparity leads to resentment between departments.

DD Year 10 get 8 sessions over a fortnight. The sessions are 1 hour or 1 hour 5 minutes. They are doing the GCSE syllabus over 3 years and started in Year 9. They also get occasional additional after school sessions on topics that are really hard.

Physics, agree. English (2 GCSEs) gets the same as Maths. Science (2 GCSEs) gets 8 per fortnight. All other single GCSEs (languages, humanities, design etc) get 5 per fortnight.

Luckily, Maths homework occupies almost no time so far, relative to e.g. Art, History or Textiles.

Ds has 9 hours of maths a fortnight in ks3. They have 26 hours of lessons a week

My dd y9 usually has 3 hours Maths per week.
Science is 3 hours per week and English is also 3 hours per week.

Other subjects are French, German and Music with 3 hours each per week.

The few hours left are divided between 2 hours of Art,
Drama/ Enrichment, one hour
P.E sometimes, one hour.

physics maths contains way more content than other single GCSEs, this has long been recognised and it now counts as 2 GCSEs in school measures (it was going to be turned into a double GCSE but they decided against it because that was a Labour plan). Perhaps you can stop giving the maths department evil looks!

We've moved to 8 hours a fortnight for all year groups.

All the other local schools seem to have managed to make time for the extra maths.

Yes it may lead to resentment between departments, but realistically when the school results come out maths is double weighted, and has almost double the content of most other single GCSEs. We still make the pupils choose 4 option subjects as well as the core subjects, where other schools seem to have reduced that to 3 in order to give more teaching time to Maths and English. Even the English department agree with us that we should get the same amount of time to them, because although they do 2 GCSEs a lot of the skills are transferable.

Dd is in yr 7. Each lesson is 1 hour. She has 4 maths lessons a week (on a 2 week timetable)

Gove said years ago that schools would need to increase maths teaching time to account for the extra content so it seems odd that a school would be resisting this.

DS comp 7hrs a fortnight
DS grammar 3x50 mins per week

I don't know why he's resisting this. Other than the fact that his subject (and the subjects of all the SLT) are optional at GCSE, and reducing options for the kids means there will be fewer kids choosing mfl, history, geography, business, technology, art, etc. And that would make him unpopular with all those departments. It's easier for him if he's only unpopular with the Maths dept, and he knows we'll knock ourselves out trying to provide the best for the kids anyway.

In the latest raft of changes, the science content has increased by about a third. Maths is not alone in feeling pushed for time! That's the entirety of my opinion.

I used to have several weeks for revision before study leave. Alas, no more. In fact, they even had to shift some old (Physics) content into Biology to 'fit' everything in!

MsAwesomeDragon

It will lead to resentment in other subjects, but as long as its not your job that is a risk.

I know we're not alone in feeling pushed for time physics. And actually, what we are proposing would actually give more time to 3 subjects, not just us. We want to reduce the number of optional GCSEs to 3, which means that those doing triple science would end up with 10 GCSEs and those doing double science would get 9. Then the 3 hours a week freed up by that could be spread out to 3 other subjects. So we're not just saying "maths needs more time", we're saying "we're all being squeezed into less time than we need, can we sort that out?" But obviously, being the maths department our opinion only counts when we're talking about our own subject. We're really, really not trying to just get more time for our subject at the expense of others, we're trying to give the kids time to get to grips with the increased demand of the new GCSEs, in as many subjects as possible.

I'm astonished at some of the hours - at my secondary, it was 9 hours/fortnight for maths A level, 11 hours if you were doing double maths (that was fun). This is a while ago though....

All our jobs are already at risk because of falling numbers.

I really didn't intend this thread to become a justification about why we need more time, I just wanted to know what other schools are doing. So if other schools are continuing with just 3 hours a week in Maths, then at least I know. But if other schools are moving to having more time allocated to Maths I'd like to know that too.

Physics The Smith Report in 2004 said "Respondents to the Inquiry also report the universal perception among teachers and pupils that the amount of effort required to obtain the single GCSE in mathematics is similar to that needed to obtain the two awards in English or the double award in science. This further reinforces pupils’ view of mathematics as a disproportionately hard subject and undoubtedly influences pupils’ subject choices post–16. The Inquiry recommends that immediate consideration be given to re-designating GCSE mathematics as a double award."

So maths should have been two GCSEs for years. The content in science might have increased recently, but maths has as well, so it still should have the teaching time of two GCSEs.

It was pretty clear when they made the changes to GCSEs that students would end up taking fewer subjects.

The head is also trying to avoid having to make redundancies, but then he really needs to consider that double-weighted maths bucket...

We've already had 5 redundancies last year, one of whom was a Maths teacher. I know he's trying to avoid more, but our headline figures affect how many pupils choose us, and the headline figures are disproportionately affected by Maths results because it's double weighted.

MsAwesomeDragon
All our jobs are already at risk because of falling numbers.

Pupil numbers here are rising.
Major issues in training and retaining maths teachers.

Other subjects are also seeing a major rise in content, as someone that teaches one of the non core subjects that might just make it in to the bottom bin of progress 8, and just seen teacher numbers in the department reduced, we are not in the same boat.

DD is in Y11.
She does 9 GCSEs, like most at her school - most do triple science (DD does double) but that just means they get one less option.

Her timetable is fortnightly and works out at the following, per fortnight:

Maths - 6 hours
English - 7 hours (but two GCSEs)
Double Science - 10 hours (2 GCSEs, break down: 3 Biology, 3 Physics, 3 Chemistry, 1 Science)
Spanish - 5 hours
History - 5 hours
Computer Science - 5 hours
Drama - 5 hours

So, in DD's case Maths already has one extra hour than her GCSE options, per fortnight.

Also on her timetable, but not GCSEs/examined:
PE - 4 hours
Life Skills - 1 hour
PSE - 1 hour
General Studies - 1 hour

Boney, I'm sorry you are worried about your job, it's not a nice feeling at all. [Flowers]

I didn't mean us as in on this thread, I meant us as in all the teachers in my school. We have a problem with numbers because there was a low birth rate in our catchment area for quite a few years. Other schools don't seem to have that problem, even fairly close by (but still a 30 mins bus ride away).

MsAwesomeDragon

apologies.

we run a three year ks4, early entry in several subjects, which means that pupils can opt for an extra 5 hours per week in year 11.

Gove is such a tosser isn't he. He might be gone, but the awful effects of his thoughtless decisions live on, with real teachers losing their jobs.