A schedule your child will keep
Four study timetables, one per class band, from Class 1 to Class 10. Each says how long a school day should really take - thirty minutes at Class 1, two hours at Class 10 - and why each block is that length.
They are shorter than most timetables you will find, deliberately. A four-hour plan for a Class 5 child is abandoned within a week, and what a family takes from that is not “the plan was wrong” but “my child will not study”. A short timetable that is kept beats a long one that is not, every time.
4 timetables, by what a child can actually sustain
Class 3 to 5
About an hour on a school day, in two sittings with a real break. This is the band where a routine starts to hold if you keep it small.
- School day
- 60 min
- Weekend day
- 60 min
- One sitting
- 25 min
On a school day
4:30 - 4:55Homework, hardest subject first.
Your sharpest focus happens first. Postponing maths until the end explains why an hour is spent and tears follow.
4:55 - 5:15Break. Off the chair, ideally outside.
A genuine break means no screen. Screen breaks won't regain your attention; they drain it away.
5:15 - 5:40Finish your remaining homework, then practice for 10 minutes.
Practice means tables, spellings or matras - the recall that school assumes and rarely drills.
Bedtime15 minutes of reading, their choice of book.
A child will read a book they have chosen, but skip through one they were given.
On a weekend day
30 minutesOne worksheet in the weakest subject.
One. A whole morning of catch-up teaches a child that weekends are punishment for a weak subject.
20 minutesReading, or being read to.
The activity that pays off most in this group.
10 minutesTimes tables against a clock.
For Class 6, recall speed is key. Turn this into a race rather than a formal test.
What not to do at this age
- Don't revise all subjects daily. Switch them around instead, because memory works better with gaps between reviews.
- Don't stay beside them for the entire session. Get them going, then step back - learning to work alone is part of what they're developing.
- Putting extra tuition into an already full schedule without dropping anything.
Hours, homework, holidays - and why timetables fail
How many hours should a child study a day?
Most online timetables suggest far more than this. The gap is big. What follows is focused study time on a school day—remember, a child already does six or seven hours at school, which is a full working day.
| Class | School day | Weekend day | Longest useful sitting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | 20-30 min | 30 min | 10-15 min |
| 3 to 5 | 40-45 min | 1 hour | 20 min |
| 6 to 8 | 1 to 1.5 hours | 2 hours | 30 min |
| 9 to 10 | 2 to 2.5 hours | 3 to 4 hours | 45 min |
Two points about this table matter. One: how long each sitting lasts is more important than the total—three twenty-minute periods beat a single hour, and asking a Class 4 child to sit for an hour wastes most of that time even though it looks like study. Two: these numbers are tops for real work, not goals to reach. A child who finishes sooner has finished.
When a child does well more than this and still falls behind, the answer is not more hours. The method has a problem somewhere, and piling hours onto a broken method just tires them out without closing the gaps.
Building it around school, not on top of it
The main reason a printed timetable falls apart by mid-week is assuming the child arrives home with energy left. That's not what happens. Kids come home tired, and studying is not what needs to happen first.
- Start with a real break. Give them thirty to sixty minutes to eat, go outside, or just rest - not screens, which don't refresh the brain the way they seem to.
- When study time begins, tackle the hardest subject. Attention drops as the evening goes on. Do maths at 4:30 and copying at 7 and it works; do it backwards and it fails, yet kids pick the easy stuff first because it feels like getting started.
- Homework and revision are not the same. When homework takes the whole time, there's no real study in the timetable. Keep them as separate items on the page, even if homework beats study some evenings.
- Leave one evening a week with nothing booked. A timetable with no give gets broken for good by the first birthday party. One unscheduled evening means the week can bend when something comes up without falling apart.
Stopping homework battles is a separate issue, rarely a timetable problem - the real goal is homework that doesn't become a fight.
Holiday study timetables and why they usually fail
“Study timetable for holidays” ranks high in searches, and this is a place where parents commonly overreach - school is closed, hours seem plentiful, and unrealistic plans get drafted.
What actually works over a long break:
- Around half your term-time workload, no more. The purpose of a holiday is to let your child rest, and a child who comes back still tired begins the year tired, not refreshed.
- Same slot each day, but short. What gets you through a break is routine; volume does not. Forty minutes in the morning beats three hours on Sundays for a Class 6 child.
- Fix one thing, not the whole lot. A holiday is the only stretch of year long enough to close a real gap - tables, matras, place value - while new material doesn't surge ahead. Trying to revise an entire year throws away that gift.
