Homework statistics show that study time is highly uneven across students and education systems. In the latest OECD comparison, 15-year-olds reported about 1.4 hours of homework per day on average, while PISA 2022 data show that the relationship between time and mathematics performance was positive only through a limited range. The figures below place daily homework, subject-specific study, support, and historical trends in context.
Contents
- Latest homework time
- How homework time changed
- How students’ time was distributed
- Country patterns and study support
- Homework time and mathematics performance
- Gender and historical comparisons
Latest homework time
The OECD’s PISA 2025 results provide the newest broad comparison of homework time among 15-year-old students. Across OECD countries, students reported spending about 1.4 hours per day on homework. The range across education systems was wide: average reported time ran from under 1 hour per day to at least 2.5 hours per day. These are student-reported averages, so they describe reported study behavior rather than a timed record of every assignment.
Several systems were among those reporting at least 2.5 hours per day: Zambia, Azerbaijan, Mauritius, Mongolia, and Rwanda. The PISA 2025 analysis also found that homework time was positively associated with help seeking in 55 countries and economies. That association does not by itself establish that homework causes students to seek help, but it connects homework routines with the broader study-support picture.
The latest science-specific results add another boundary. In PISA 2025, the relationship between homework time and science performance was positive up to a threshold of about 2 hours per day. The result suggests that additional time cannot be interpreted as uniformly beneficial at every level: the association changes once reported science homework passes that approximate threshold. The threshold is a statistical pattern in the PISA analysis, not a universal daily recommendation for every student.
Source: Student school life and beyond: PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).
How homework time changed
Compared with PISA 2022, the OECD average reported homework time fell by about 10 minutes per day in PISA 2025. The newer average represented an 11% relative decline from 2022. The proportion of students spending more than 2 hours per day on homework also fell by 6 percentage points across the OECD.
Science homework followed a similar direction. Average science-homework time fell by about 6 minutes per day between 2022 and 2025, a 13% relative decline. The share of students spending less than 30 minutes per day on science homework increased by 7 percentage points. Average science-homework time decreased in about three-quarters of the countries and economies with comparable data from both PISA cycles.
The pattern was not universal. Average science-homework time increased in seven systems between PISA 2022 and 2025: Georgia, Viet Nam, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Ukrainian regions, Latvia, and Portugal. Because the comparison covers countries and economies with comparable data, the result should be read as a cross-cycle comparison for those systems, not as a claim about every education system worldwide.
Source: Student school life and beyond: PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).
How students’ time was distributed
PISA 2022 students reported an OECD average of 1.5 hours per day doing homework during a typical school week. The distribution shows why an average alone can hide substantial differences:
| Reported homework per day | Share of students, OECD average, PISA 2022 |
|---|---|
| Up to 30 minutes | 27% |
| More than 30 minutes to 1 hour | 19% |
| More than 1 to 2 hours | 23% |
| More than 2 hours | 31% |
The largest single group was therefore the 31% reporting more than 2 hours per day, while 27% reported no more than 30 minutes. Together, the two middle categories accounted for 42% of students, but they should not be combined with a claim about performance because the OECD analysis reports performance relationships by different time ranges.
At the system level, students in 54 PISA 2022 countries and economies averaged no more than 2 hours of homework per day. Students in Colombia, Guatemala, Morocco, Panama, and Peru averaged more than 2.5 hours per day. By contrast, students in the Czech Republic, Finland, and Switzerland averaged less than 1 hour per day.
Homework was one part of the school week. Across OECD countries, PISA 2022 students spent an average of 24 hours per week in regular lessons and 10.8 hours per week doing homework. These measures cover different activities and are reported in weekly and daily forms, so they should not be treated as interchangeable measures of total learning.
Source: Investments in a solid foundation for learning and well-being: PISA 2022 Results (Volume II).
Country patterns and study support
The Palestinian Authority national report illustrates how subject-specific homework can differ within one education system. In PISA 2022, 49% of 15-year-old students in Palestine reported spending 30 minutes or less per day on mathematics homework. The corresponding figures were 48% for language-of-instruction homework and 43% for science homework. Across all subjects, 21% reported spending 30 minutes or less per day on homework.
