...... to be fed up with the amount of homework my 7YO gets?

[fedupfrida]

My Year 3 child gets what i think is a LOT of homework and it's starting to cause more and more family stress, especially at weekends.

It doesn't help that she hates doing homework and would rather be playing (which 7YO wouldn't?) but here's a list for a normal week;

Times tables,
2 or 3 pages from a Maths workbook,
10 spellings
2 (yes 2) book reviews per week,
Literacy/Science homework (usually a piece of writing, reading comp etc)
Reading every night.

How much does your Y3 child get and am i BU to be fed up of the sheer amount of time it takes and eats into our precious family time at weekends?

You do realise it isn’t just me disagreeing with you, don’t you?

WIt till year 7 😩😩😩

What your dd gets seen excessive at my sins outstanding primary
We get
36 math questions
Spellings to learn
A page of English

Once a term we get the hated project

That's it. And reading.of course.

We have 15 very difficult spellings a week, 10 French spellings, 3 sheets of maths and science homework once a week. It all takes hours and hours. We get occasional geography sheets and reading every night.
I did not sign up for this.
It is a constant source of stress and although I do support homework and a good education. Too much too young strips out the joy of childhood.
I don't have any solutions for you beyond helping her with it to complete it faster, this will keep her onside and she will then have time to play. She will still be learning and you can slash the time. You are unlikely to change the culture of the school in my experience so better to find a way to solve it yourself

Good luck with supporting your DD it’s sounds excessive, my yr6 (10yr old) gets less homework than that and it’s SAts year in a “outstanding” primary. My younger DD gets 5spellings, about 2-3books a week to read and a maths sheet once a week. These years should be about inspiring and enjoyment through learning not stress and pressure I couldn’t begin to imagine how the less able kids & parents feel with the level of homework your DD is getting. Hope you can find a sensible balance.

My ds in yr5 normally gets
1)10 spelling words to be tested next week, and write sentence with
2) a maths work sheet
3) 5 online maths skills
4)online comprehension
5)some topic research work
6)reading aloud everyday

Research work sometimes takes a lot of times, but others, not so much. He normally has less time to do during the week, so tends to do it on the night he gets it and on Saturday, and it is totally manageable all by himself.

My dc don't get kept in at break or lunch, the school tried it once, I complained, they haven't since. Primary homework ia not compulsory. We often only do some. I set a timer and that's all do. I leave a note in their diary and usually just get a "thank you for your comment" back.

My dc don't get kept in at break or lunch, the school tried it once, I complained, they haven't since. Primary homework ia not compulsory. We often only do some. I set a timer and that's all do. I leave a note in their diary and usually just get a "thank you for your comment" back

I didn't even set a timer, I just didn't make them do it at all. They are both well out of primary (one is out of secondary) and neither have problems academically.

I did read with them both but not school books because they bored us all to tears even when they got to pick their own from the school library.

OMG! When I read this I suddenly thought that all that homework was for one day. But then I read it again and saw it was for the whole week. That's not a lot of homework.

Yanbu my LG (7yo, year3) gets 10 spellings, reading every night that has to be recorded in a reading record, maths homework on a Monday to be handed in on Thursday then English homework on a Friday to be handed in on the following Monday plus extra homework based on the topics she's currently doing, I often forget the weekend homework because we are out doing family things ECT and then I have a teary 7yo on a Monday morning not wanting to go into school because she will have to stay in at break or lunch to do it! I have made it clear to the school that she doesn't lose any play/lunch time due to me forgetting to do her homework with her and I've had to have words with the teachers a few times as they have still kept her in.
I don't agree with it because she is being punished for me forgetting it and she doesn't get help at school when they keep her in she just gets left to do it on her own which takes her time!
She got really hard spelling last week that even I had to keep checking the sheet when she was telling me them to check she was right because I wasn't even sure, now she usually gets between 8 to 10 on her spellings but last week she only got 3 so she had to stay in at lunch and write each word down 7 times because they told her she didn't practice enough! I was fuming and had strong words with the teacher and head as she had tried so hard but her teacher told her she should of at least got 7 as they were easy, sorry for the rant but this topic makes me mad and sad for my little 7yo that just wants to enjoy school and playing with her friends but she's constantly worried she's not good enough

@Butterflyhulk - you rant away. That is disgraceful and the school should be ashamed of themselves. It makes me sick the pressure some schools are putting on young children.

The fact is homework is non-compulsory at primary school and although I agree that some reading/spellings/times tables is useful and helpful, the rest is just a paper exercise and bu*s**.

