Please fess up, how many hours a day schoolwork are your Primary school juniors doing each day?

[JMAngel1]

Just read a survey on BBC website that said poorer families are only doing 4.5 hours each day with their children whereas wealthier families are doing 6 hours.
My two are year 3 and 5 and we do 1.5 hours in the morning of. maths and english and then 1 hour in the afternoon on their school website looking at history/science/RE powerpoints thatkind of thing.
I thought we were doing a lot!
They do Jo Wickes, creative art time, chores and we go for a walk or cycle so we still fill the school day with activities.

What are your junior primary school children doing each day?

Erm my 9 year old20 minutes reading in the morning and the odd work sheet thats pretty much it at the mo

We work and Hes looked after by his 17 year old brother 🤷🏻‍♀️

Only 4.5 hours?! Blimey. I have a year 2 who does about 40 minutes a day. I have a year 4 who does about 1.5 hours a day. That's a struggle! Our headmaster has told us several times it's optional and not to stress about it. Sometimes I get them playing educational games on BBC bitesize. That's the best I can do. I'm not a teacher and I'm working too.

DD is Yr5 and is probably spending 4 hours at her desk each day.
DS is Yr3 and is probably spending an hour at his. This seems to be enough for him to do the bare essentials of the work he has been set. Getting him to even do 10 mins reading and TTRS as home work when he is at school has always been a battle and I only have so much fight in me! I certainly can't be bothered to get him to draw a picture in the style of X artist or listen to two pieces of classical music and compare them.
I am concerned that his written work (which has only ever just scraped into "expected" or whatever the phrase is) is slipping but I don't really know what to do. The teachers aren't asking for work to be submitted so aren't commenting. I have no idea of what standard - or even quantity - he should be producing.
We don't have the time to research this either as both DH and I are continuing to work full time (well full time plus plus as have been insanely busy since this all started).

Year 1 child:
Between 0 and 1.5 depending on whether or not I can stand the fight. But they read independently and a lot and I never have to even ask, they just do for fun.

Year 3 and we are doing 2 hours absolute max and that is on a good day.

Oh my goodness nowhere near 6 hours! Most days DD ( year 6) does about an hour & a half on her laptop of stuff like TT Rockstars. We have had several technical issues with our E Schools & it’s been difficult to either see the work posted by the class teacher or to submit it. To be honest, I’m not too concerned as they wouldn’t be doing much at all after their SATS & DD had a great report last time. She reads loads & is learning through life skills eg cooking & baking. She has quite complex needs so we have to do what we can. My main concern is her transition to secondary school & I guess making sure she doesn’t get out of the habit of doing schoolwork

We are aiming to work school hours 9-3ish however if the work isnt finished they work longer

Mine are years 7, 6 and 2.

Year 7 has lots of work online to work through.

Year 6 is set three pieces a day from school, he does any extension tasks set plus looks at BBC bitesize daily and working way through sats books.

Year 2 also set three pieces a day from school. She flies through these so i also do daily spellings, reading, maths and spag sheets (twinkl) plus BBC bitesize

We would be classed as a lower income family. 5 children and currently receiving FSM

We are what would be classed as a wealthy family. We are spending about 90m a day (max) on school work. Most of that is unsupervised.

Because in order to be a wealthy family we have to work full time as well (albeit from home).

7 year old, bugger all. Normally very conscientious 10 year old, probably 2 hours max.
Both of us are working from home. Haven't got time to be supervising them. I can't honestly think of anyone I know those kids are doing more than half a day's schoolwork each day.

Well I have two dds. Eldest 9 in y4 and youngest 4 in nursery. My dd9 school only set some worksheets at the start of lockdown when they closed. We haven’t heard anything since apart from a letter stating we weren’t expected to homeschool and not to forget that daily life lessons can be learned without putting pen to paper. The worksheets in all honesty were a load of crap so we generally incorporate maths into daily activity such as baking or cooking. We read and talk about the story and she reads well independently. We talk about the grammar and punctuation etc.

The youngest. We talk about different shapes. We count along when walking and we read and talk about the letters (capitals etc).

We have lots of creative time and have been making things from the recycling. We go on nature walks and see how many bugs, flowers, trees and weeds we can find. We fetch things home like sticks and leaves to do crafts.

How many hours a day do we spend I have no clue. I’ve just been trying to pack our days as much as possible so the house stays in tact, both kids stay alive and they are both happy

3-4 at best. Quality over quantity!

