Education in States and Nations: 1991
(ESN) Indicator 20:
Time in formal instruction
Time spent in instruction can have a major influence on student
achievement,
since it reflects the access students have to learning
opportunities. It is
important to keep in mind, however, that the quality as well as
the quantity
of classroom instruction determines the educational worth of the
time students
spent in formal instruction. Time in formal instruction is
measured here by
the average hours of instruction per day, the average days of
instruction per
year, and the average hours of instruction per year at schools
with an 8th
grade in the United States and at lower secondary schools in
other countries.
Formal instruction is that interaction that takes place,
generally in a
classroom, between a teacher and a set group of students on a
regularly
scheduled basis.
- Compared to other countries, U.S. schools had a relatively
low number
of instructional days (178) but a relatively high number of
hours of
instruction in each day (5.6). For the combination of both
factors - the average hours of instruction per year (1,003) - U.S.
schools
exceeded most of the other countries represented here.
- In the average number of hours spent per year on formal
instruction,
the range across countries extended wider than that across
the states.
Those ranges were defined by Hungary (658 hours per year)
and China
(1,276 hours per year) for the countries, and by Idaho and
Massachusetts (936 hours per year) and Mississippi (1,092
hours per
year).
- In general, there were more hours of formal instruction per
day in the
U.S. states than in the other countries included here.
More than half
the countries had an average of less than 5 hours per day
of formal
instruction, but all states averaged more. Texas and
France had the
most hours per day of formal instruction, with an average
of 6.2
hours.
- For the most part, the U.S. states in 1990-1991 had shorter
school
years than did the other countries for which data are
available.
Thirteen out of 20 other countries maintained a longer
academic year
than any of the fifty states. The range across the
countries was also
much larger than that across the states. The country with
the most
days of formal schooling per year (China) employed 79 more
days of
instruction than did the country with the fewest
(Portugal), while the
difference between the states with the most (New York) and
the fewest
(Minnesota) days of instruction was only 8 days.
Table 19b 
Figure 20a
