Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average number of hours per week was of PE undertaken by pupils in secondary school pupils in England in (a) 2009, (b) 2012 and (c) 2017.

The government is clear that PE is a valuable subject. For this reason, the national curriculum continues to ensure that PE is compulsory at all four key stages. Academies and free schools are not required to follow the national curriculum but must provide a broad and balanced curriculum that should include PE. Ofsted inspections evaluate the effectiveness of the PE curriculum in all state funded schools as part of a broad and balanced curriculum.

We do not hold information on the average hours per week taught by secondary schools. Information on the number of hours taught in individual subjects has been collected since 2010 in the school workforce census for state-funded secondary schools only. This information is therefore not available for 2009. In November 2012, the number of hours taught in PE to pupils in state funded secondary schools, was 317,100 hours. For 2017, this same statistic was 282,200 hours. This school workforce census data can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-workforce.

However, these figures do not cover the time dedicated to extra-curricular sport or other physical activity done outside of formal lessons.