Someone said up-thread that many primary schools today do not have the pupils' best interests at heart. I couldn't agree more. All they have at heart is their latest results and Ofsted inspection.

I guess I'm going slightly off-topic now, I originally posted to get an idea of how much homework other Y3 children were getting, but it's all part of a wider problem in the UK education system. We start them too young and set them on a road to pressure, pressure and more pressure. We rank, test and assess children endlessly. It's just wrong. That there are such young children out there stressed by school and homework is sickening.

The irony of all this is, that this is a bid by schools/government to raise standards in education in Britain. AND IT'S NOT WORKING. Idiots. We are lagging behind badly in the international league tables.

I'm ranting now. This has been building for me for a long time. The homework stress over the weekend has just put things into sharp focus. Am going off now to seriously consider home-educating....

I don't know, I do think manageable amount of homework is good thing, even for primary kids.

I am from one of PISA top countries, and we do start school at 6/7. But it's a very formal lesson from the start, Children learn basic literacy and numeracy in kindergarten. So, it's not like they don't do any work until school age. And we do get homework every day from the start of formal education, so from age 6/7.

Compared to my country, amount of homework in English school is minimum. Even in ks2, they only give homework once a week, to be spread out for whole week, which is totally manageable imo.

I think getting into the habit of doing a little work is a good thing for future.

That is ridiculous! An awful lot of homework for a 7 year old.

My eldest is only in year 1, but our school appears to have a more sensible approach.

Homework comes home on a thursday, to be handed in on a Tuesday, so we have the weekend to do it.

We get a reading book, 5 spellings and something else to do. It's either maths (via a maths app) or something like learning how to write out their address, so they can send a letter to themselves from school the following week.

The homework sheets state that no child should find it stressful, and if they do, to talk to the teacher.

I've queried some homework because it took a long time (lots of maths questions or a lot of text to copy out), and was told to set a time limit and just do what we could in the time.

At the moment, my eldest is finding reading fairly easy, so we only read the school book once a week. We read to her every night, and she regularly reads books after we've put her to bed.

Spellings only take a few minutes, and then we put a 10 minute limit on whatever the other homework was.

I'd complain about the level of homework. The more parents who speak up, the better.

Our school has just done away with homework like "build a tudor house", as the parents wanted minimal homework which was going to directly contribute to essential reading, writing, maths etc. Particularly when it was mostly completed by the parents, as was well beyond the ability of the children who had been given the homework.

As a once-upon-a-time teacher, I'd say teachersbonly set homework because the govt tells them to, and if the child doesn't do it I personally wouldn't do anything about it. My daughter gets plenty of homework, but above half an hour if we're busy or she doesn't want to do it we leave it. I really don't think its compulsory at Primary and only an arse of a Head is going to cause a stink. Just choose what you think they should do, no stress.

My Ds in y2 gets a reasonable amount of homework from a pick from grid type thing. As a working single mum I struggle to get even ours done. We always read but until Ds is capable of doing his homework without me then this is how it's going to be.

I do what we can and teachers are v kind and sensible about it. No punishments in our school for not doing it.

I don't think primary children should have lots of homework, but do think reading at home, some spellings abd times tables are reasonable.

I'm always wary of 'i think homework is pointless so my DC won't do it, I'll send a note and then be annoyed when school sanction' approaches. Same for PISA comparisons. Education is part and parcel of wider cultural norms. Some Asian schools scire highly in PISA but some of the lessons are in lecture theatre type rooms, students go from normal school to night schools so 10-12 hour days are the norm. At some schools the teachers teach their subject to 2 year groups and there's set planning so every y8 in the region doew topic X on Monday (no differentiation). Equally some Scandanavian schools score highly in PISA and they are very play focussed with a totally different approach looking at individual child needs. What they probably have in common is a culture where schools and teachers are respected, where parents support the schools.

If you need to raise a concern about homework then I would absolutely speak to the teacher in a polite and reasonable way. It might be that they need to pass your concern higher or it might be that after that you need to go higher, but I'll echo wjat another poster said if I had a parent informing me their child wouldn't bw doing homework then i'd pass it to SLT (see also my child won't be doing detentions/my child will be wearing skinny jeans/trainers etc)

Dd is in year 6 and she has homework a few times a week but seems ok with it. She forgot her homework folder last week and had to stay and redo it at lunchtime. (It was a quick homework and didn't take her long.) She didn't seem phased by it though or see it as being in big trouble which i think is a good attitude to have. The teacher certainly didn't mention it at parents eve a day or 2 later and was very positive about her. I'm sure she understands kids will occasionally forget something but if they let it go each time probably not a lot of homework would get done

PS Think they even have centres in the UK.