WRITTEN QUESTION P-2388/00

by Rosemarie Müller (PSE) to the Commission

(7 July 2000)

Subject: School hours

In Europe school hours are organised in two ways: there are half-day schools and whole-day schools. In the light of the recent report on the standard of school education, does the Commission have any evidence to suggest a correlation between standards of educational attainment and school hours?

If so, with what result? What conclusions does the Commission draw in respect of future activities in the educational field?

If not, why did the Commission not consider this organisational question in its evaluation? Will the Commission consider it in future?

Answer given by Mrs Reding on behalf of the Commission

(8 September 2000)

The European Report on Quality of School Education was drawn up firstly on the basis of carefully selected indicators, limited to sixteen, and secondly on the basis of existing sources of information. This report is based on the work of a committee of experts following an initiative of the education ministers of 26 European countries.

Clearly, the organisation of school hours differs from country to country but also within many countries themselves as a result of the increasing autonomy granted to local authorities and schools in the management of school hours. Opting for one or another means of organisation is in part an attempt to adapt to geographic, social or climatic conditions.

Furthermore, in order to establish correlations with pupils' learning and the quality of teaching, it is necessary to examine not only the organisation of the school day but also the content of the curriculum, the number of hours allocated to the various subjects, the time of day when the subjects are taught, the teaching methods, etc. The freedom granted to schools in the vast majority of countries to define methods and organise timetables means that reliable comparisons cannot be drawn because so many variables must be taken into account.

The Eurydice network (European network of information on education in Europe) contains descriptive information about the organisation of the school calendar, but there are no comparable data at European level, and there are currently no plans for research in this field. Moreover, the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) has tried on several occasions to establish relationships between the levels of attainment measured in basic disciplines (mathematics, reading, etc.) and criteria governing the operation of the school system, including the time allocated to each subject, but no direct relationship could be established between the number of hours and the marks obtained. It would be more useful for studies to look into the correlation between the whole question of the pace of school teaching and the quality of the education received, rather than into the correlation between the organisation of the school day and the quality.

For these reasons, the Commission considers that there is no significant correlation between the organisation of school time into half-days or whole days and teaching quality, and therefore does not plan any research into this subject.