Can teachers tell when parents do the HW?

Yup.... I can tell....

I have, on occasion, bailed my children out buy helping more than i should but ive never done their homework for them. They have one free pass per half term where I will chip in.

Ds1 (y7) had to write a song recently. He wailed about it and wanted me to do it. I told him that I could do it in under 15 minutes, blindfolded and with my right arm tied behind my back and it would be bloody obvious that he'd done none of it. I wrote the first two lines to set him off in the right direction and then simply encouraged him.

My involvement in DS1s HW should really be no more than nagging him to do it. As it's his first term, I get a little more involved giving suggestions if necessary or if asked for help. I do not agree with HW in primary school, and it isnt marked anyway, so I am happy to be a little more involved for DS2 but stop well short of doing it for him.

I agree that the child gets no benefit from having a parent do it (bar the obvious!). What is being described by the OP is appalling.

If parents at my school are doing homework for their DCs, they must be pretty rubbish at languages!! They certainly seem to produce work at the same level as their kids!

I think schools should really clamp down on homework being done by parents. One of my best friends drives me mad with this, she even had one of her kids crying the other week because she had done his homework for him when he wanted to do it himself! (Build a castle). Her arguement - she wanted his to be the best! FFS

I remember an Easter Bonnet competition at my primary school. We had to traipse around a ring wearing our efforts at the school fair. I was about 7 and had stuck crepe paper flowers etc on a card top hat. It was so embarrassing-there were children there with the most amazing creations. The boy who won had something resembling the Cutty Sark on his head (perhaps he was Philip Treacy), and the girl had a basket of fruit worthy of a milliner. I was utterly demoralised.

My daughter doesn't let me review her hwk anymore. In year 5 her teacher told them that they had to get used to working independently, and to not ask for help unless they were REALLY stuck.

Perhaps they had encountered parent-produced hwk.

Obviously, I didn't discourage her.

Lottie - how many bottles of gin did it take??

Mum HP - that is a really horrible situation for your daughter and she has a few years of it to go too - I presume you have talked to her about it being the parents that are getting the vivomiles and not the kids? (So that she doesn't feel that the others are more clever than her?).

I don't think you are ever going to change the schools (shitty) attitude to it, so either she understands what is at play or if it is still upsetting her (which is understandable - it's pretty crap to know that no matter how hard you work or how well you do, you will never be acknowledged) would you consider changing schools? I would, I don't think this is a healthy atmosphere for her.

Gah, my parents NEVER and I mean never, did a single piece of HW, or even talked to me about HW. I was always quite resentful that they weren't the sort of intellectual, arty parents who did know a lot about everything who could help with HW.

Once though in primary school, a girl brought a piece of artwork in for a competition that had probably not only been done by her parents but quite possibly by a professional artist . Her mum was a PTA governor or whatever it's called, and her dad contributed loads of £££ to the school funds. She won 2nd prize. Obviously the teachers couldn't bear her to win 1st prize when so clearly it had been done by a talented adult (she was no child prodigy in art, there was really no way she'd done it) but they felt they had to place her obviously because of her parents' connections to the school. Even at aged 8 I could see what was going on and we (the kids) all thought it stunk. Her parents should have known better though, but then they were arrogant sorts...

I think there's a fine line between 'supported through the work' and 'did it for them' (and my suggestions to language-duffer DS yesterday were the wrong side of it, but it's survival tactics in the Lottie household atm)

LL: Right DS. You have to write a paragraph about your favourite holiday. In German. Sooo...
DS: Can't do it, argh, no, I hate this
LL: So where would you go? In English.
DS: Wales I spose. Umm. Cornwall. Dunno. Austria except I'm afraid of rabies. I hate being afraid of things. Why do I have to be me?? I hate being me
LL (loudly): OK DS, what's Wales in German? And are you going by train or fahring mit dem Auto?
DS: Umm, fahr mit Auto. No, train. fahr ein train then. What's 'to'? What's train? Aaargh... Wales is Wales I think.
LL: so, is 'Ich fahre mit dem Zug nach Wales' OK by you? DS? Would that do??

Dunno, but I once dictated an essay for DS having got fed up with the whole weekend of him procrastinating, then was totally mortified when he/I won a prize and a special mention in assembly so have never done it since.

