Do schools not distinguish between homework done independently and that ‘done’ by parents?

[NellyJames]

Just tried to post this in education but it doesn’t seem to want to post:
DS has been upset as they have a HW ladder where they sit on certain rungs depending upon how the do in their homework. He’s middling and hasn’t really been moving. This is fine by me as it reflects where he is/should be I guess. However, he’s getting upset as he keeps asking me to help (answers not explaining concept) and says everyone else’s mum helps. I’ve been telling him this isn’t true but talking to some other mums they’ve confirmed they always help otherwise their child would get 4/5/6 questions wrong each week. I often see DS getting the wrong answer but I never correct him. The most I’ll do is encourage him to check them. Anyway, DS tells me these friends are up in the ‘clouds’ which is apparently the top rungs of the ladder. Now I feel bad but I still don’t want to help as surely his teacher needs to see which ones he doesn’t understand so she can target those with him? I emailed to ask earlier this week and she’s just emailed back confirming the ladder is used as motivation. Today one of his friends got the gold award for consistently ‘excellent standard of homework!’ hmm I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable.

Do you not want to help your child improve? You see him making a mistake but instead of helping you leave it for the teacher to sort out. This is why he is middling and not progressing. Yabu

This issue has irritated me for years! It’s especially noticeable with an arty school project, when little Johnny brings the most fabulous model town in to school.

The hilarity when the child proudly declares that their mum or dad was up all night working on it.

What does it teach them? That they’re too special to have to put the work in and mummy will always save them and project a good image for them.

Guarantee a lot of these kids get to uni, freak out etc as they don’t know how to work independently without a parent doing it for them or hovering over them.

Children should do their own homework, with support where necessary.

I suspect that some(not all) people who feel this way about other children being helped with their homework are just narked at the idea that the superiority of their own child's intelligence or talents won't be so obvious to the teacher unless the teacher realises that little Johnny is (supposedly) the only one not 'having his homework done for him'. And obviously, that is really not what homework is for.

Guarantee a lot of these kids get to uni, freak out etc as they don’t know how to work independently without a parent doing it for them or hovering over them.
Not really.

In secondary we don't tend to see anywhere near the amount of involvement with homework because the students are older. Even where some parents are more helicopter parents, secondary homework tends not to be an issue.

Some will go to university lacking independence, but it's not because they had some help with their sums or their parent decided to build a to scale model of the Egyptian pyramids when child was 8.

I think lazylinguist nailed it.

Entirely agree, LolaSmiles. There are lots of things that can make a teenager struggle, lack resilience or fail to cope at university, but having supportive parents who were able and willing to work through school work with them when they were younger (or still occasionally at secondary if necessary) is really not one of them.

As has repeatedly been pointed out on this thread, helping is not the same as doing it all for them.

I always help my DS. His teacher is fully aware of his limitations and struggles and I'm therefore is sure that I help him. All the parents I know help their children.

This still feels like an alien world to me. All the evidence suggests that regular homework has a limited impact on progress at school so all these parents who are adamant that helping in this way is what is ensuring their child is progressing well just don't seem to be borne out in the statistics. What about schools who don't set homework at all? Are they failing their kids? The evidence suggests not.

And anecdotally I do hear of more and more university students who want to be spoonfed.

Plus, I'm not exactly terrible at maths, I have A level at grade A, but I am not infallible at it. My dd is year 5 and we do "maths with parents" online. I point out ones that need looking at again if I spot them but they're complicated sums and sometimes we both fail to spot one or two are wrong, even though we have understood the theory.

They're marked automatically. We do it again if she scores badly but not if she got, say, 8/10 and I have never thought of this as totally damaging to her self esteem and, in case it's relevant, her last parents' evening report said she was "excelling in all subjects" and keen and interested, so I really don't think it has.

I'm not saying other parents' approaches are wrong, just that I can see merit in different approaches and don't think the OP's son is being let down.

Isn't there evidence that suggests (all other things being equal) that state school pupils out perform private school pupils at university? Probably because they are more self motivated and haven't had teachers and parents driving them on in the same way?

lazylinguist
It's laughable that a parent helping their child is something that generates such a strong response. You were probably right when you said that those who feel strongly about other parents supporting homework are probably more annoyed that other children might 'look better'.

The silly thing is I'm sure many of those parents who think it's unfair to help with homework will have read to their children, taken them to extra curricular activities, had good quality conversation with their children, had a range of toys and appropriate stimulation for their children from a young age etc and they are all things that will advantage their child over children who don't have a great home situation. I highly doubt they'd be saying it's wrong and unfair for them to have done all of that. They are just bothered if they think another child has had a helping hand.

CountFosco
They do tend to outperform, but last I read up on it there were a range of factors as to why.

Mine is nearly 10 and I no longer check, she just does the homework and submits it online before I'm even aware she has finished! Bit worried I should be paying more attention?

I set homework, not as a class teacher but as tutor.

I encourage parents to go over it with them, to circle the ones they get wrong and get them to try again. Leave the circle, and prefereably put the new answer underneath. Show their working.

Some parents are able to go the next step, eg if they are struggling to explain it again, but not all are able to do that.

The one thing I hate is a perfectly correctly presented piece of work with all right, no working and no evidence of how they got their - all right first time? Some corrected?

It is REALLY hard though to get to the place where parents understand that I NEED to SEE what they cannot do, where the mistakes are, to know how much they have understood.

On the other hand usually if they have about 8/10 right they I am fairly confident that they have understood it and that is fine. the odd error is not an issue.

longest lurker

I think the evidence is that children from supportive homes do better and this is the deciding factor-homework doesn't even things up.

