To have told ds he didnt have to bother with his homework this weekend

[laptopdancer]

He finishes on wednesday and tuesday is sports day. I know its a bit bad but was I too bad telling him he could leave it? There was a lot.

Mutt, the schools are primarily there to support children and their parents, not the other way around....

And the parents are expected to do their part in line with the home/school agreement.

home/school agreement?

well with three of them age 5 and 6 and a school that gives homework ALOT i have had to decide that its easier to love the work we do at home or I would have a mental breakdown.
I prob would not have made any sort of anarchist statement and just forgotten it was there if I really couldnt be arsed.

www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/parents/involvement/hsa/a0014718/home-school-agreements

aquashiv I think mine writing as one of his sentences "I hate my mum because she makes me do my writing" in year 1 was my highlight. I left it as is and the teacher and I had a good old laugh about it.

Thanks Ive never seen that before sooty

Way to support the school, OP. He has six weeks off school. Why the need for an early start?

He's 7.

Yanbu.

He's 7.

Yes, we should help them with their learning at home. But one piece of 'optional' homework at the end of the year, when the Dc are all knackered, it's really not a big deal IMO.

My 2 rarely do homework (or at least didn't at primary school). There's no evidence that homework at primary school is of any benefit whatsoever, but quite a lot of evidence that it causes undue stress to families. I've always explained my stance to teachers and never signed anything saying that I'll enforce work that school sets. I find it actually quite disrespectful of children that they get given work to do at home. In my profession I would never be expected to take work home, in fact it wouldn't be allowed (confidentiality issues).

Incidently both my children are flying along at school, excellent reports, they work very hard when they're there and I give them plenty of opportunity to expand their education at home, just not necessarily by doing work the school sets. I don't tell teachers how to teach and I'm very supportive of the school in many ways, so I don't expect them to dictate to me what my children do in our family time.

I know I'm in a minority, judging by this thread! But YANBU at all OP, in fact neither of mine are getting homework this late on in the year when they are tired and on wind down and my DS is in Y8.

If my dc's homework is something they can do largely independently with only a wee bit of guidance and direction then they do it....when it appears to be homework for me masquerading as something my 8 year old has been tasked to do then it often gets left. I have a relaxed attitude to ks2 homework, and I doubt you have been unreasonable op

I agree OP. It is so pointless. It won't be marked. It won't be assessed.

And FloJo I can tell you what my DC are knackered from. From the constant treadmill of the school year, supplemented at this time of year by concerts, plays, rehearsals, sports days, practise for sports day, late night for open school, brownie revels, extra brownie activities, finishing off term-long projects, baking competitions, school trips, exams, practise exams, transition days, swimming galas, trampolining comeptitions etc etc etc.

Need I go on?

We are all counting down to the end of term in this house. It just goes MENTAL in the last few weeks.

So pointless homework is the final straw. Reading we still do. Spellings. Times tables. Yes. But writing sentences using imaginiative connectives that won't get marked? No thanks!

Pingpong I agree with you. Schools are far too dictatorial about people's family life and habits. Our time is for us not more school. At secondary school I can understand revision, GCSE coursework etc being done at home as needed but 5 year olds having to colour pictures (happened with DS1 who hated that sort of thing), 7 year olds sweating over spelling lists instead of playing. Ridiculous. Especially at this time of year. What we need is a proper summer holiday like a lot of other countries get! British kids barely get to unwind before it's back to it again.

The thing is, as a teacher, you are caught between a rock and a hard place. Parents either think school sets too much homework or too little. Our last Ofsted parental questionnaire was pretty much 50/50 on this. Children have a very highly developed sense of fairness and if they are doing the homework and someone else isn't, with no consequences, problems occur within the classroom, or between the children.

Actually this has made me very curious. For the teachers, what do you actually do on the last day? Do you treat it like a usual day with no mention of the fact ots the last day or is it different?
My memories of the last day are lovely...we had wooden desks and had to clean out the desks and wax then for the next year. Then we would do things like tidy up the art stuff, craft, have a end of school mass and stuff like that.

I'm secondary, we have a normal day but with lessons with a looser link to the SOW, so I'll do some writing protest songs/poems with year 9, some Victorian detective work with Y8 and have a lovely lunch in the staffroom which everyone in our faculty will contribute to. I'll be marking until the last lesson - so the children can take home a fully marked book (or just chuck it in the bin!).

Sarcalogos - Chipping you lack of understanding about the value of creative subjects is astonishing

LOL - you know absolutely nothing about me, what a huge judgement to make based on one comment. You might want to try proof reading as well if you are going to be so judgemental of others

Laoptopdancer - we used to do similar things and take a game in from home to play with our friends - I think there was one teacher to about a hundred of us, I think the others were mainlining gin tea in the staff room and who can blame them!

Reported.

Ok, Chipping,

The lack of understanding demonstrated by that post is astonishing.

Pleased to hear that you, generally, are more enlightened.

I can write English when I'm not also dealing with a screaming baby, sadly not at the same time. Do you seriously not think describing curriculum work as 'some art project' is more ignorant than the odd grammatical error?

Homework is a complete minefield! I am a teacher and in a single week I had parents complain that there was too much and too little homework!! I give homework out on a Friday and expect it to be returned the following Friday, but there are still those children who;
a) get stressed because they HAVE to get up on a Saturday morning to do it all at once
b) didn't have time to do it because they were too busy

I hate homework, I feel it is a complete waste of time (other than spellings and reading), the effort in getting it organised and marked do not equal the benefits. I also wonder if it instils in children from an early age the idea of working at home as being expected. Possibly this is not correct though!

Anyway op, I never give homework in the last week of term as it's often pointless. At any other time if the year I would be a bit if a parent told a child they didn't have to bother doing homework!

Sorry for the ramble!!

PingPong I completely agree with you. How have you managed to avoid making a bad name for yourself? DS1 is just finishing reception and I'm already plotting. I fear I am in the minority at school - it's a vert academic, results-driven school (state) and I'm not sure how my view would sit with them. I'm thinking of taking in info about European schools and am just hoping they've encountered mothers with a similar attitude in the past!

OP, YANBU - happy summer!

If a parent was upfront from the beginning and let me know their stance on homework, I would have no problem whatsoever! I think pingpongs stance on homework is admirable!

Byecklove - I think because my children do quite well at school that they can't argue that hw is of any benefit to them anyway. In fact my argument is that they both do well at school precisely because they're allowed to relax and chill out at home. They both quite often choose to do projects set etc (presumably they don't want to opt out if no other child in the class is), and my DS usually gets on with his hw off his own bat - either at home or sometimes he does it at school I think, but as someone else mentioned if it requires a lot of involvement from me I don't think that's acceptable. As far as I know they can't enforce hw at primary school anyway.

Also, though it may not sound so, I am very respectful of teachers, I know they do a difficult job, I simply ask for the same respect I extend to them to be returned to me as a parent. I wouldn't dream of telling a teacher how to teach, I would have no idea, a day helping out at a school trip nearly finishes me off! But I don't expect them to tell me how I should parent either, or what we should do in our time away from school.

he is 7 ffs YANBU, tsk, to those who think you are. `