To be livid that year 11 DS thinks 4-5 hours/week homework/revision is enough for GCSEs?

[Hotdaisies22]

DS in year 11. Bright boy but has always been poor at doing homework at home despite being well set up for it at home (quiet desk space etc). Does his homework at homework club after school -Mon - Thurs max 5 hrs week (thats only time homework club room is available at his school). We're having conversations that he now needs to up his game these next few months before GCSEs and start studying /revising at home extra time. Getting massive push back and causing a lot of friction. He thinks what he does is enough and no intention of doing more "at the end of a tiring school day" (he only has a 20 min journey to school). What are other year 11s doing? (I'm trying to have conversation with his school on this but so far they've been rubbish - no reply!)

Studies have shown most children and adolescents are physically unable to focus for more than 4 hours per day, and some countries are already shortening the length of a school day have stopped giving out homework. What he’s doing sounds reasonable. Does he do any sports? Good health is more important than anything in the long run

Livid clearly isn’t helping. If he’s bright he’ll find his own way. Don’t lose your relationship over it, try to get more in tune.

There is a strong links between health and good exam grades @IvyM

There is a culture of low expectations and low effort in too many schools.

Absolutely this! Children in school should work hard in lessons (though they often don’t). Even if they do, year 11 doing 1hr per night plus another 3-4 across the week really isn’t too much. While children are in school 8.30 - 3.30 (ish), much of that time is “lost” to break, lunch, lesson change over, form time, assemblies etc. The actual learning time is way lower - more like 4.5 - 5hrs rather than 7, and even that is somewhat diluted by group work, passive learning, time spent by teacher dealing with behaviour rather than teaching.

Measuring Effort rather than Achievement.

Your making a classic British mistake. Hours spent doing revision aren't a useful, interesting, or important thing to measure.

What are his expected grades? Not everyone needs hours of revision. Some take it in during class. He's not you. Try being understanding and taking a genuine interest in what might work for him.

I'm sorry you are getting such a hard time OP. My own DC are now all at uni, but they wouldn't have even got through their homework in that time, never mind revision or planning towards good grades.

You should be able to get school on board though, that's just odd.

Kids in China are in school for 14 hours a day, 11 hours of lessons and then 3 hours of homework. And yet our kids can supposedly only concentrate for 4 hours a day. How do we expect them to compete in the global economy?

The OP in one of her subsequent posts says he’s predicted low grades so your comment doesn’t really hold up.

Are GCSE's much harder these days than they were in the mid 90's? I didn't do anywhere near that much revision and I got ten with pretty good grades. I just studied at Easter if I remember rightly.

Private school is the day longer @Hotdaisies22 classes smaller. Both of those make a difference

WTF? What on Earth makes you think Chinese school kids do 11 hours of lessons a day?! Of course they don’t.

It doesn't follow that extra hours will help though. It's quality, not quantity that count. Although having found that post now, I see the OP expects to buy the results through the invested 'sacrifice'.

I expect he hears you and knows it’s true that he’ll have to do more as exams draw closer. I would just do a gentle reminder from time to time. Just because they grumble doesn’t mean they don’t know something is inevitable.
if he’s particularly poor at one of the key subjects probably a good idea to see what you can do a bit earlier to get him up to speed.
i just had a conversation with my daughter where she was telling me she doesn’t need to practice her french vocab for a test because she knows it all already, she knows it’s not true, I know it’s not true.
is there a festival or something he might want to go to in the summer that you could dangle as a carrot for hard work.

@MultiTulip

DH has relatives in South Korea and the DC there do up to 16 hours of studying a day in exam year.

They have a morning break, lunch and afternoon break so not 11 hours of lessons, that's true. But they are in school from 7am-9.30pm which includes 3 hours of doing homework (in school).

‘Livid’ is a bit much no? It’s not like he’s stealing from you and bunking off school

Are GCSE's much harder these days than they were in the mid 90's? I didn't do anywhere near that much revision and I got ten with pretty good grades. I just studied at Easter if I remember rightly.

I don't know about the 90s but for a few years they were mostly coursework and modules which you could resit until you passed. All changed now and most are exams at the end of 2 years plus this is the 1st year when exams will be completely back to normal with no concessions since covid started (so I suspect that the experiences of many people on here is irrelevant). Plus I'm not sure that doing bugger all work for GCSE's is good preparation for A levels. I'm all for a happy medium.

My ds didn't even do that much i don't thibj as he said if he did too much he just switched off anyway
He passed all his exams , could he of got better , maybe but if I had pushed him , he wouldn't of likely done much more
Hes at uni now so it didn't work out to bad

I didn't do any homework for my GCSE's, not everyone learns through 'homework' and do you know how often my GCSEs have been checked or mattered?

Litrally ONLY when I applied to college, everything else has just asked 'do you have math and english GCSE?' and a 'yes' has been enough with no checking.

@PalmTrees7 and when does he have time to actually be a kid
What if he has a bad day in his gcse day , it happens , will you be fuming
How much pressure does he feel under , have you considered that

Research is conclusive, unreasonable stress makes young people more able to cope with unreasable stress. Way to go parent of the year.

Does he actually know HOW to revise?

Is his revision effective?

The time he spends doing it is of fuck all relevance really - someone who is effective and knows how will get much much more out of an hour a day than someone who hasn't a clue doing 3 hours a day.

Everyone's different too, I am better at flitting between two or three things than focusing solidly on one thing for hours (though sometimes I will do that, it happens naturally, any sort of pressure would result in an immediate push back, even now!).

I don't think being livid about the time he is spending is justified or useful - and you definitely need to dial back the expectation that he works his arse off for hours on end because you chose to pay for school. If he is not the academic type, then he isn't, you can't make someone be that by bullying them or making them feel guilty for how much it has cost you. It was your choice.

Why are you livid? My son and I were talking about this before. There is so much pressure put on kids to perform after working hard at school. There needs to be a balance, it is a very difficult age let alone exam stress, homework stress then mother stress give the kid a break.

Wow!