- Mornings, before the day gets busy. Anything set for “the afternoon” during a holiday gets done on roughly one in three days.
Using a break to plug a particular gap? The free assessment reveals which one actually drains marks - usually not the gap that looks most important.
How timetables go wrong, and the three things that fix them
Within two weeks, most study plans get abandoned - but rarely due to the child being lazy. Three design faults account for this, and each has its own remedy.
| What you see | What it usually means | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Kept for three days, then gone | Ambition, not real capacity, set the daily load | Halve it. A timetable followed at 60% beats one abandoned at 100%. |
| Sits down but nothing gets done | The slot names a subject like "maths", not a task - and subjects have no finish line | Write down the task: eight sums, read one passage, draw one diagram from memory. Concrete tasks beat time slots. |
| Works all week, collapses on Saturday | Weekend work got packed with extra to compensate for the week | Keep the weekend near weekday levels. Overloaded weekends kill timetables. |
One final note, which is not a design fault: should a child follow the timetable, do the work and still lose marks, the timetable is functioning and something else is amiss. This is a diagnosis issue, not a timing one.
About study timetables
How much daily study time should a Class 8 student dedicate at home?
About 90 minutes on a school day, in two blocks of roughly 35 minutes with a real break between them, plus around two hours on a weekend day. If your child needs far longer than that most days, the problem is usually method or workload rather than effort - see how many hours a child should study.
Why do your class times seem shorter than what others offer.
The limits come from what a child can actually focus on after spending the whole day in school - not from what sounds like an impressive schedule. Offer a Class 5 child a four-hour plan and it's gone in three days, leaving parent and child both thinking the child lacks motivation. A 30-minute plan you stick to is better than a 3-hour plan you abandon.
Once exams start, do you need to modify your timetable?
Study duration stays much the same. What shifts is what you're studying. Come January of the board year, the focus moves from re-reading chapters to completing past papers under exam conditions and checking them against the official mark scheme. Don't sacrifice sleep for revision - dip below seven hours and your memory suffers more than you gain from that extra study hour.
Your child doesn't follow the timetable. What do you do?
From Class 6 onwards, let them write it - a timetable a child helped set is kept far more often than one handed to them. Below Class 6, keep it to two short blocks and make one of them reading. If the resistance is bigger than the timetable, this is usually why.
Can I print these?
Absolutely. Use your browser's print function to show all four class bands nicely without the menu visible. You don't need to download anything or sign up for an account.
Will a timetable help if your child is behind?
A timetable creates habit, not understanding. If your child has fallen behind due to a basic gap - like place value, phonics, or fractions - sticking to a schedule will only deepen the problem. First find the missing piece, then the timetable helps you maintain the skill once they've got it.
What length of study time at home follows school lessons for children.
Study doesn't need nearly as much time as most guides suggest. Aim for roughly 20-30 minutes for Year 1-2, 40-45 minutes for Year 3-5, one to ninety minutes for Year 6-8, and two to two-and-a-half hours for Year 9-10. These figures represent the top end for meaningful study on a day packed with school. Don't treat them as targets - treat them as limits. A single focused session outweighs total daily hours.
Strategies for spreading study across your break.
We hold sessions at roughly half school frequency, always in the same morning window, zeroing in on one specific level rather than trying to cover everything. Only during holidays is there time enough to solidify times tables or place value grasp while schooling pauses, and this tight focus pays more than sweeping review attempts.
My child keeps the timetable going for three days before stopping. Why?
The problem's often that the daily goal relies on hope rather than reality, or tasks just name subjects rather than concrete work. A subject like 'Maths' never ends, but 'solve eight problems' does. The answer is to cut the daily target in half and describe every task with a clear stopping point. A schedule your child will stick to most days is worth more than a flawless one they ignore.
Should weekends have more study time than school days?
A bit of weekend study is okay, just not overdone - and definitely not as an attempt to catch up on a missed week. Around three hours is when focus starts to slip, no matter what day it is. Six-hour marathons on Saturday just make children think studying is futile. Packing weekends with study is the main reason schedules fail.
Routine keeps improvement going, but won't build it.
A child who lags behind due to gaps in the basics will only entrench mistakes through extra practice alone. Our free assessment pinpoints what's really going wrong, costs nothing, and gives you straight feedback immediately.
- Tell us the class, the board, and where it is going wrong.
- We find a teacher who has taught that exact thing, and offer a slot.
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