Hours cut at A Level

[Hairydogmummy]

Our school has begun cutting our teaching hours at A level if we have fewer than 10 students in the class, from 5 to 4 hours a week. We're really concerned that we won't cover the specifications in time and that results will suffer for our students. Also it's adding to workload as we have to adjust things to try to cover everything and make sure the students have something to do in that hour and worse than that, we are then given another class to teach in that hour, with all the marking, planning, reports, parents eve etc that goes with it. Does anyone have any experience of fighting this or tips on how to cope? Success stories? It's because of budget issues which I get.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but our standard hours are 4 per week.

Not sure what they are else where. Assumed this was typical

We are small 6th form and I teach 2 hours per week

We have 4 in year 12, 5 in year 13. We lost an hour a week about 10 years ago now I think. It was the only way we could keep 'minority' subjects running which is very important to us (we have no minimum class size at A level

At the school I just left it was 8 hours over 2 weeks, then we had an extra hour added so 9 over 2 weeks. This has now been taken away and further hours cut, so 7 hours over 2 weeks. 4 hours a week was okay, you need to get them to do flipped learning and be on them.

It's a funding thing. If they can't make cuts this way, the subject will go entirely, in my experience.

Sorry OP but it will be a choice between reduced hours or dropping the course altogether as the numbers are too small for it to be viable. Choose your poison.

As pp have said, 4 hours per week is standard for A level in the schools in my trust. The exception is MFL who have a conversation class with the assistant in addition to their curriculum allocation. Our local sixth-form college allocates 3 hours per week in y12, 4.5 hours per week in y13.

You will need to look carefully at home learning and independent study, and students will have to raise their game.

Thanks all. I'm in Wales so we are having to prepare students for AS in May so it will be very tight in some subjects. Yes will have to get the students to do more outside the lessons. It's something of a cultural problem we have there, many of our students are very unreliable.