Why do some parents not engage with school?! Asking as a teacher!

Typical you think you know me and my children.
Likewise I could say -
I tells me you are happy to spend your time blaming others blah blah blah and conclude doing homework makes children feel “unvalued” and like “failures”. Thats the message YOU are communicating. Not the school.

The idea of spending extra money and effort in providing another pair of shoes to make the cleaners lives a little bit easier? Erm. No. Sorry but as a disabled parent on a low income with disabled children, that's not going to be very high on my list of priorities.

Seems to me that some schools have very unrealistic expectations of parents.

I worked in education for 15 years, I had a similar viewpoint until my children went to primary.

Personally I don’t agree with homework. I believe work should end at school. I haven’t mentioned this to DC but I don’t want them to grow believing it is ok to bring work home with you. You work a 9-5, you get paid a 9-5. Do not work at home, something I frequently had to do when I worked in education.
I believe it creates a toxic work ethic.
Home time should be spending time with the family.

Last year I had 3 DC in primary school and both parents working full time. I would rush home and cook dinner straight away, by the time we’d eaten it was already 7pm. Then after a bath we would sit and watch a series together or play a game. I do not want to spend this time doing homework.
Reading is a different story, we can all read together or they can read a book in their room, but other than reading I don’t think extra learning should be an expectation. This is time to unwind.

COVID definitely had something to do with it.
Unfortunately the government got this wrong. Trying to create a school environment in a home is not feasible. This is absolutely not how home schooling is doing. Making children complete worksheets for hours a day??
This made my two children with SEN completely shut down and they completely refuse to even hear the word now or they have a meltdown.

The format we are now expected to do it in is too complicated.
Our school uses Google classroom. Personally I struggle to use it. I also don’t own a computer and have no need to own one, so this also makes it trickier.
I would be happy with paper format but I don’t expect schools to fund this.

We also have other clubs on at times for example brownies, cubs, football etc. These should not be overlooked for homework.

This just tells me you haven't had a child suffering trauma from school / homework

Lucky you

My other children we could do the above with. The one damaged by school has needed a very different approach. We needed them to know they were valued and worthwhile as they were and that their value wasn't tied into academic success.
School made them feel failure and worthless because due to unmet needs they couldn't learn the way schools teach.
This is a system failure and not our child fault.

I’m in the minority here …. I believe that spending the very small amount of time required with each child, reading together or discussing/checking homework is worthwhile.

1. reinforcing ethos of putting in effort when asked
2. Demonstrating to DC that you care about their education and supporting them to success
3. showing DC that you are available to them when they might need support or help
4. You become aware of where they struggle or where they find interests

If you are on MN, any minutes after school … you could divert that time to DC “education”. Any MN time during day, or at night - cut it in half & get organized so can support your child in working with your child’s school.

Show your kids that you think school/homework is pointless and they will likely take that idea to adulthood. If doing homework would help them be 5% more educated as adults - would you do it, 10%? Convince me that homework is pointless and has 0% impact on overall educational outcomes.

Wondering also … parents paying private schools - do you think homework is pointless?

Well my son's tutor after finally ringing me back this week had forgotten my son's dad died suddenly last year so I'm no over-awed with their behaviour.

In year 1 - so they are reading phonically decodable books at their level?

My primary school DC do an extra curricular activity every day of the week. I think this is much more important to making them a rounded individual than after school homework when they have been in school all day. They deserve some downtime too. I have discussed at parents evenings not having time to do homework and my DC's teachers have indicated this is fine as neither child is struggling. Life is literally too short.

I think parents sometimes resent the amount of work coming home to be done, reading/writing/maths (important stuff), then you ask the child what they did at school and the say they watched fecking moana that afternoon or something. Or bring home 5 drawings from the day, when they surely should have been doing the reading/writing and maths??
I always do the homework, but parents can definitely resent it when you've done a full week at work, kept the house clean, cooked healthy meals and are absolutely frazzled by then end of it all.

I think it depends what else you are doing. I’m a teacher and we do my DSDs maths and spelling homework with her but we don’t read the school books because they are pretty rubbish, the homework is to re-read what’s already been read in class, and she has access to better quality texts at home. She reads independently every day and she and I still do a bedtime story on my DHs nights (7 in 14) so there’s plenty of reading happening.

But for those who struggle and can not learn it..doing more of the same at home doesn't help it actually caused my one child trauma forcing them to do something that everyone said they should be able to just do but they couldn't.

Homework should be set at a level that is achievable. It is no good setting homework beyond the child.
What may take 5 mins in one house hold could take 3 hours in a household where the child can't do it.
.

There is children that can do homework independently and actually get pleasure from showing parents their progress.

There are children who need a little encouragement and a support.