I know a number of parents who did homework for their dc's, then it became a battle to get them to work themselves when the real stuff in secondary kicked in. I was accused of doing some art for one dd, I have never done their homework (just pointed out when it needs to be redone, if a teacher is going to spend their time marking I expect my dc to put in a decent amount of effort, but I don't expect it to be perfect), she went on to A* GCSE and 100% in art AS, I can barely draw a stick man, doubt she would have achieved that if I was doing her sketch books, sculptures etc. In my younger dc's school I don't think many children do their own homework, I was shocked when I went in to see the termly project work on display, obviously done my parents, support and help yes but do it all for them? I don't think so

I've never done it. At primary I would sometimes help if asked or read it through but at secondary never.

It used to be a standing joke in this house when it came to arty competitions. The front runners were always Mrs K. and Mrs C.
What surprised me though was the fact that the staff would judge the work and these two mums always won. The teachers must have known - why did they not choose the wonky efforts actually done by a child?

But harking back to the OP, at least the teacher recognised that it wasn't ds's own work. He didn't suddenly give him a great mark.

I sometimes help ds with his homework, in that I find him relevant books, suggest a few things, but I would never write anything for him. What would be the point?

No, wait, I lie. A couple of years ago it was 4pm on the Sunday of half-term and ds sheepishly muttered that he had a project on Clarice Cliff to be handed in the next day. I cobbled together the words whilst ds did some sort of suitably orange design round the edge. But I wasn't aiming to get him top marks - just get the darn thing out of the way.

Very mean of the teacher, gramercy.

Art is one of those things you are either good at or you aren't.

Could understand having to take it home and redo if he hasd been mucking about in th lesson.

But to have to redo just because the teacher thinks it is just not good enough is just plain nasty.

Did she think he was going to turn into Picasso overnight?

Sounds like some of the stories my mum tells me about her convent school in the 1950s.

Ds is terrible at art. Truly awful. The (fierce) art teacher told ds he had to re-do his self-portrait at home and bring it in the following day.

So ds duly turns up with a all-new self-portrait owing much to dh's artistic talents. The teacher was furious and threatened ds with detention for not doing his own work.

Ds realises he just can't win with that teacher.

We have the opposite problem. I think we're expected to help DD with her homework (in year 4) but we always ensure she hands in her OWN work. I've often wondered if the teacher knows that we've not helped and DD has done it all on her own?

Cory - that is fairly poor of your DDs teacher. Surely she can see that the classwork and homework are of the same standard.

My DD also writes in a much more mature style than me, she is y6, but there has never been any suggestion that it is not her own work (Her teachers have met me so know better ).

Though at DDs previous school there was a lot of obvious parental help with homework but the teachers never did anything about it.

I remember one case when DD was in yr 2, homework was to visit an art gallery and choose a picture to do a project about. One child came in with a massive complicated poster which was obviously done by her mother - the writing was obviously not that of a 6 year old!

The child was given top marks and a big fuss was made of her. DD was really cheesed off as it was obvious to everyone that this was not the girl's own work.

The teachers must have known but the mother was the leading light of the PTA so no-one wanted to upset her

Generally yes. ONe local kid was refused her coursework because it was so obvious that her mum did it.

They can generally tell, but sometimes they get it wrong.

Dd's geography teacher has been hinting all term that dd must have had help with her geography homework because her language is so mature. She hasn't bothered to check with dd's English teacher what her level of English is actually like. I wouldn't dream of writing her work for her; and she would turn down any offers from dh (not that he would make them) as his language is far more naive and cliched than hers.

Dd feels slightly troubled by the thought that her teacher thinks she is lying, but I've told her to try to put it out of her mind and just keep on doing her best, because teachers come and go, but the learning she does will stay with her.

imho we can always tell

Had a parent quite hacked off 'their' h/w didn't get a better mark ...

sometimes they can tell and sometimes they judge wrongly. My dcs have occasionally fallen foul of homework that has looked too professional when they have in fact spent ages on it and done it all themselves. I imagine it works the other way sometimes too and a parent's work is thought to be the student's.

Yes we can tell. A mile off. Even with the brightest year 11s we can tell if it's not their own. Genuine work has a certain naivity that parents just can't replicate.

They don't always notice. My son made a fantastic castle out of clay and lego for his 1/2 term project. It was really good for an 11 year old and we contributed nada apart from admiring noises when it was completed as we are both far too lazy to do homework. I was gobsmacked when he got a very average mark for it. It was well researched and well thought out and he did a really good job. Explanation was that loads of other kids' parents had spent all 1/2 term making papier mache ones with working drawbridges and the like and his looked shite in comparison, apparently. Pah.

I deliberately did my sons homework once (long story); he was working at a level 4, the work I completed gained a level 7. Accepted without a murmur. In his Educational Records as 'X completed a really good project'.