The School Year in Europe: Recommended compulsory instruction time and holidays
This tool illustrates the diversity of school year that students may experience across Europe in primary and general lower secondary education both in terms of recommended compulsory instruction time and holiday rhythm.
Effective learning depends on many factors, but undoubtedly, the instruction time available to students plays a key role in their learning process. Alongside the quality of instruction and the time available for learning after school, an increase in the amount of instruction time allocated to a particular subject can help heighten students’ interest in that area and positively affect their performance. This effect is even more pronounced when the increased instruction time is accompanied by other support measures and directed at disadvantaged students.
The school year is also marked by holiday periods. Examining the frequency and duration of breaks, as well as the length of summer holidays, helps in understanding how these factors relate to each other.
The data provide information on European countries, members of the Eurydice network and covers primary and lower secondary general education in public schools.
Related publications
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Recommended Annual Instruction Time in Full-time Compulsory Education in Europe – 2024/2025. Previous editions are available here.
Source
The data presented here originate from two different Eurydice data collections, conducted jointly with the OECD:
- Recommended instruction time in primary and compulsory secondary general education
- School calendars in Europe.
Information on the methodology and the data collection tools – questionnaire and manual – are available in the quality framework.
Data are collected in accordance with the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) (see the glossary for a brief presentation of ISCED education levels).
Open data
The open data zip file contains two Excel files:
- Datasets used in this publication
- An extract from the data collection questionnaires on instruction time. This information is harmonised in yearly hours to ensure comparability. It also provides additional useful information:
- By grade on the subjects covered here and more (ICT, physical education and health, arts education, etc.)
- on general upper secondary education (ISCED 34) for grade(s), which are part of compulsory education – if applicable.
© European Union, 2026
Catalogue number: EC-01-26-038-EN-Q
ISBN 978-92-9416-106-2 ISSN 3094-5941 doi:10.2797/4413584