Why is homework in primary seen as "bad"

[Iamwaiting]

Inspired by a few other threads. I'm not a teacher or in education so I'm genuinely interested in perspectives, plus those with older children who have been through/ going through primary.

Why is homework viewed so negatively?

Context... I have a DD in reception. She finishes school at 3. We come home (5 min walk) and do her homework (set by me.) 15/20 mins of reading, 5 mins of writing (tricky words / practicing writing words with "igh" sounds for instance / following wibbly lines for pen holding) and 5 mins of simple maths.

Finished by just after 3.30 leaving 4 hours to play / go to clubs / see her friends before bed. Same thing at the weekend but we do it in the morning.

But so many threads on here seem to imply homework is awful in primary, certainly reception. But I genuinely don't understand why. Surely it's just getting her used to a concept that will become increasingly important as she gets older?

For context she can ride a bike, swim well, climb a tree etc etc. Not boasting but just to show she is still enjoying lots of activities despite the "evil" homework!

What is "busy" work?

In DD's case, it was such a bad thing, we never did it.

Once you added in

walk to the childminder,
spend the afternoon with three other kids from the school and a baby, add in the older children and their mates, tea, then pick up, walk 35 minutes home -

or spend 2 hours at a chaotic after school club with 30 kids and maybe a slice of toast or a biscuit, spend 25 minutes waiting for a bus in the cold, then walk ten minutes uphill -

get in (add in 'wait to be fed properly despite the extra compulsory fiver a day the afterschool club charged for 'a meal' for the latter choice')

get changed/possibly wash (although that wasn't guaranteed due to her state of mind by then)/uniforms in wash/PE kit and other things packed/clothes out in strict order of putting them on/decompressing for half an hour -

Any suggestion of a bit of school reading, spellings, putting random spellings into sentences, writing the sentences using the spellings and doing maths (there was a lot of homework, never the ten minutes they claimed it would take), it ended up with such a dramatic meltdown and refusal to ever do anything other than school holiday projects as long as they meant a poster presentation rather than something done by a parent, that I wasn't going to put her or me through it every night.

Didn't seem to hurt her as she's a university lecturer now.

I wanted homework as a kid because I was bored. I didn't have a working parent, the parent didn't believe in parenting beyond putting some food on a plate and leaving me in front of the TV until bedtime and from 3.30 - 8.00pm was a bloody long time to be bored every day, not counting the boredom of all day Saturday and Sunday. DD had more than enough to deal with just as a by-product of my needing to keep a roof over her head - she decided very early on that school work was for school and being at home was for doing home things, not school things.

Findings from EEF research show that homework at secondary has greater impact.
My children get home around 6pm most nights and leave for school around 7.45am. Their day is long enough.
School is busy. Children are rushing from one subject to the next in order to get through the curriculum. In the evenings, we always prioritised a few clubs like swimming and dance/drama, free time, play and reading to them.

Because learning isn’t all about sitting at a desk. They’ve just had a whole school day for that, we can do different things after school. Today after school for instance we planted some seeds, my dc love gardening and they can learn a lot from being outside. Or we might just go to the library, or a bike ride, or play in the garden.. or we might just play with toys, or watch tv. We always do their reading but there’s a lot more to life than doing some writing exercises.
You also must recognise you are in a very privileged position, I also live 5 minutes walk from school but realise not everyone does. Mine are also in after school club 3 nights a week so not home until 6/630.
Also not everyone has a child who wants to sit and write etc. Mine would get really upset if I tried to get them to do that, and I’d rather do things they enjoyed as they’re only little. You do sound incredibly ignorant to be honest.

Busy work is stuff that can be time-consuming so keeps you busy, but is utterly pointless as far as learning goes. KS1 examples might be: colour in this picture, being careful to stay within the lines; draw your own scary monster - why have you designed it like that?; make a poster advertising X; make a model of Y. Or it could be stuff at the wrong level, like a worksheet with a lots of sums that are far too easy, but still takes 20 mins or more to get through. In Y1, DC3 had a piece of homework to research Van Gough on the internet and stick copies of her favourite pictures by him into her workbook. So lots of parental involvement, including finding pictures that would copy/paste easily, shrinking the size down and then printing them, just so DC could cut them out and stick them in a book. That one was busy work for the parents really!

I personally don’t agree with homework for primary children. Parents should be encouraged to engage in unstructured activities with their children outside of school that are relaxing and fun such as reading, baking, sports, puzzles, hobbies, trips to cultural places and outdoor activities etc. This creates a much more rounded education and helps with family bonding and well-being.

Our primary school decided to end homework a few years ago. They are set challenges to read a book a week and thats it.

Decision was taken after national and international research and consideration with parents. Proved to lead to better engagement and happier learners, assessments have stayed consistent.

Both my children pick up new concepts quickly, read a lot and love quiz shows so I don't think adding in homework would benefit them. Saying that the school give assessment feedback on a very regular basis so parents aren't missing out on knowing how the child is getting on.

We are in a situation where doing homework wouldn’t be a problem but I still don’t like it. School has our child for so many hours every day. I would rather spend the rest of our time learning and playing in the way that we want to.

