AIBU to wish primary schools would do away with homework

The majority of kids DONT do the 11pmus though. My DD did but she was also at a primary school that didn't set homework and never had " tuition" for 11 plus either. Had some practice papers . Got her into a good grammar

Mine is year 5 and they don’t do homework in her school. She gets nothing- all school work is done in school. There are optional apps if you want to do them

Well that's easy Just make it optional

It's so bloody granular too

Refer to this page in that book, then check line 27 of the green folder etc etc.

They should just give them a book each week to read, then discuss it on Fri. That would be far more valuable.

My kids would be worse are times tables, spelling, maths reading etc if they didnt do homework.

Normally do 10/15 minutes on a night after they've been in the bath, they grumble about doing it, but just part of our evening routine.

Cant say we lose precious family time to it.

I'm more than happy to support with practising reading/spelling/writing/maths at home.

Our DC also get various optional tasks/projects relating to topic work in school, which are always really woolly and hard to get them to engage with (mostly because DC always furiously deny having covered the topic at all in class). So we don't tend to do those as they feel more like homework for us than DC.

If they’ve been learning very dry grammar, homework might be to research Egyptians, make a poster of it and build a model of the pyramids.

Is it a topic they are moving to - as we used to get that make x and research topic every half term and it would be the topic they were doing next. They were too young to do it themsleves so I'd have to find books, tv shows appropriate for their ages for information then do a poster or art thing that would get taken in often needing resources and money to do.

I was at home with the kids so even with three kids could just about manage it but I know a lot of the working parents who had kid in childcare of with DGP actually found the hoildays extremely stressful with more school work than usual and no extra time to do it in.

Under one teacher it got so bad - it just crept up and up - that parents talked to the head and it was cut right back again.

Both sets of schools should.

Agreed. In the 70s we had zero homework in primary and we all coped fine in secondary. I think reading with your kids is good but homework completely unnecessary. Let them be children. Now the curriculum is so jam packed from day one. No wonder so many are burning out halfway through secondary school.

I'm going to respectfully disagree here. My daughters have had homework all the way through. I remember chatting one day with the head and this came up.

He said it's not about the work, it's about the habit. My girls are year 7 and 8 now, both are on top of homework with minimal support from me. The girls who have fed in from other schools find it a hell of a shock.

Unless they are feeling particularly inspired, they do roughly the timings that are set and I pop a note on the work if they haven't finished confirming how much time they have spent on it.

I agree that it was a slog in primary school, but I think that it has paid dividends now.

My DD is in Y2 and, thankfully, no homework yet apart from a weekly reading book. Which I'm pleased about as she always comes home from school exhausted. I don't think it's beneficial at all in primary school. They should gradually introduce it in secondary.

I never felt we got the right kind of homework to know where they were or what they were doing academically- and when we raised concerns they were dismissed.

So we did our own stuff at home with basics - when realised kids were behind in some areas - and the school busy homework just sucked time and engery from these programs that had reaserch behind then and seemed to actually help the kids.

What homework there is and how good it was varried between teachers and definetly between schools. It took moving schcools to realise what a huge burden and timesink we were actually dealing with in first school.

I think reading at home is essential. Online games for timetables really useful, and some time, even if it’s 10 minutes or so to do something structured, like writing out spellings - which sometimes seems pointless.

If you can get them used to some routine or familiarity with independent leaning it helps a lot when secondary school arrives.

My kids school has it just right - basically what you say in your OP - 10 mins maths/Irish/English/reading - all of which most kids can do without input (apart from the reading when they're little and it's out loud), apart from being in the room and occasionally wandering over to comment. It's perfect.

They don't even do 'projects' until the last 2 years (when they're prepping them for secondary).

Oh, and no homework on Fridays, so your weekends are always family time.

Our old primary school never did homework as the head didn't believe in it.

Pros:

1. Less stress, working parents so nice to have evenings more chilled not having to persuade/nag kids to do work.
2. More time to have fun/enjoy childhood.
3. Teachers taught them what they needed to know during the school day (I presume)

Cons:

1. getting them to do homework once they started at secondary was HARD WORK as they were not used to having to work after 3pm. I was also not used to it and hard to know how much to nag and now much to leave them to it and reap the consequences.

2.The school didn't do as well on sats/phonics stats or Ofsted as other nearby schools with similar socio-economic intake. (Was this to do with homework? Who knows).

3Had NO idea what they were doing in school so couldn't help them in any way (unless children told me but they usually "couldnt remember"

Overall. I think I'm still glad we had no homework at primary

I think it should be done away with altogether, even at secondary school as it only adds to inequality and low attendance as kids just can't keep up with the huge amount, and all to be done on apps. They could build in independent study periods at school itself- as private schools do! Keep school for school and home for home.

Completely disagree. My dc primary school have abolished homework, so I don't know where they are, so I struggle with "adding" to what they are currently learning.
I don't mean bombarding them with tons of homework, just a small amount so I know where they are academically.

When we moved areas we obvioulsy changed primary school - and we suddenly had so much more time just because they only did the craft/project style homeworks once or twice a year in new school rather than every week and research new topic and produce something every half term.

Not doing the homework in first school meant loss of breaks and/or kids getting upset and worried about not having done it.

Our school only sets spelling tests, they are expected to do 20 mins of times tables rockstars and read x3 a week.

They went through a phase of setting work sheets and on parents evening I explained we won’t be doing them, teacher was fine.

I also don’t fill in the reading record, it’s not fit for purpose, it wants a mini book report from the child for each and every reading session. It’s demotivating. They read daily.

Maybe… but I have two kids, for one doing homework has always been difficult, loads of reminders, push back, really hard, for the other one it’s easy, they are mainly independent and it’s done very quickly. I am academic I love studying and I had no issues in doing homework (we had loads in my school, like 2-3 hours a day in secondary plus weekend work) and I love doing them with the kids, but I can see the different attitude (and also different academic results that inevitably follow!)

My Year 3 DS has spelling, reading and 10 mins time stables a day. The creative stuff is optional at our school and set termly. Some terms we do stuff some we don't depending on what else is going on.
It's still a drama to get him to just to that

We just don't put any pressure on it at all.
If there is something they want to do they do it. My eldest will do it all by himself and more when he wants to so I just gently guide and make sure I'm available to print out whatever he wants etc

My middle has additional needs. He just abouts tolerates going to school masks a lot of the day so comes home exhausted. If we started doing homework it would completely overload him. We let him guide us on what he can manage. So timetables and reading we do but at his pace.

I just don't think anyone is learning the moment it becomes stressful or pressured.

My children didn’t take the 11+. I wanted to know what they were doing to take an interest, and to see if they needed help from me, or if I needed to speak to school. I do think how parents approach homework makes a difference, whether children are academic or not.