Yes, but a supportive home doesn't necessarily mean interventionist when it comes to homework:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6521700/

It is REALLY hard though to get to the place where parents understand that I NEED to SEE what they cannot do, where the mistakes are, to know how much they have understood

If the child now understands it then you don't really need to see at all. Because they now understand the process.

Exactly, LolaSmiles - it's as if the parents are cross because 'it's not fair'. Fairness is irrelevant. It's the child's learning that matters, not who helped him. There are no prizes for doing it with no help.

The way I see it, I can help(time and ability) so why wouldn't I?

All the perfect homework in the world would count for nothing if she couldn't produce the same level of work in class. As it is,she does.

Sometimes, it just helps having it explained again 1 to 1.

I didn't really get that as a take away point from your link longest but it's definitely a complex and interesting point. I feel the OP is relying a lot on her kids being able to manage and resilient enough to keep trying despite set backs (and this is hard if they perceive other kids doing better and draw who knows what conclusions from it). It may have worked for her driven and able DD but wouldn't have worked with my anxious and struggling DD so it's probably down to the individual. That concerns me slightly as this seems to be a one size fits all approach on principle, applied to their academic work generally-'if you can't do it it means you're incapable of performing at that level'. I can see it going wrong in some circumstances, with knock on effects for an individual child who perhaps could have emerged with a stronger academic record and self esteem. It simply isn't true that children reach their academic potential on their own in every circumstance-that's why good teachers and supportive parents are necessary.

I kind of get that 5863. And I agree there isn't one takeaway point from the article but it does refer to other studies that do bring out the idea that too much directional support can have negative outcomes. I kind of agree that it's individual and complex, but there's lots of sneering on this thread towards people who might take a less directional approach. You can be interested and supportive in many different ways.

Is this thread still going? The OP left ages ago.

But I just remembered about a half term history project my kid did when he was about 7 or 8 ... the teacher made it very clear she didn't want parents to help with it, but there was no way my DS would have got through it alone ... he didn't even know what a "project" was, hated drawing pictures (which is a classic space filler at that age) and was still at the stage of getting upset if he made a mistake in his writing that he couldn't erase without trace. So I ignored the teacher's plea and used it as an opportunity to teach him how to use Microsoft Word. He learnt how to copy in chunks of text from different websites, rewrite them in his own words, spell check, paste in images, do fancy fonts and borders, a contents page, page numbers and a reference list. He learnt just as much about the history topic as the kids who went at it with pen and paper, but with a lot less stress and much more fun. We were both proud of the result. I'll always remember the teacher.wrote on it "This is very professional!" which was clearly a dig, but I didn't care, because he learnt more IT skills in that week than the school taught him in 7 years, and they are skills which have helped him ever since.

He also got 100% in just about every maths homework he ever did at primary school ... because he asked me to check his answers and I told him which ones were wrong so he could revisit them ... and explained if he didn't understand, so he learnt how to do them. He's competitive, and wanted to get full marks. It certainly didn't do him any harm ... when he got to secondary school he learnt to look things up independently and didn't need me any more ... he continued to perform just as well as ever.

The kids who got no help were the ones who lost their confidence early on and never regained it.

@Kaliorphic

Other posters have implied also that incorrect work should not really be handed in & that they would continue to work on said task until it was accurate

Yes indeed posters are saying they will support their child to understand the concept so that they are able to work out the correct answer independently. Otherwise known as supporting your child with their education.

Well I guess we're just lazy parents then 🤷🏽‍♀️🥺

I never realised we were supposed to sit and go over homework & am probably more like the OP than some other posters on the thread. My parents never helped me with any school work & like a poster earlier I somehow managed to get to grammar school.

We do/discuss other things that we think are probably more useful. No idea if they are....

My parents never helped me with any school work & like a poster earlier I somehow managed to get to grammar school.

See, I have no idea what this is supposed to prove. Other than the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude.

I suspect getting into a selective school was easier in days gone by because there was less of a culture of consciously competing for a place, of engaging in extra activities over a long period of time to give a pupil an edge over the ‘opposition'. The tutoring industry had yet to make its mark. It was enough to be a scholarly type.

I’m not a fan of the homework ladder. It reminds me of the old practice at universities of posting exam results up on a noticeboard in rank order for all to see. Are such measures, whether in schools or universities, supposed to encourage ‘healthy’ competition? There may be the odd slacker that’s humiliated into trying harder. There may be the odd swot that gets a momentary thrill. But mostly it just seems inhumane and disrespectful of privacy.

Education does not have to be designed around the idea of a competition, other models are available. But it’s hardly surprising in the current pushy climate that spending time on MN can feel like being trapped in an episode of Dance Moms.

And, no, the adults shouldn’t be doing the homework. But then, I’m not entirely convinced the children should be doing it either - at least at primary school level.

The school day is long enough and there is plenty of research to show the brain needs downtime - and not just during sleep - to process the input of the day and form memories.

I think indolence is truly underrated!

I feel that no homework, except reading and perhaps the odd project, should be the norm. If children want to mooch when they come home, they should be able to mooch. Let them draw or make lego models or play keepie uppie. Their brains will still be at work on the material introduced during the school day without them being consciously aware of it.

Of course, children who’ve missed out on schooling due to ill health need to catch up and those who are struggling because they don’t have the sort of mind that assimilates certain aspects of schoolwork easily should be given the extra help they need. And that might require out-of-school-hours effort.

Those sort of exceptions aside, I’m in favour of more chillin’ and less drillin’.

My parents never helped me with any school work & like a poster earlier I somehow managed to get to grammar school.

All that shows is that it didn't matter to you. But to other kids who do struggle, it does matter that they get additional help.

I’m not a fan of the homework ladder

No, me neither, though in this case it did alert the OP and their child to the fact that something was amiss, and on the back of that hopefully the OP will help their child more in future.