Brussels, 29/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 25 September, the Eurydice network published a comparative analysis of the annual recommended instruction time in full-time compulsory education in public sector schools in Europe. It covers 32 countries in the Eurydice network (reference year 2013-2014) and includes national sheets and diagrams enabling readers to access data easily on instruction time in general teaching according to country and subject. The report also gives additional information on the characteristics of each country. The joint collection of data was carried out by the Eurydice network and the OECD (the NESLI network). Stakeholders in education - such as students, parents and employers - want to know if schools give enough importance to science and foreign languages, Eurydice states, thus highlighting its interest in the study. More generally, “they want to know if students are gaining the knowledge and skills they need to either get a job or carry on studying at a higher level”.
A reading of the data shows that instruction time in the compulsory curriculum varies considerably from one country to another. This reaches, or sometimes even exceeds, 900 hours per year in some countries (as is the case in Ireland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK - Wales). It is slightly less but close to 900 hours in other countries (Spain, Luxembourg, the UK - except Wales). It is around 600 hours in Bulgaria and close to 700 hours in Romania, Poland and Slovenia. In Croatia, it does not exceed 555 hours. The report shows, moreover, that, in compulsory instruction time, the importance given to certain subjects is similar in many countries. At the level of primary education, emphasis is put on reading and writing, while many countries insist quite strongly on the teaching of foreign languages at secondary level education.
In primary-level education, several countries at the top of the ladder dedicate over 60% of instruction time to four groups of subjects that they consider to be key (reading/writing, maths, science, a first foreign language). This is the case for Belgium (Flemish Community), the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Malta, Austria and Portugal. At the other end of the scale, with 50%, are Germany, Cyprus, Ireland and Iceland. For all countries (except Malta, where it is maths), emphasis is especially put on reading/writing, followed by maths (with reading/writing in second place for Malta). At the level of secondary education, a more or less equal division is noted for these four categories. Moreover, for this level of education, some countries give a large share of instruction time to learning foreign languages. This is the case in Belgium (Flemish Community), Germany, France, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Liechtenstein and Norway. Maths, on the other hand, claims on average around 15% of instruction time. This is rarely the branch that claims the biggest share of instruction time, except in Austria. Lastly, in around half of the countries, the lowest share of total instruction time is given to science. (IL)