This is a time and coverage comparison. It makes no claim about learning outcomes;
see 07-claims-and-limits.md for why not.
Core instruction hours are measured. The daily packet logs start time, finish time and total breaks, and the tracker holds every graded result.
Enrichment hours are estimated and labelled as such throughout. They are the programme owner’s figures for session lengths, not logged times. Treat the core column as evidence and the enrichment column as a good-faith estimate until it is logged the same way.
US public elementary, grades 1–4, from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey:
| Subject | Hours per week |
|---|---|
| English / language arts | 11.6 |
| Mathematics | 5.4 |
| Social studies | 2.5 |
| Science | 2.3 |
| Core instruction | 21.8 |
| Student school week | 32.1 |
| Not core instruction | 10.3 (32% of the week) |
Nationally the average student spends about 1,231 hours in school per year, and the same body of research finds interruptions and teacher absence cost a meaningful slice of that — roughly 97 hours a year in one district study.
The number that matters is the third row: about a third of the public elementary week is not core instruction. Transitions, lining up, attendance, assemblies, and the overhead of moving 25 children through a building. None of it is wasted exactly, but none of it is instruction either.
Measured across Days 17–22 of the first grading period:
| Hours | |
|---|---|
| Working time per school day | 3.9 – 5.3 (mid 4.6) |
| Per week, 5 school days | 19.6 – 26.7 (mid 23.1) |
Important caveat for honest comparison: those hours cover eight subjects — Bible, Reading, Language, Writing, Spelling, Arithmetic, History and Science — where the 21.8-hour benchmark covers four. Spelling and handwriting are separately timetabled here and are folded into English in the benchmark. The totals are close; the baskets are not identical. Read it as comparable, not equal.
Structured, scheduled activity outside the core programme. Reported as hours by category — not as days, times, named organisations or locations, because this is a public document about a specific child.
Estimated, not logged — see the note at the top.
| Category | Hours per week (est.) |
|---|---|
| Academic tutoring (mathematics and a second language), 3×/week | 9 – 12 |
| Scouting, one meeting per week | 1.5 – 2 |
| Sports club | 1.5 – 2 |
| Youth sports — 2 practices + 1 game per week, seasonal | 3 – 4.5 |
| Total | 15 – 20.5 |
Of that, roughly 10 hours is additional academic instruction and roughly 7 hours is structured time with peers.
| Hours per week | |
|---|---|
| Public elementary, in school | 32.1 — of which 21.8 is core instruction |
| This programme, core instruction | 19.6 – 26.7 |
| This programme, core + enrichment | 34.6 – 47.2 structured |
Core instruction is comparable. The difference is what fills the rest of the week: about 10 hours of non-instructional school time, against 15–20 hours of chosen academic tutoring, scouting and sport.
That is the whole claim. Not better learning — the same instructional load in a shorter day, with the recovered time spent on things that were chosen rather than inherited.
The most common objection to homeschooling is social isolation. The research does not support the objection in either direction — reviewers find no evidence of help or harm, and say so because the studies are too weak to conclude anything.
What this programme can report is a schedule: roughly 7 hours a week of structured peer activity across scouting and two sports programmes, plus 3 sessions a week in a classroom with other children. Five days a week this student is in a room with other kids doing something organised.
That is not evidence about socialization outcomes. It is evidence that the scheduling objection — that a homeschooled child has no structured peer contact — does not describe this programme. Those are different claims and the weaker one is the defensible one.
The things the schedule can absorb that a fixed timetable cannot:
The last one cuts both ways and is included for that reason.
07-claims-and-limits.md.