Fucking Primary School homework.

[YippeeKayakOtherBuckets]

Ds2 is 8, yr 3. His teacher is new this term, I’m not sure if he’s an nqt or just new to the school but he’s a keen bean.

DS is expected to do homework every evening. He needs to read for twenty minutes to an adult, do his fifteen spelling words and do twenty minutes of maths. So an hour an evening. There are also two spelling projects to complete every week, ie write them with your left hand, recite them on a tape recorder (?!), write them in squiggly letters.

I think it’s complete overkill. Not to mention we just don’t have the time. We both work FT so he’s in wraparound care most days, he also does Beavers and swimming, I have one child in college and one doing GCSEs so they also need support and it’s just all too much. I don’t want to spend what precious little downtime we all have doing (IMO) unnecessary homework. We do read together and do his spellings and maths but not every single night.

I’ve been collared this morning again to query why he hasn’t had his various diaries filled in every day to show he’s done it. I said well he hasn’t done it all. We are busy. It’s too much. The response was that I really need to make time to do it as otherwise he’ll be behind.

I kind of think if he needs that much extra work outside of school then something is going very wrong with the teaching...although I haven’t said that to the teacher.

WIBU to escalate this? I know I’m not the only parent feeling this way. Is it worth taking a stand?

I should add that DS loses playtime if we haven’t filled in his diary so obvs there’s a lot of pressure and guilt on us as parents and we do honestly try to fit it in but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

Personally I would keep the piano and ditch the school work

drspouse
Nobody sits down and forces them to do homework at the ones near me, but plenty of my friends say their kids come home having done their homework. It's perhaps like yours in that it's the independent homework that gets done.

It's hardly that unreasonable to expect a parent to hear a child read at home though.

Homework clubs are a bit different. To be honest I find it odd that people seem surprised that schools might set reading or spellings or times tables homework. I remember doing that in primary and still managed to see friends, do clubs. Our parents just didn't have us in after school activities and enrichment most evenings and let us be kids. It wasn't traumatic.

This is too much. By the time he starts Secondary School he'll be burnt out.

eh @cravingcheese you think it's crazy to suggest Op listens to her child read for 20 mins before bed?

TBH when you're working FT you have to triage constantly what to back them up with on a daily or weekly basis as you don't have those extra 2.5 hours to play with each day.

Sure, you have to do both academics and the other stuff. So neglecting music, sport and other after-school activities in favour of mindless homework like spelling is categorically not going to help your child academically. UK state schools tend to have kept the academic stuff and scrapped all the rest, so if I do anything with my kids after school, it's going to be all the essential creative stuff that their school has missed out or taught badly. Don't get me started on the abysmal level of music and art education at my kids school - it's virtually nonexistent, and what there is is crap. And this at a supposedly Ofsted outstanding school.

I haven't read the full.thread, but I think I'd not be doing the writing in squiggly letter, or left handed (unless he's left handed).

Can you do spellings in the car?

Then that just leaves maths and reading, and the at aged 8, I think I'd alternate them. So 20 minutes a day actually sitting to do it .

Are you sure you’re or he is reading the homework correctly?

My kids are both primary but a bit older, but they both get 15 - 20 spellings a week and they are supposed to do a few a day writing them out to help them learn them - i.e. or a list of words one day, the same list a few days later, etc. It takes a few minutes but means they learn them effectively. They are also expected to read for at least 30 minutes every day and a note kept in the reading record - but you don’t have to fill it in every day, they generally do it when they’ve finished the book. They usually do this at bedtime. They only read to me maybe once a week now and generally we read poems aloud now - they prefer to read to themselves. So the usual evening homework is about 20 minutes or so. It’s up to them whether they do it at after school club or at home but if they’ve done it they can watch TV at home so generally they do it but not always.

BillieEilish
still don't get it, do you? (or pretend not to get it)

You might be in sunny Spain right now, but I guarantee you that no school child in Paris is "going for a dip" after school today... or doing any of the list of things you pretend they are expected to do

I know everyone pretends to be a world famous expert on MN, and it's always amusing to point out where they are talking rubbish

Re the wraparound care/clubs scenario. I work shifts either 9-4.30 or 10-6. Occasionally I start earlier or finish later. Dh works a constant 7-3. He’s home by 3.20 to 3.30 depending on traffic.

We COULD pay £100 a week for breakfast and after school club, but it works better for us to utilise the school ASCs because we are talking about a maximum gap of half an hour after school. We’d be paying until 6 because it’s a flat rate.

When clubs aren’t running or it’s school hols there are teenagers and grandparents and neighbours around who help out. I’m not one of those parents relying on school for childcare and DS loves his clubs.

I used the term wraparound care to illustrate that I’m not around as much as if I dropped him off at 9 and picked him up at 3.

Is this school in an academy chain by any chance?

Our parents just didn't have us in after school activities and enrichment most evenings and let us be kids.
We didn't have homework in primary school (70s kid).
My mum didn't work till I was in secondary school and I was at that stage able to come home on my own if necessary and to do my homework by myself.
And I did lots of after school activities in primary school - swimming, music and Brownies spring to mind.

Hero complex " The trouble with home/School argument is it further disadvantages children with no home support " Maybe but surely no one can expect Children to learn everything at School? By the time everyone has settled down ,probably best part of 10/15 mins. Breaks and lunchtime as well . Any class problems .Children who dont have any support at home will fall behind for sure but so will everyone else if no/little homework is set! A friend who is a single parent ,manages to Shock Horror ,listen to her children read,,help with homework ,get them to bed on time and still work!

We adjust the homework to be appropriate for our child and then if needed, I fake the logs. I am clear with the teacher what we are doing. They might hate me, but not a one has protested to me.

