To expect my Yr 9 DD to do 2hrs homework a night.

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My year 9 daughter is at present only doing about 45 minutes a night homework (she refuses to do anymore). she is getting away doing so little at the moment. The school expects year 9 girls to do between 8-10 hours homework a week DD is spending less than half of that time on homework.

The school sent a letter out to parents asking 'how much time does your daughter spend on her homework' I sent the letter back saying less than 4 hours per week DD was sent to the year head for a dressing down. DD is no calling me every name under the sun (being very rude). She is saying all her friends spend the same amount of time on their homework and that being dressed down by the year head was unfair. The school expects pupils to achieve A /* or level8/9 grades for GCSE so she was told in no uncertain terms by the year head that 45 minutes a night on homework was unacceptable. This is in contrast to her elder year 10 sister who always does/did over 2 hours a night homework (both are at the same school) even her year 7 brother does 1 hour a night .

Am I correct to ban her from using her computer (except for school work) until she can prove she has spent two hours on her homework that night.

Also the title of the thread is misleading. The 14 year old is not expected to do 2 hours every weeknight. She is expected to do 8-10 hours per week. That's 2-3 hours at the weekend and an hour or sometimes an hour and a half during the week.

That is a completely normal amount of work for a 14 year old and it leaves time for a couple of hours of hobbies and a couple of hours of relaxing and socialising.

(Or am I missing something? Most secondary schools finish by 4/4.30 right? If there is some kind of supervised study at school and teens don't actually come home after that until 6 or 7 then I do agree that the work done under that supervision counts as homework and just relaxing is fine.)

HoldMeCloser - I certainly believe that hard work and education are hugely important. I am not against homework if it's stimulating and involves development of executive functioning skills and the ability to problem solve. If any of my daughters are spending hours on useful after hours study I'll be all for that. What I object to is the two hours a night because it HAS to be two hours and the assumption that if it's not two hours then the student won't do well. I did very well at school on much less and the other skills I learnt whilst not ploughing through the "busy but pointless" work helped at medical school when I was faced with more volume, a faster pace and a lot more autonomy.

Sounds like work for work's sake. My A-level chemistry teacher was like that: set homework every lesson; 2 or 3 mock exams for every module etc. I always did badly in those mock exams because I just couldn't see the point of putting the cramming into something that didn't count for anything, and was debatable whether you'd retain the information for your exam. All she cared about was the results.

My maths teacher though didn't really set that much homework. If there was something that needed reinforcing from a lesson then we'd be set a few problems (which we then marked in class so he didn't have to bother doing it himself...). Also spent a week of lessons learning about polar coordinates even though they weren't on the syllabus because he thought it was something we should know about. He educated us whereas the chemistry teacher got us through exams. His results were just as good though. And his lessons far more enjoyable.

Hak - it would never come down to just two applicants and one offer left to make. There'd be a deskfull computer screenfull of applicants from which to make a limited number of offers. In fact if their predictions and PSs were OK they'd probably both get offers.

In the case of the applicant from a low achieving school the offer may well be contextualised anyway.

Titchy- not the point. The point is whether it would be discriminatory to use extra curricular activities as an admissions criterion.

I agree that the wrong sort of homework can put a child off a subject entirely and is to be avoided.

I think there is still some merit in fixing a (flexible) time expectation though. It's true that some children will fly through a piece of science homework in 30 minutes, while another might take 60. But there's value in saying to the first person "Well, you ought to have the energy for another 30 minutes of effort, so is there something useful you could be working at?" State examinations might be a year away, but what about in-class revision tests? What about ongoing coursework? What about reviewing and preparing revision material so it's not all forgotten by the time the state exams roll around? Is the 30-minutes kid at the top of the class? If not, they should be putting in the work to get there, because they are clearly capable.

The initiative to seek out more work than the bare minimum you were assigned is a valuable life skill that will stand the teenager in good stead at university and beyond.

I do like that MN has made me realise all this stuff about privilege. The conversations on here have opened my eyes to the way others live. If universities look at extra curricular activities, then they are discriminating. The thing is - some of them might not appreciate they are discriminating.

If they are in the top 1-2% (Oxbridge material) academically, a teenager might want to look at going abroad to the likes of Stanford or the Ivy League. These institutions have generous financial support programmes and students from disadvantaged backgrounds might end up with considerably less debt than if they stayed in the UK. Those institutions all look at extracurricular activities.

I totally object to homework for work's sake and I'm kind of campaigning against it. My kids know it and I'd rather they were reading stuff they're interested in rather than pointless exercises repeated 100 times once they've understood the theory.

All it does it make them hate school.

I also can't stand all the homework they have to do in art and DT which seems to stem from the teachers' notion that they are just as important as any other and so have a "right" to set just as much homework.

My kids' school insists on calling homework 'homeLEARNING' which makes me laugh.

HoldMeCloser is this true for undergrad studies too?

I was under the impression that this was only doable for post-grad studies.

Extracurricular activities are absolutely vital for undergrad admissions to top US universities.

Yes I know, I meant about financial support.

Is there any available at undergrad level?

"If universities look at extra curricular activities, then they are discriminating."

What I've read/heard this year is that universities are looking for evidence that someone is keen on / passionate about the subject they are applying for, rather than for extra-curricular activities per se. For my older daughter who applied to do psychology, the fact that she had done various volunteering work in counselling, etc was thus relevant. If she had been applying for a different course, it wouldn't have been.

