How much time is spent on maths and science in primary education?
by Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Division, Directorate for Education and Skills Compulsory instruction time per subject in primary education, in hours per school day (2015) Primary school is a fundamental stage in children’s education. Yet it is often neglected in education research and policy debates, somehow squeezed between the seemingly more important stages of early childhood education and secondary education. The purpose of primary education is to build a solid foundation on which an entire life of learning can thrive. Cognitive processes such as working memory, attention, self-regulation, as well as character traits, communication skills, motivation and meta-learning attitudes grow enormously during the first years at school. And the primary school curriculum lays out the basic constituents of human knowledge by introducing students to its core disciplines. Historically, the relative importance of the core subjects in primary school has always been a conten...