Sixth form lessons- your experiences please

[EvilTwins]

I am head of 6th form and want some fuel for getting SLT to have a look at the timetable. If you're secondary, how much time is given to 6th Form lessons per subject per week? Our lessons are 1hr long and 6th form class get 4 per week, which seems low to me.

TIA

Ours get 5 50 minute lessons.

Ours get 5 lessons that are 1hr long.

3 hour and a half lessons here.

5 1 hour lessons at my school

Seven hours a fortnight

Year 12 get 10 a fortnight per subject and year 13 get 9 - all 1 hr long. Which gives yr12 approx 9 'frees' a fortnight (minus tutorial hour every fortnight) and yr13 will get 19 - to do gawd knows what I do not know - certainly not as much work as they should be doing

Sorry! Nine hours- split classes, face palm.

9 x 50 minutes per fortnight, usually 5 one week, 4 the next (A level)
5 or 6 x 50 minutes per fortnight (IB SL), 9 x 50 minutes per fortnight (IB HL)

Ours get 4 1hour 20mins a week per subject, in both years.

Ours get nine hours a fortnight. Lessons are an hour long. Most of ours have assigned study periods with only a very small number of lessons being left as free. They have to sign in and out of silent study periods.

5 hours a week per subject x

Nine 50 min lessons a fortnight

Ten 50 or 55 minutes lessons per fortnight (4 of our lessons each day are 55 mins, the other 2 are 50 mins)

4 hours per week.

There are 25 hours per week. 5 option blocks (LVI) x 4 hours = 20 hours. Add to that PSHE (1 hour) and PE/Enrichment (2 hours), that leaves 2 hours of private study (+ the 4 from the option they are possibly not taking).

knowsabit - they do 5 A levels as standard?

Most do 4 AS, but a few do five.
Even with just four choices, we are a small school and have to offer 5 option blocks so that the students can get their choices.

If we had just four option blocks, we wouldn't be able to give many students their choices, as we can only put any given subject in one block.

I imagine a large school could get away with four blocks as they could have the big subjects in multiple blocks.

you still need 5 blocks surely to fill the timetable, and allow the odd kid to do 5. We are big sixth form and have five option blocks. (happily my subject appears in every block in both years )

So if you have five blocks and a bit of PSHE type stuff, you can really only give about four hours to each block?

no - see my first post above - we have 5 blocks, each block gets 5 lessons/week or 10 per fortnight (we run on fortnight timetables so tend to think more in those terms)
That makes 25 lessons. It leaves 1 for enrichment, 1 for tutor time and a random 3. It is never as much as 5 hours, but much nearer five than 4, and quite frankly i can cover the same amount of stuff in most lessons in 55 mins that i used to cover in a hour in my previous school.

8 x 35 minutes (usually = 4 x 70 mins)

yes, our large sixth form runs exactly as yours, Loshad.

Thanks for the replies. Trying to get SLT to increase provisions - we have 8 per fortnight so in an average timetable cycle, our 6th formers have 32 taught sessions out of 50, plus 2 of PSHE and far too many "free"s. It's a bit of a nightmare- too many of them lack the skills so self-study (long-running issue with school- far too much spoon-feeding in KS4 and then left to get on with it in Yr 12) I only have 12 non-contacts per cycle and am at my wit's end trying to manage it all. Small 6th form but SLT are too focused in KS4. If anyone has any suggestions which might help me, I would be VERY grateful.

So 18/50 are non-academic. Presumably 8 of those 18 are the option block they aren't taking, and 2 are PSHE?

Are the other 8 all frees study periods, or are they doing something else with it?

Our schools is similar 40/50 lessons are academic, 2 PSHE, then we have four hours of PE and enrichment. Someone taking 5 AS levels would therefore have 4 study periods over two weeks, which really isn't very much. Although for a typical student doing 4 ASs, they end up with 10 hours to themselves over two weeks, which can mean a bit too much independent study. For lower ability students doing just three subjects, they have a humongous 20 hours to occupy themselves, which these students find hard to do.

I think if the structure of your timetable is based on 1 hour lessons, you are stuck with each subject being 4 hours per week.

35 or 40 minute lessons (mostly doubles) would give you a lot more teaching time, while fitting in with needs further down the school.

Evil
do you think it is affecting your results, could you present data comparing your schools results with another similar in most other regards?
or could you do a student voice survey and see if the kids think they have too much undirected time?

I think a student voice survey would help- thanks. It does affect our results. Our deputy thinks that 4 hours per week is enough, though because we are a small 6th form with classes on average of 12-15 students. Puts me in a difficult position of wondering if the teaching is the issue... Some subjects do very well (Business Studies, English Lit, Performing Arts, Sport) every year and others (Psychology, Biology, History, ICT) do badly every year. It will doubtless come down to money. So depressing.