The same report measured the availability of peer-to-peer tutoring as study help. Sixty-two percent of 15-year-old students in Palestine had peer-to-peer tutoring available. The OECD average share in the comparison reported for Palestine was 49% of students enrolled in schools providing peer-to-peer tutoring. Availability describes whether the support existed; it does not indicate how often individual students used it or how effective it was.
Country patterns also appeared in the mathematics results. In Brunei Darussalam, Macao (China), the Netherlands, North Macedonia, and Portugal, students scored higher in mathematics when they reported up to 2 hours of homework in PISA 2022. In Georgia, Korea, Romania, and Viet Nam, the higher-scoring range extended to students reporting up to 3 hours. These country-specific ranges are not a global rule: they show where the PISA 2022 analysis identified higher scores within the reported time categories.
Sources: Out-of-school learning time and Investments in a solid foundation for learning and well-being: PISA 2022 Results (Volume II).
Homework time and mathematics performance
After socioeconomic adjustment, PISA 2022 students reporting 30 minutes to 1 hour of homework scored 16 mathematics points higher than students reporting less than 30 minutes. Students reporting 1 to 2 hours scored 2 points higher than those in the 30-minutes-to-1-hour group. Above 2 hours per day, homework time was negatively associated with mathematics performance in the OECD analysis.
This pattern matters because 31% of the OECD PISA 2022 sample reported more than 2 hours per day and had lower mathematics performance than the positive-association ranges after adjustment. The finding is an association, not proof that longer homework caused lower scores. Students who need more time, face more challenging work, or study in different circumstances may be represented differently in the time categories.
The broader learning-time result was also quantified: across OECD countries, the average mathematics score-point gain per hour of total learning time was 14 points in PISA 2022. Total learning time and homework time are separate measures, so this figure should not be read as 14 mathematics points for every additional homework hour.
An older PISA analysis focused on low-performing mathematics students. In PISA 2012, low-performing students across OECD countries spent about 3.5 hours per week on homework. They spent almost 2 hours per week less than students above the baseline proficiency level across the school system, and about 1 hour per week less than better-performing students in their own schools. These historical comparisons describe the PISA 2012 population and should not be treated as current estimates.
Sources: Investments in a solid foundation for learning and well-being: PISA 2022 Results (Volume II) and Low-Performing Students (EN).
Gender and historical comparisons
The PISA 2018 optional questionnaire measured study at home on the day before the test rather than the typical-school-week homework measure used in PISA 2022. In that 2018 questionnaire, 64% of boys and 73% of girls reported studying at home for more than 1 hour. At the other end, 24% of boys and 18% of girls reported not studying at home at all. These figures should be kept distinct from homework averages because the question, reference day, and data collection cycle differ.
More than 75% of both boys and girls studied at home for more than 1 hour in Albania, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malta, and Panama. More than 25% of both boys and girls reported no home study in Brazil, Denmark, Iceland, and Ireland. The gender gap in the share studying at least 1 hour at home exceeded 10 percentage points in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
Longer historical comparisons also show a downward trend in reported homework or teacher-set study time. Across comparable OECD countries, the average fell from 5.9 hours per week in 2003 to 4.9 hours in 2012, a decline of 1 hour per week. Average homework time decreased in 31 of 38 countries and economies with comparable PISA 2003 and 2012 data.
The largest reported reductions included more than 5 hours per week in the Slovak Republic and more than 3 hours per week in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece. Across comparable countries and economies, the correlation between 2003 homework time and its change to 2012 was -0.68. That negative correlation indicates that systems with higher starting values tended, in this comparison, to show larger declines; it does not forecast future change.
For a country-level historical reference, PISA 2003 reported an average of 12.7 hours per week of homework or teacher-set study in the Russian Federation, 10.5 hours in Italy, 9.9 hours in Hungary, and 3.7 hours in Finland. These are legacy figures from 2003 and were not independently verified here; they are included to preserve the historical comparison and its measurement period.
Sources: Do boys and girls differ in their attitudes towards school and learning?: PISA 2018 Results (Volume II), PISA 2012 Results: What Makes Schools Successful (Volume IV), and Mathematics Teaching and Learning Strategies in PISA.