And there are children that are actually being damaged by homework. Families in the brink. My child, myself, he while family in distress trying to read a biff and chip book. A book where they child couldn't do it. A book that left the child feeling a failure, a book that often left me punched by my tiny child. A book and approach by school that did nothing to help the child actually learn to read and resulted in child still avoiding reading books now.
They can read now but not because of school and not because of homework

We celebrate all talents at our school. Chn bring in their extracurricular achievements and they are celebrated in assemblies. But they still need to learn how to read fluently and do basic maths. Only practising regularly will achieve that. A two pronged approach with parents reinforcing the message .

There is more to life than academic learning
Dance, karate, football, drama, singing, looking after pets, time with family, cooking, art and play all has so much value and benefit

Why are saying these should be dropped so that more homework can be done.
The child who had a trophy that is an achievement. Maybe they are just not academic but they excel in other areas. Maybe they are not ready for learning, but they maybe in a year or two if they aren't damage by unrealistic expectations and pressure to be a square peg in a round hole.

Every child is different, every child will have things they struggle with and things they excel at. We need a variety of skills and knowledge.
No matter how hard people work some children will achieve the top grades and some will not because never has every child in the UK achieved an A in maths the same year.
While people here talk about the impact on life of not getting support at home they fail to acknowledge that some children will struggle while others find it easy.
It is important for those who struggle at school to have activities in their life that they excel in.
My child who couldn't cope with homework or reading. Learnt to read in their own time and in their own way. School destroyed their confidence and their self esteem and left them feeling worthless.
School refused reasonable adjustments to teach child in a way they could learn as it is easier to blame the child and the parent than the system.

This child has so many talents and so much going for them.

Imagine a society with no art, no sport, no TV/Movies/theatre or nobody doing the jobs you wouldn't want. Is that the world you want to live in?

Homework is very useful . It gets done by the pupil not the time short parent.

But people are all saying on here that they have no time/homework is pointless and time consuming so get rid of it..I'm just pointing out that the OP has zero control over any of this. If people feel strongly about this then they need to express their opinions to the Department of education. Teachers are parents too and we have our own opinions but we can't influence this. (There should still be some time in the day to read to/with your child though)

@LameBorzoi but as I said in my post whilst I'd like them to read the school book, trying them to read other books, as you do, is great. It's reading! The parents I'm talking about are spending hours at dance, football etc and not squeezing in the 10 minutes needed here and there because they don't want to.

And many of us are exhausted. Whether that's parents with SEN themselves, working full time, caring for others but we chose to have children and need to do our best by them.

Do you use a phonics programme? If you teach them how to spell they don’t need to learn spellings.

On the whole most homework is a waste of time. In forty years of being a parent and grandparent I have rarely seen any homework of value. Give the kids, and their parents, a break. They are 7 fgs.

She asked why parents don’t engage - if the daft rules are set by other authorities then she needs to be asking them why they’re doing it, not us!

Move to a less affluent area? If she can't handle kids not doing their homework how will she cope with seeing poor kids that haven't eaten?

I personally find girls that age a lot easier to get to sit down and learn but someone will tell us we are both being sexist haha

This
Stop trying to teach the class you wish you had, and start teaching the class that's in front of you.
Ex-teacher here.

I don't have it at hand as I'm at home laid in bed scrolling right now. But it's been the case for many years, certainly as long ago as my daughter being in school and she's in her twenties now.

But an internet search of educational papers will usually bring it up.

Spelling tests for young children don't generally lead a child to be able to independently poly those spellings to their every day work in English and topic. Many children can achieve 10/10 in a weekly spelling test but then fail to apply those in their written work.

It's better to learn spelling and phonics rules, and other little 'tricks' for trickier worlds over a period of time,, with regularly reminders as they go - so it becomes second nature rather than short term memory learning.

The reading books they send the kids home with are complete dross - I let them go wild in the library and read whatever they like. They probably read for an hour each night but it will look to the school reading books are untouched.

At my school parents can record any reading the child does, but just school books.

However the school books are the main ones we look out for. These are directly linked to the child's current phonics level in terms of decoding, expressive reading and comprehension levels. So yes, the story line might be limited simply as the child isn't yet able to independently decide enough sounds to include more interesting text. That will come with time. But those early books have an important benefit to the child.

We read a book with a child three times in school, each time with a different focus, and then send it home for a week. By the time it flies home the child should be able to read the book pretty fluently with good expression and full comprehension.

Additional books from home, school or library are great for learning new vocabulary, developing an interest in more complex stories and listening to an adult read passages with fluency and prosody.

In all honesty, 6/7 year olds should be going home to play and socialise with their families, there is no need to push more formal learning on them outside of school hours, at this age they learn through play and exploration but our education system is dreadful and our government doesn’t care for the needs of children, we need more play, more structured outdoor activities, more breaks throughout the day, less sitting still and writing at desks for hours.