To be thrilled DDs school have ditched homework

[MeAgainSparkle]

DDs in primary school. This academic year the school have decided to stop setting homework for children as they agree with studies showing it has no academic benefit. AIBU to be absolutely delighted? It used to annoy me so much sitting over them on a Saturday or Sunday morning nagging them to practice cursive writing etc. Not to mention eating into our weekends. For the record school still expect books to be read every night and support specific online learning portals that children are encouraged to login to (maths and phonics games)

mammmamia - there's no figuring out needed - if you want to do a homework activity with your child you can pick one off the sheet or practice reading or times tables. I know if my child is struggling/getting on via 'termly learning conferences' (parents' evening). I don't feel I need to micromanage her learning - that's the teacher's job!

I think homework is a great idea. Parents don't like it because they have to spend time with their children and help them and teachers don't like it because they have to mark the work. But its useful for the children in order to show where they're not understanding the work (unless the parents do it for them). And the teachers can then see where it's going wrong. I believe that getting rid of it is a bad idea.

@Goth237

Parents don't like it because they have to spend time with their children and help them

You either don't have school aged children or you don't like them. Parents dislike homework because it TAKES time away from time doing interesting things with our children. Only a sociopath dislikes helping their own children.

I wouldn't be thrilled.

Spellings,times tables need to learnt. I wouldn't be keen on my dc having to do online activities in primary. The less screen time the better.

Sats have an impact on future GCSE predictions. Year 6 need to do some prep towards them

Penny times tables are important and should be practised at home. how you do that isn't set in stone, though.

There is little evidence that setting spellings actually achieves anything - reading is a far more effective tool for improving spelling. I absolutely agree with making reading at home compulsory, preferably in a mix of child reading out loud/child reading silently/parent reading out loud to child.

Those who say music and school work are not comparable because the kids do 5 hours school work per day are conveniently lumping evetything the kids do at school into one category. No child does 5 hours spelling, grammar or maths per day.

In the simplest of terms, if we practise something we get better at it. Defined parameters in which to practise allow parents to help to make kids better at school work.

No one is suggesting giving 7 year olds mountains of homework each night, but the research that claims that practising something on a regular basis does not improve ones's performance is bollocks.

but the research that claims that practising something on a regular basis does not improve ones's performance is bollocks

But this a discussion about homework, not ‘practising’. The research into how effective homework is at underpinning knowledge always comes out with similar results - that it’s not effective.

Research studies have also consistently found the most effective way to boost your child’s performance is to read, read, read with them.

Time at home should be spent enjoying being together, playing a game, going for a walk, preparing and eating a meal, reading a book etc.

If people want to make their kids work in the evening then that’s up to them, but it shouldn’t be compulsory.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

The reading is the key thing, some maths all the rest is crap.

I wonder if your kids’ school is the same as my kids’! They’ve stopped homework this year bar reading & some maths / spelling programme they’ve subscribed to. It frees us up so much more. Previously he homework was so arbitrary - choose from a bunch of tasks. I HATED it, so did the kids. & we’d spend Sunday mornings faffing about with DD1 crying most weeks over it.

DS now in secondary school and homework is PITA. They already have a long day and it adds more pressure. Weekend he goes climbing and we visit elderly grandparent and needs time to unwind and play

I would be delighted if homework was dropped if my DC were still at primary. I don't think children should do homework at all, at any age. If they can't learn all they need during school hours, them something is wrong with their education. My DC had a very casual attitude to it when they were at school. It didn't affect their GCSEs or A levels or their degrees.

Normally I’d say that homework is useful for junior school pupils and helps prepare them for senior school. However as on top of the usual (useful) spellings, sentences and reading (which seems sensible) we’ve got ‘learn these 3 paragraphs by heart’ this week which has given me the rage. I resent that our time will be wasted in this way for the next week, and have been muttering ‘Is it the 1950s again?, Are they trying to put the children off the topic?’ (Sighs and reaches for 🍷)

Truly jealous. Apparently as one of her 12 homework activities my six year old is meant to build the Houses of Parliament out of Lego, as are the four year olds in her class. Luckily she’s got a half term to not do it in.

Ours finally dropped making things type homework and it’s now purely read 5times a week, a maths sheet and a English sheet both of which are not even a whole page. The teachers don’t mark it so it doesn’t actually matter if you do it not.

I’d rather my children where playing and learning about life by doing than making a cardboard castle because Mrs pink says so. My oldest had got to the point with the old homework of Just doing the bare minimum because it was too long and didn’t interest him. You don’t want to ruin learning/reading for young children.

The trouble for primary schools is that when they ask parents about homework the results are usually evenly split between those who want it and those who don't, or those who want more and those who think their DC already do too much. In my humble opinion, 15 minutes of reading a great story/novel/chapter book aloud to your child every night will have much more impact on learning than completing a worksheet.

@Goth237 maybe parents prefer spending time with their children playing outside, reading books, baking and painting etc instead of doing school work?

Amazing.
I think every child needs to read a couple of nights a week but nothing else should be compulsory.

Kids don't learn by being bored and crying due to stress. They learn by having fun and enjoying activities.
So playing card and board games to help with maths, writing their own stories and diaries and books etc.

We put so much pressure on young people now a days but we're still not that great at education. So maybe people need to realise the way we're running education isn't great

I think from about age 9 or 10 up a small bit of homework at night is no harm, and is good preparation for when they go to secondary school.
It shouldn't be homework that is going to require huge parental involvement, take more than half an hour, or be so difficult that a child will be in tears trying to do it. Just a bit of re-inforcement of what they've learnt during the day, or maybe reading on a bit in a school reading text so that they get used to reading on their own.

We are in Australia. Many primary schools have more or less given up on homework, bar the odd 'create a ...' project. (maybe 1/2 per year). However in G6 (last year of primary) they are given fortnightly homework to aid the transition to high school. Seems to work well

I don't agree with primary homework. Especially during the holidays. I think it's wrong for primary.

I strongly disagree with homework, especially at primary school. I think children need down time after school, I don't bring work home with me from my job and I don't want them thinking they need to bring work home either. Their teacher is trained to teach them, I'm not, we read together, bake, go for nature walks, watch tv together, plan and cook meals, do colouring etc. All stuff which aids relaxation and learning. Homework just highlights the gap for kids who have engaged parents who would be doing activities with them regardless of homework and those whose parents don't support them in that way. My kids school has stopped formal homework this year and I couldn't be happier.

There is quite a bit of research which seems to show that homework in primary makes no difference--the problem is that the research in question makes no attempt to tease out the differences between different types of homework or different levels of quality. If we carried out some research which distinguishes between "targeted practice" vs "academic unchallenging craft-type activities/costume-making/model-building/colouring/wordsearches" I suspect we'd see positive outcomes for the first type of homework.