CBSE timetable: how many periods a week each subject should get
CBSE does not publish a timetable. It publishes a scheme of studies — a range of periods per week for each subject area — and leaves the grid to the school. That range is the thing most timetables are quietly built without, which is why a curriculum can look complete and still sit below the board’s own minimum.
The scheme is a range, not a number
The board counts subject AREAS, not subjects. English and Hindi are one line — "Languages (L1 & L2)" — so seven periods of English and six of Hindi is thirteen against a twelve-to-fifteen range, not two separate allocations. A school allocates anywhere inside the range; it is going below the floor that is the problem.
The teaching week itself is expected to be 30–35 periods at the Preparatory stage and 41–54 at the Middle and Secondary stages. A school running well above that is not breaking a rule, but it is the reason its timetable has no slack: every extra period is one the solver must place with nowhere left to move it.
Classes 6 to 10 — periods per week by subject area
| Subject area | Periods / week | What the board is asking for |
|---|---|---|
| Science | 7–9 | Needs continuous double periods for laboratory work |
| Mathematics | 6–7 | Scheduled daily, ideally during morning peak-focus hours |
| Social Science | 6–9 | Split across History, Geography, Civics and Economics |
| Languages (L1 & L2) | 12–15 | Split between English, Hindi or a regional language |
| Third Language (R3) | 4–5 | Compulsory from Class 6 under the 2026 guidelines |
| Skill / Vocational | 2–3 | Mandatory; covers IT, Artificial Intelligence or trades |
| Physical Education | 5–6 | One period every school day — five on a five-day week, six on a six-day week |
| Art & Work Education | 2–3 | Visual arts, performing arts and foundational life skills |
Every area in this table is required — a curriculum missing one is non-compliant, not merely light. The Third Language became compulsory from Class 6 under the 2026 guidelines.
Classes 3 to 5 — the Preparatory stage is a different scheme
Not a smaller version of the middle-school scheme: at this stage the science and social material is taught as one blended subject, Environmental Studies, and the split into Science and Social Science only happens at Class 6.
| Subject area | Periods / week | What the board is asking for |
|---|---|---|
| Languages (L1 & L2) | 8–10 | Usually split evenly between English and Hindi/regional language |
| Mathematics | 6–8 | Scheduled daily, usually early in the day |
| Environmental Studies (EVS) | 4–6 | A blend of early science and social studies |
| Physical Education | 5–6 | One period every school day — five on a five-day week, six on a six-day week |
| Art & Craft | 2–3 | Mandatory integration of visual AND performing arts |
Classes 1 and 2 are CBSE’s Foundational stage — play-based, with no formal scheme of studies — and simply start from these rows.
Periods per week says nothing about hours
A school can satisfy every subject ratio the board asks for and still run a year that is legally short, because a period count says nothing about how long a period is or how many days the school opens. The Right to Education Act sets the floor directly:
| Stage | Minimum working days | Minimum instructional hours |
|---|---|---|
| Classes I–V | 200 | 800 a year |
| Classes VI–VIII | 220 | 1000 a year |
Both are floors on the school. The Act covers elementary education, so Classes IX–XII have no equivalent statutory hours floor — and WeekWise deliberately does not invent one.
Breaks, assembly, lunch and activity rows are not instructional time. Only periods your bell schedule marks as teaching count, which is the same definition the timetable engine itself uses.
What WeekWise does with all of this
The tables above are not a reference we wrote for this page — they are the data the product enforces. When you build a CBSE curriculum in WeekWise, it maps your own subject names onto the board’s areas and tells you which ones have fallen below the minimum. Because it also holds your bell timings and your academic calendar, it can compute your actual instructional hours and warn you while there is still a year left to fix it.
None of it blocks you. A school short of a floor gets a finding, not a refusal — the remedy is calendar and bell policy, and those are the school’s decisions to make.
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