To think 16.5 hours a week homework for GCSE is ridiculous?

[Southernisle]

My dd has bought home her year 10 handbook, and in it states homework will be 1.5 hours per subject per week = 16.5 hours per week = Nearly 2.5 hours per night 7 days a week.

This seems like no down time - factor in instrument practice, sports and cadets, and she will be full on 17:00-22:00 Monday to Friday and 6 hours of school work on Saturday and Sunday.

What happened to the teenage years?!?

I spot ink some schools do a lot of make-work homework, though, largely because parents like it. Frankly, GCSEs aren't that hard- a child who concentrates during lessons shouldn't need to be overwhelmed by extra work.

Suspect. Obviously. Although I do like spot ink.

I can't believe it really will be 16.5 hours, come back and tell us how it's going later, OP. I bet it settles down to more like about 8 hrs/week on average.

Agree with art comment, art and product design takes up a lot of time. Maths/Science homework is whizzed through. Other big thing is english coursework.

We hate English in this house

Doesn't have to be the weekend, of course, prudaloo, just the equivalent time.

I teach at a good school, since you ask.:o

I found that the more I took on the more effective and organised I became. It sounds about right.

my sons doing this at the moment 11 subject 2 hours or so a night but doesnt actually work out like that , the work isnt usually given in great big 2/3 hour forms its given bitsized smaller little chunks of each subject with occasional essays that are bigger yes, because the chunks are small and not always due in the next day you can arange your timetable and activities/sport and social time around each other it works out fine .

meaning to add i think when they say 2 1/2 hours a night there going by how slow at doing the work some dc's are so this is to cover themselves so johnny's mum doesnt ring up complainning he cant do the allotted work in such a small time period.

Redexpat that's-good point. Dd became incredibly organised overnight when she got a pony in year 8. Not suggesting this pretty drastic solution to anyone else though!

Hi

She'll probably get lots in September then by October it calms down and the good kids often get much of the homework done in lesson.
All my schools I've worked in have sent home information like this and from the number of comments we get about lack of homework being set suggests the reality is nothing like the hours they predicted.
The time when they do struggle is the run up to coursework deadlines. Seriously don't worry, it won't be as bad as it seems. (by the way I have 16 years experience working in 4 different secondary schools)

When I did mine it was about that. All day both days at the weekend and then whatever evenings I didn't have extracurricular stuff on. If she wants to do well, she'll get on with it, if she doesn't, she won't.

If they have to do this much work for GCSEs then A levels are certainly going to be a shock!

My friend's DD has just started her GCSE years. I worry mainly about the fact she's getting inadequate sleep.

Teenagers need more sleep than the average adult. Research suggests about 9.5 hours.

But simple things like personal hygiene, eating and basic household chores (which at this age is a vital lifeskill that needs incorporating at home) take up several hours a week.

Add on homework time and extra curricular activities and you're eating into sleep time.

The long-hours culture - working through the night - may be admirable in some circles but it is unsustainable long-term unless you are one of the small number of people who can cope with very little sleep.

Not to mention the cost on personal relationships. What's the point in being CEO of a company if you have no healthy personal relationships and no life outside of work? It's very unhealthy to tie up all your identity and feelings of self worth in one thing alone, and most people need human relationships for mental health reasons - we are a highly evolved social species.

I will encourage my DC to do as much homework as they can, but if it clashes with other activities I will be happy to let them off and I'll take it up with the school myself. Given that I didn't do that many hours for my A levels and held down a job and still got 3 As I don't doubt it's possible to do well without that many hours spent toiling over homework.

I don't want school to prepare my kids for work, with their timetables and targets.

I want school and my husband and I to stretch their creativity, their aspects of philosophical thought, their questions about life and politics, their artistic ability etc.

If I wanted them to be moulded into into a MacJob I' d send them to KFC at the age of 8.

Please let kids be kids.

I took my kids out of the english education
system because there was too much emphasis on tests.

Please lets not support an education system that sets itself up to only prepare children into good employees. Isn't education about more?

DD1 did 12 and a half GCSEs as well as 2 x 1 hour sports activities and working most of Saturdays, plus minimal music practice as well as sleeping at least 10 hours a night (she's always needed a lot more sleep than average, bless her). It worked because a lot of the homework was "finish off the classwork" so get it done during class and that's one lot if homework ticked off. Plus they had half an hour each morning in tutor, so on non-assembly days that was more homework time. Then you can fit quite a lot into lunchtime if you have geeky mates [ wink].

Coursework deadlines caused some stress, plus I was incredibly flexible about helping out round the house (she's now paying back for the three years of GCSE/AS/A2 years ).

I can't recall how much homework there actually was ( A level was one hour of personal study for every hour in class) but certainly a lot less than the guidelines of 1.5 hours per subject per week.

Thankfully she didn't do any creative/arty subjects as all the Art people really suffered.

just to chuck something else into the mix, dd is at a very high achieving state school, loads getting into Oxbidge, yadda yadda, and they only do 9 GCSEs. Unless they really want to do another language, in which case they are allowed to do 10.