Dd reads to herself before bed. In year 3 she was reading long chapter books from the ya and adult sections. We checked in with her by sometimes reading the same books and discussing them as a family at dinner. I would not have stifled her by asking her to read to me instead. Logs faked.

Spelling, I gave her a pre-quiz on Monday. If she could spell all the words, we did no spelling study that week. Logs faked.

Math. Well math is math and just got done.

I was a 70s kid. I had HW in primary. My DM worked fulltime from age 8 and she was a single parent. I came home to a neighbour's cleaner.
Sometimes I did my HW sometimes I didn't bother. No-one checked. It made no difference to my education.

I don't think it is relevant to guilt trip FT working parents or pick over their childcare decisions because their input should not be necessary at the level outlined in the Op.

Teacher here. Too much. There's VERY little evidence that homework in primary helps at all in fact. Reading and x tables are good. That's about all they should be doing. Complain to the head about the impact on family life and your child's balance between school and other activities. It doesn't sound healthy.

When my daughter was there North London Collegiate school had no homework in the holidays ever - it was a llovely rule (and that school has often got the very top of every school yes including Eton in the country for exam results and almost always top 5 schools in the country.

We had 3 of that age and stage at one point and homework could be quite a lot - private schools. The best days were if they stayed at school and did it in the school homework club and secondly usually the rule was the person we paid to look after the children from 3 - 6 got them to get on with their homework where possible and then we just had 2 x 3 music practices a day to supervise..... phew... exhausting... Now they are 5 lovely adults, the youngest 2 at university and it is much easier.

However despite the exhaustion for parents it really does help children if they can read to someone at home every day in addition to the parent reading their usual bed time story and with musial instruments 5 minutes a day is much better than 30 minutes only at the weekend so best to prese on and get them to do it. I used to commute with my daughter to her first school in Kensington (Kensington Prep) and we always got a seat on the sub so had 30 mins for me to hear her reading and that kind of thing.

I don't think it is relevant to guilt trip FT working parents or pick over their childcare decisions because their input should not be necessary at the level outlined in the Op.
I wasn't intending to guilt trip if that refers to me talking about the difference between wraparound care and after school club. I was just pointing out there is a difference between the two and using them interchangably is referring to 2 very different things.

Bottom line is this is a child doing lots of additional clubs, but home apparently haven't got time for standard pieces of homework like reading with DC or spellings.

From the original post it sounded like teh school policy was way over the top with different spellings each day etc,it then transpired that it's 15 spellings a week in KS2. There's quite a difference there.

Like I say, I'd happily have primary homework stripped right back to reading, spellings and times tables at KS2. But I do think it's probably the wrong approach to fill a child's time with loads of clubs, then want them to do 20 mins piano a night but then be too busy or tired to do some spellings or reading. There has to be some common sense and balance applied in a way that doesn't involve teaching kids that they don't have to do homework they don't feel like doing / if you do clubs then you can not do homework.

That's insane, thankfully my daughter's primary school did away with homework when she was in Y5 (except for reading). I have a feeling they can not enforce homework at primary school and shouldn't punish the child. I hate this idea that children should be at school for 6.5 hours a day and then do more work when they come home.
My daughter does a lot of after school clubs (she's at secondary school now but was the same at primary) and it's one of the reasons school got rid of homework. According to our head children learn better if they have a break in the evening doing something they enjoy. That was someone who'd been a head for 15 years. Perhaps you should tell that to your child's teacher.

dottie DD's school has ERIC (everyone reading in class) time - free readers pick a book to read and those in need of intervention get support.

Times tables get practised while they are lining up etc - dual purpose of distracting them from all the mucking about

My DD can usually spell all the words by the time she comes home because the teacher goes over them when they are copied out rather than chucking a list at the board and leaving the DC to it.

If a school is doing all these sorts of things then 6 hours a day is acres of time.

@treepolitics

eh cravingcheese you think it's crazy to suggest Op listens to her child read for 20 mins before bed?

Goodness, not at all, no!!

My daughter was a truly terrible speller until she changed schools aged 8, and the new school gave a list of 15 words on a Monday, and they were tested at school on the Friday. The words were on a sheet where they had space to copy them out a few times.
We'd go through the list together for just a few minutes a day and by the Friday test she was mostly getting them all right.
It really shouldn't take 20 minutes a day to learn the spellings! It is something that you have to remember to get them to practice daily, if you want your child to be able to spell correctly. It really is worth putting in the effort now as they are essential building blocks that won't get repeated at secondary school.
The ability to spell correctly lasts a lifetime.

Also depends on the child. I remember one of my non identical twins took 5x as long as his twin to learn his spellings each week - just how his brain worked (or didn't work) and by the way by upper sixth he got the best A level results of the 5 siblings so is quite clever but found learning spellings very hard so what might take hardly any time for one child even in the same family can be a very difficult task for another.

Teacher for 17 years. There's no evidence that homework increases achievement.
There's no evidence (actually evidence to the contrary) that learning spelling for a weekly test increases spelling ability.
This is a total waste of time.
Also homework is not enforceable in primary school so I would send a letter to the head explaining that it's having a detrimental effect on family life and it will not be completed, that this is your decision and that child is not to be kept in/punished for it.
I've had the pressure of school/parents to push homework but don't be forced or fooled into thinking it's best for your child if it's not.

We get reading everyday then a week to learn spellings and a week to complete one homework task.

Your school sounds mental!

Xenia ditto. DD just imbibed times tables by osmosis. DS is taking significantly longer. Both are v clever. To say your child learnt spelling easily so every child should is a little glib.