Eight to ten hours homework a week for a 14-year-old does not seem that excessive to me. As it presumably includes the weekend, you would be looking at an hour a school night plus three to five over Saturday and Sunday, and no doubt some of that homework will include reading etc.

However, what I would say is that a lot of pupils' "academic strain" comes from the accelerated pace of learning and teaching between 14 and 18 that seems to be built into the British qualification system, particularly as it comes at a time when young people tend to go a bit loopy because of their hormones.

When I taught in other European countries, there seemed to be a stronger and deeper academic foundation at primary level that mitigated, to an extent, against this four years of panic and anxiety we see in Britain.

Orlando, Hakluyt ... I work in a RG university. A better way to describe the non-academic factors that have weight when it comes to admissions to RGs would be say that successful students show evidence of a personality that will work well within the cohort for that course. RG universities offer places to people, not grades, because they are not primarily "recruiting universities" -- or academic admissions tutors do not think about their institution in that way.

Some of the most successful personal statements I have seen have been ones where the personality of the student shows through. DoE doesn't really say much about an applicant compared to, say, running a youtube channel devoted to YuGiOh!

It also doesn't not necessarily have to be something that a prospective has done, but what they would like to do ... so saying in an interview that they would like to get involved in the student radio station or develop the geology society.

When you are faced with hundreds of applications for a course that only has five places (as is the situation with one of the courses in my faculty), everyone that applies will have a predicted three A*s and the usual extra-curriculars. So, instead, admissions tutors look for something different to that, something that makes an applicant stand out, and it really could be anything.

I really don't understand why the amount of time spent doing the work is a problem? If they set X pieces of homework a night and those pieces are done to a good standard within an hour, why would it matter that it's not taken her longer?

IMO schools set homework too arbitrarily anyway. Why set hours worth of homework about topics they know a student is extremely competent in? A child of that age gains nothing from having their time repeatedly wasted, bar a disrespect for the system and a disregard for the importance of homework.

I was a very good student in high school and got 13 good GCSEs. After year 8 though, I flat out stopped doing homework until it was coursework that counted towards a qualification. I was sick of wasting time reciting things I knew when I could have been reading...the homework wasn't developing to challenge me, didn't introduce new material, nothing. Homework should be about what the child gets from it, not the amount of time spent doing it.

Perhaps I am 'bright but lazy' as a PP has deemed the OP's daughter. Or perhaps I was just fed up of a system that was supposed to challenge me and was repeatedly failing to do so, being more concerned that I spent time doing something that provided to benefit to anyone rather than enabling me to better myself.

Orlando If universities look at extra curricular activities, then they are discriminating. The thing is - some of them might not appreciate they are discriminating.

Universities, particularly Russell Groups, are very aware of this type of thing influencing admissions. After all, they produce a lot of the research and data about higher education and social mobility!

Widening participation schemes are taken very seriously with a lot of effort and resource poured into them. The major problems in this regard are nothing to do with extra-curricular activities, but that prospective students from non-conventional HE backgrounds do not apply to the institution in the first place or do not get the grades required to access the course in academic terms.

2 hours a NIGHT? Bloody hell, that's ridiculous. So after school, she's expected to crack on with two MORE school hours? When exactly are the poor sods supposed to wind down?!
I'm all for homework, and I'd say the amount she's doing now is perfectly fine and more than enough at 45 minutes.
Anything more is madness!

Sorry but I never realised that a Saturday job was the preserve of the rich.

I never did anything like 2hrs a night and got a mix of A*s/As and Bs at GCSE. If she's doing fine, who cares?

"Sorry but I never realised that a Saturday job was the preserve of the rich."

Eh?

Oh right sorry!

Yes, at Harvard for example 20% of undergraduates pay no fees at all. There is no discrimination between American and international students.

college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works

They are mostly private institutions so it can vary quite a bit. The general rule of thumb is that the more prestigious the university, the more aid available, but that's a big generalisation.

Sorry but I never realised that a Saturday job was the preserve of the rich.

There are many reasons that poorer teenagers wouldn't be able to have a Saturday job. Caring responsibilities, lack of money to travel to work, needed at home to help with siblings, simply no way of getting a job - many teens get their jobs through their parents' contacts, if you have two parents out of work you don't have those contacts. And how are you supposed to know how to put a CV together and conduct an interview?

^That should be SOME poorer teenagers, obviously.

Works. Yes the 8-10 hours a week includes the weekend . The school sets 15 homework assignments over the 5 days with the exception of English/Maths they have two days to complete the homework. I just rounded up the homework requirement over 5 days not 7. The other problem is she only does her 'weekend' homework at 8.30 pm on Sunday night ( when she starts panicking about getting a detention). DDs form tutor has noted that her teachers have commented that her weekend homework is poorer than her mid-week homework. This indicates she switches off at the weekend and only does homework to avoid a after school detention.

This attitude is not going to get her far next year with a workload of 11GCSEs . The school ask for A grades to study any subject at A level which she is not concerned about. DDs elder (adopted sister) is doing Maths/ English Literature this year, one year early and is expected at least an A in both subjects due to her diligent approach to her studies. This is in total contrast to No2s haphazard attitude.