Ask ten music teachers how long a child should practise and you may get ten different answers. That is not because nobody knows. It is because the honest answer depends on your child's age, their instrument, how long they have been learning and what their teacher has set for the week. This guide offers sensible starting points, but your child's teacher is always the best guide.

Quality matters more than minutes

One of the most cited studies on this comes from Robert Duke and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, published in the Journal of Research in Music Education in 2009. They watched advanced piano students practise a short, difficult passage and tested them the next day. How long they practised, and how many times they played the passage, did not predict how well they played. What mattered was how they practised. In the authors' words, the strategies used during practice "were more determinative of performance quality".

The pianists in that study were university students, not children, so we should not stretch the finding too far. But it matches what teachers see every day: ten focused minutes usually achieve more than thirty distracted ones.

Practice is important, but it is not everything

You may have heard that expertise is simply a matter of clocking up hours. A large 2014 review of the research by Brooke Macnamara, David Hambrick and Frederick Oswald, reported by Princeton University, found that practice accounted for about 21 percent of the differences between people in music performance. Practice clearly matters. It is just not the only thing that does, and children progress at different speeds for many reasons. That is a good reason not to compare your child's minutes with a sibling's or a classmate's.

Sensible starting points by age

The ranges below are common starting points that many teachers use. They are not research findings or rules, and your child's teacher may suggest something quite different.

• Ages 4 to 7: around 5 to 15 minutes a day, sometimes split into two tiny sessions. Short and cheerful is the aim.
• Ages 8 to 10: around 15 to 20 minutes a day, with one clear task for each session.
• Ages 11 to 13: around 20 to 30 minutes a day, building towards more independent practice.
• Ages 14 and over: often 30 minutes or more, especially before an exam or performance, ideally planned with the teacher.

For complete beginners, less can work perfectly well. In an NPR feature on getting children to practise, republished by the US public radio station WFAE, a 16-year-old pianist, Hilda Huang, put it simply: "For the beginner, 10 focused minutes is perfectly acceptable."

Little and often usually wins

Most teachers would rather see five short sessions across the week than one long session the night before the lesson. Regular practice keeps the music fresh, stops small problems from growing and makes practice feel like a normal part of the day rather than a big event. For young children, stopping while they are still enjoying it is often better than pushing for an extra five minutes.

Signs the length is about right

• Your child can tell you what they worked on.
• Sessions end before frustration takes over.
• Something sounds a little better by the end of the week.
• The teacher is happy with progress at the next lesson.

If practice regularly ends in tears, try shorter sessions with one small goal. If your child is happily playing for longer, there is no need to stop them. Enjoyment is worth protecting.

Follow the teacher

Your child's teacher knows their pieces, their technique and their next step. If you are unsure, ask at the end of a lesson: "How long should practice be this week, and what should it focus on?" Write the answer down so everyone remembers. If it helps, Music-Ready's free weekly practice chart at free printables gives you a simple place to record it.