@Iamwaiting @Thinkbiglittleone
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=homework+in+primary+school+and+negative+academic+effects&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1709624190178&u=%23p%3DTie194YqH34J

This is one, but not the one I was thinking of - I will keep looking.

I think it also depends on how much time the kid is spending at school, what the home work actually is, and the kid's style of learning. Side kids need repetition - other kids need novelty to learn.

homework in primary is a test of whether the parents sit and do it with them. And they are better off reading and playing anyway.

I did reading and work set by school every night apart from swimming night, but I worked school hours, not everyone is home

I was lucky to be home some days and used after school club some days.
My dcs not only did the homework but also some extra work. Not huge amounts but 15 mins of maths and timestables. They didn't mind and the confidence it gave helped them to do well in secondary.
There was also a lot of reading by me and them but I don't really count that as homework.
They also did lots of fun stuff too before people comment that 15 mins work is practically tying them up and putting them in a cage.

Would you like it if your boss expected you to work three hours overtime, every day?

Homework is an absolutey pointless waste of time, it's an abusive process, designed to control and manipulate children. It keeps them so exhausted they they can't think straight.

If you can't adequately educate children during school hours, then there is a problem with how those hours are structured.

None of you, not a single one, would put up with three hours of job related "online training" every evening, for decades on end.

I found that homework helps me to realise what my child is doing in school. We realised in Y5 that she was really struggling in maths but only because she was in tears when doing homework. When we spoke to the teacher and asked for the books it was shockingly clear that nobody realised what was going on.

In Infant, lots of homework was play based or really looking outside of the box. Apart from reading and writing practice we had games, spending an hour in the park/garden to look for flowers, leaves, observed how animals behaved etc.
That was always given on Thursdays and had to be done on Tuesday, the one hour during these days was easy to find.

Later it was often times table practice, looking up some facts to prepare for a new topic and that all helped with secondary school homework which for her is a lot more pre-learning and practice.

I really hated the holiday homework, especially if it included arts & craft noone really liked and with DD in holiday clubs we really struggled finding the time.

Heartiest congratulations on your straightforward child and your superior parenting.

Sorry, some kids, not side kids!

At the moment I don't mind them to be honest to recap what they've been learning that week but dc is nearly 5 and learning phonics so it helps to drill the learning from a busy classroom environment to be able to give a 1 and 1 time for 10 mins a night with Dc just before bedtime story and it also helps me see the progress dc is making. There are some academic private schools nearby which dc got accepted to but we didn't want to send in the end that do 2 hours of homework every night. I've witnessed a meltdown from a child in a library once from that particular school (could tell from the uniform) and how distressing it was for the child and stressful for the parent and that I would hate to subject my child that system, but 10 mins a night is fine merged with bedtime story. I could change my mind though in a few years.

I am a SAHM, and I’m very engaged academically, and in a position to assist my children with their work. However, I also have 4 DC, and so consequently, homework is an extremely stressful time.

My eldest child needs a lot of input. He is capable, but needs me to sit with him. He has probably 1.5 hours of homework daily (he’s 9). As you can imagine, the 3 and 1.5 year olds don’t want to sit quietly for that time!

my 7 year old’s homework is very easy for them, and is completed alone, very quickly. But it achieves nothing, as it’s so easy.

If I was a SAHM parent to only 1 or 2, it would be a breeze, but, I’m not!

Depends on the purpose of the homework.

Learning to read... they do need the regular 1-1 practice and for efficiency, patents are best placed for this.
Spelling/times tables/number bonds
.. the quick recall stuff... its practice that makes it stick.

For older children, a bit of research.

Stuff like colouring in, wordsearches, build a spaceship out of cotton buds etc... it cam be fun, but it can be hell.

Incidentally, DD never had homework at Primary school bar reading/spelling/time tables. Her Secondary gives 2-3 subjects a night. She had no trouble adjusting. Her school finishes 45 minutes before her younger sisters, and sometimes completes it all by the time her sister is home.

Many of us work extra hours without the extra pay! It's normal in many industries. It's not right or fair but there's an expectation. Especially if the job is well paid. There's a culture of 'you're getting paid to do the job no matter how long it takes'
Teaching is notorious for all the extra hours.

I've done courses as well to help me improve at work and my job prospects.

I dont mind it but ive only one child at school..my friend with 3 at school on the other hand finds it takes up her entire evening after finishing work and I totally understand her point

DS is out the house 8.30-4.15, I need to start tea by 6, and by the time that's done, I need to start bedtimes (younger sibling at 7, DS at 8), so really we've got about an hour and a half free, in which we could do homework, but that time if far to precious to wast on pointless busy work (as most primary homework is).

DS still does learning outside of school, but more applied learning then sitting in front of a work sheet. He plays an instrument, swims, goes to a spot, builds lego, draws/does craft & gets taken to museums, historic buildings, natural places etc. I feel leaving time for that type of learning, and having an engaged parent to do that stuff with, is more beneficial to him.

I’m too busy giving my kids crack cocaine and letting them jump from bridges to be bothered with homework.

At least you are engaging with your children, encouraging them to jump off bridges and making memories with crack!

OP clearly thinks those of us who don’t want their 4 year olds doing hours of pointless homework each night are just busy on our phones, ignoring our children.