A study timetable your child will actually 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.
Attention is highest at the start. Leaving maths until last is why it takes an hour and produces tears.
4:55 - 5:15Break. Off the chair, ideally outside.
A real break, not a screen. A screen break does not restore attention; it spends it.
5:15 - 5:40The rest of the homework, then 10 minutes of practice.
Practice means tables, spellings or matras - the recall that school assumes and rarely drills.
Bedtime15 minutes of reading, their choice of book.
Their choice. A book a child picks is read; a book assigned is skimmed.
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.
Still the highest-return activity in this band.
10 minutesTimes tables against a clock.
Speed matters here because Class 6 assumes recall. Make it a race, not a test.
What not to do at this age
- Revising everything every day. Rotate subjects instead - the recall is stronger for the gap.
- Sitting with them for the whole hour. Start them off, then leave; independence is part of what is being learnt.
- Adding tuition on top of a full timetable without removing something.
Hours, homework, holidays - and why timetables fail
How many hours should a child study a day?
Less than almost every timetable online will tell you, and the gap is not small. The figures below are focused study on a normal school day - after six or seven hours of school, which is already a full working day for a child.
| 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 things are worth saying about that table. The first is that the sitting length matters more than the daily total: three twenty-minute sittings beat one hour, and a Class 4 child asked to sit for an hour spends most of it not studying while appearing to. The second is that these are ceilings for productive work, not targets to hit. A child who finishes in less has finished.
If your child is doing far more than this and still slipping, more hours is the wrong lever. Something in the method is broken, and adding time to a broken method just produces a tired child with the same gaps.
Building it around school, not on top of it
The commonest reason a printed timetable fails by Wednesday is that it was written as though the child came home fresh. They do not. They come home depleted, and the first thing to go in is not study.
- A real break first. Thirty to sixty minutes of food, outdoors or nothing at all - not screens, which do not restore attention the way they feel like they do.
- Hardest subject first, once study starts. Attention is a falling resource across the evening. Maths at 4:30 and copying at 7 works; the reverse does not, and most children default to the reverse because the easy thing feels like starting.
- Homework is not revision. If homework fills the whole slot, the timetable has no study in it at all. Keep them separate on the page, even if homework wins some days.
- One buffer evening a week with nothing scheduled. A timetable with no slack is broken permanently by the first birthday party. One free evening lets the week absorb a disruption instead of being abandoned.
Getting the homework part to stop being a fight is its own problem, and usually not a timetable problem: homework without a fight.
Holiday timetables, and why they usually backfire
“Study timetable for holidays” is one of the most-searched versions of this phrase, and it is where parents most often overreach - because the school day is gone, the hours look available, and a plan gets written that nobody could keep.
What actually works over a long break:
- Roughly half the term-time total, not more. The point of a holiday is recovery, and a child who returns already tired starts the year behind rather than ahead.
- Same time every day, short. Consistency is what survives a break; volume is not. Forty minutes each morning beats three hours on Sundays for a Class 6 child.
- Fix one thing, do not cover everything. A holiday is the only stretch of the year long enough to repair a real gap - tables, matras, place value - without the syllabus moving underneath you. Trying to revise the whole year instead wastes that.
- Mornings, before the day fills. Anything scheduled for “the afternoon” in a holiday happens on about a third of days.
If you are using a break to close a specific gap, the free assessment will tell you which one is actually costing marks - which is usually not the one that is most visible.
Why timetables fail, and the three fixes that work
Most timetables are abandoned inside a fortnight, and it is almost never because the child is lazy. It is one of three design faults, and each has a specific fix.
| What you see | What it usually means | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Kept for three days, then gone | The daily total was set from ambition rather than capacity | Halve it. A timetable kept at 60% is worth far more than one abandoned at 100%. |
| Sits down but nothing gets done | The slot names a subject, not a task - “maths” has no finish line | Write the task: eight sums, one passage, one diagram from memory. Finishable beats scheduled. |
| Works all week, collapses on Saturday | The weekend was overloaded to make up for the week | Cap the weekend near the weekday figure. Catch-up blocks are where timetables go to die. |
And one that is not a design fault: if a child keeps the timetable, does the work and still loses marks, the timetable is doing its job and something else is wrong. That is a diagnosis problem, not a scheduling one.
About study timetables
How many hours should a Class 8 student study 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 are your timetables shorter than others I have seen?
Because they are bounded by how long a child of that age can actually concentrate after a full school day, not by how impressive the schedule looks. A four-hour plan for a Class 5 child gets abandoned in three days, and both parent and child conclude the child is lazy. A 30-minute plan that is kept beats a 3-hour plan that is not.
Should the timetable be different in exam months?
The length barely changes; what changes is the content. From about January in a board year, the work should be past papers answered under time and then marked against the official scheme, rather than chapters re-read. Sleep should not be traded for revision - below roughly seven hours, recall falls faster than the extra hour adds.
My child will not follow any timetable. What now?
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?
Yes. Use your browser's print option and the page prints all four class bands cleanly, without the navigation. There is nothing to download and no sign-up.
Does a timetable help a child who is behind?
It helps consistency, not comprehension. If your child is behind because something was never understood - place value, matras, fractions - a timetable makes them practise the misunderstanding more regularly. Find the gap first, then use the timetable to hold the repair in place.
How many hours should a child study at home after school?
Far less than most timetables suggest: roughly 20-30 minutes in Classes 1-2, 40-45 in Classes 3-5, an hour to ninety minutes in Classes 6-8, and two to two and a half in Classes 9-10. Those are ceilings for useful work after a full school day, not targets, and the length of a single sitting matters more than the daily total.
What should a study timetable look like in the holidays?
About half the term-time total, at the same time each morning, aimed at fixing one specific gap rather than revising everything. A holiday is the only stretch long enough to repair tables or place value without the syllabus moving underneath you, and that is worth more than broad revision.
My child keeps the timetable for three days and then stops. Why?
Almost always because the daily total was set from ambition rather than capacity, or because the slots name a subject instead of a task. A slot saying 'maths' has no finish line; one saying 'eight sums' does. Halve the total and write finishable tasks - a timetable kept most days beats one abandoned in full.
Should the weekend have more study than a school day?
A little, but not much - and never as catch-up for a missed week. Concentration is gone after about three hours whatever the day, and a six-hour Saturday mainly teaches a child that studying feels useless. Overloaded weekends are the commonest single reason a working timetable collapses.
A timetable holds a repair in place. It cannot make one.
If your child is behind because something was never understood, more regular practice repeats the misunderstanding. The free assessment finds the actual gap first - no card, and an honest note afterwards.
- You tell us the class, board and what is going wrong.
- We match a teacher who has taught exactly that, and send you a time.
- A free 20-minute assessment. Sit beside your child if you like.
- No card, no commitment
- Live classes, never a crowd
- The same teacher every week