GCSE arts subjects, how many hours a week?

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DD starting year 10. She’s doing a lot of arts subjects and for these they have two double lessons a week. That works out as 2h 40 mins a week for each arts subject. Is that pretty standard? It’s just it doesn’t sound a lot to me!

Everything had 2 double lessons per week for my DC - 2022 GCSEs. He took double not triple science. When I was at school we took about 8-9 subjects but they now do 10 which a difference

When I taught in school each option subject was timetabled to have five lessons (each one hour) over a two-week timetable (so usually two one week and three the next). 2.5 hours a week per subject. Fairly standard IME.

OP when you say "arts subjects" do you mean art and graphics and the like? Or history, RE, MFL? IS the figure different for other option subjects?

Science, maths and English will have more timetabled hours as a rule.

Sorry, yes by arts subjects I meant art, DT, music.

So about 8 hours for 3 subjects. About a third of the week. Am I understanding right?

And is that more time or less than history, geography, comp science? Or is this just the standard option block time?

I teach an arts subject. We have 2 hrs a week, which isn't enough. Used to have 2 1/2.

2 hours a week for most GCSE subjects at DC's school (maths and science get extra).

We were told the rule of thumb for art is that you were expected to match lesson time with personal time. I assume it may be similar for other creative subjects.

I think it depends on the subject -drama probably not as there is a lot of analysis of various aspects of production. Music probably fine if DC have the performance and theory sewn up so they only need lessons on the set works and help with composition.

I don’t know what the allocation is for science, maths, English etc. I’m only thinking about it now as DD was telling me she knows the number of lessons she’s having for her arts subjects but not for anything else.

It sounds consistent with other’s experience.

Yes @Gazelda , I hadn’t worked it out like that but that sounds right.

But it's not clear whether this figure is the same for all option subjects? I mean it almost certainly is. So if your DD had chosen comp sci, history and French instead of art, DT and music, she would have a similar amount of time per week per option choice? As I and others say, sounds pretty typical tbh. Work is needed outside teaching hours - perhaps more for a subject like art tbh.

So it sounds about right. That’s all I wanted to know really. I’d imagine that the other options have similar times but maybe fewer doubles, but I don’t know as they aren’t timetabled I’m blocks. And yes we know she’ll have homework.

My kids’ school is 5x 1 hour periods per day.

5x English
4x Maths
4x Science (for Dual)
3x Geography or History
2x 3 option subjects (so all the Arts come here, plus Sport, Business, Media, IT, 3rd Science)
1x PE
1x PHSE
1x French added to the 2, or if French isn’t an option that 1 becomes a general study period or for some students a specific intervention.

2 hours a week sounds like nothing for Art - and as it’s 2x 1hr I expect more dead time settling at the start, packing up at the end, too 🤨

DD's school had 25hrs/fortnight 'core' subjects (maths, English, RE, PE, core science), and 25 hrs/fortnight 'options'. As there were 5 options this lead to 5hrs per subject per fortnight.

DD's school is 5 x 1 hour periods in a day.

They take 10 GCSEs.

The weekly breakdown is:
2 hours per GCSE

• 2 extra hours for maths
• 1 extra hours for science
• 1 for PSHE
• 1 for PE

Our GCSE students get the following hours per fortnight

English 8
Maths 8
Combined science 10

All Other subjects get 5 hours per fortnight

Plus everyone does 4 hours non examined PE