*whose, not those.

Nowhere near what the BBC are reporting!

Y3 child has been asked by school to watch the 3 bbc bitesize lessons daily and do the linked activities- takes about an hour.

Also we do something crafty like make a cake or paint and something exercisy like a walk, bike ride or football.

But today we're having a day off cos we're going out for a big hike (exercise) and picnic- Y8 DC is utterly fed up of online learning (involves no interaction or feedback with teachers or fellow students) and needs a break.

So we're probably not doing enough but it works for us ( we'd be classed by press as wealthy/ middle class family)

YR does 9.30- 3 with breaks and lunch
Y4&5 do 9.30 - 4 with breaks and lunch

But some of that time is spent on things like FaceTiming GM to read to her, Joe Wicks and things like that.

Also some weeks they might be finished the work school have sent in 3 days sometimes they're working for the whole 5 and still not finished.

Oh and wealth wise we are definitely working class.

IFS Findings:

1. People lie to our researchers
2. Rich people lie the most

8 and 10 year olds 1-2 hours if I'm lucky some days nothing.

I have i excuse I don't work but they are brats and their dad is away so they listen even less!!

I have NO excuse

The actual study detail says something rather different. They divide the day into 1 hour blocks and mark it as educational if ANY activity, including reading, is done in that time. So a 10 minute spelling activity after lunch counts as1 hour.

“We find that there are significant differences in how children are spending their time. On average, parents of primary school children report that they are engaged in learning activities (including reading) in just under 5 one-hour slots per day“

The average is pushed up by people doing bits over the day- some primary kids were racking up 8 hours with something educational but I’m sure it’s a bit of reading, a bit of bitesize etc.

Whole study is here www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/BN288-Learning-during-the-lockdown-1.pdf

We have 6 hours... but most of that is PE, art, music etc. My kids do better with a timetable probably only 2 hours of proper academic stuff . They are infants though.

On the study criteria (above) we probably do 4-5 hours (hourly slots a day containing educational activities). In reality we do less than 2.

To add to mine above (year 1 child doing between 0-1.5 hours a day), we’re also a high income family (although I’m not working right now) so that goes against the study.

But I would rather my kids played in the mud, or with Lego, or read on their own, draw etc. They watch almost zero television, and play imaginatively outside pretty much all day. If I force school work, they’re miserable.

The lockdown is making me seriously rethink their education, tbh.

Sounds like my kids will be quite far behind other kids when they go back to school though! I know their school friends (mostly high income families) are doing a LOT more. More or less full time schooling. (I live in quite a competitive neighbourhood.)

How ridiculous! My reception child is doing about half an hour, my yr4 about 1.5-2 hrs, they are doing all the work that school sent home to a good standard. I’d better up my game then

Yr 8 dd about 5 hours a day, school have been excellent and she can work through it herself, she gets her MacBook out and off she goes. She's won 2 awards in lockdown for a exceptional quality of her work, English and drama. She's a little grafter!

DS year 5 max 2 hours a day, very little direction or resources sent over from school and despite being bright he lacks motivation. As dh and I both working full time essential key workers albeit mostly from home we don't have time to plan, organise, supervise his work and no zoom lessons to support his learning from school. It's stressful. We're in the comfortable bracket lifestyle wise I would imagine. Work has ramped up for both of us since this started, we're nor furlough/sahp/teachers ourselves so we're not really educating ds. I start frontline work again June 1st so ds will be going to school a couple of days a week then.

From looking at other posts like this, I think we’re very much in the minority as we’re doing 6-7 hours a day for a 7 and 10 year old. Which is inclusive of maths subjects (split into topics eg, times tables, BODMAS, algebra, fractions, percentage activities), then English subjects (comprehension, grammar & punctuation, spelling etc), science (theory and practical), languages (Spanish and Korean), music (instruments), art (online tutorials as I’m rubbish).

It doesn’t include online school set work (which is minimal and is finished first thing on a Monday for the week), P.E, social communication practice (7 year old is autistic) and her usual therapies.

It does include lunch and a break.

We’re early risers so started 2.5 hours ago and will be finished around 1-2pm then we’ll play, go for a walk (weather depending) 10 year old will FaceTime friends, and I’ll do things around the house. It’s intense but we’ve found a routine that works for us.