To think that 1-2 hours of revision A DAY is too much for year 7s?

[AsIfIWish]

I've just got a letter from our secondary school, stating that students should be revising "1-2 hours every day, in short 20 min bursts, using the techniques mentioned above." (Honestly, that last bit makes it harder!)

IABU to think that this is too much for year 7s? (Not to mention SEN kids. Mine are undiagnosed, but still.) I'm just not sure when they are supposed to find the time!

(Our circumstances won't be the same as everyone else's, but they are:
They get back from school at 4pm. They are encouraged to do lots of extracurricular activities which they do a fair number of and these take up time on three days after school. They also get a fair chunk of homework that they are expected to do during the week (at a guess, 3-4 hours a week on average, but it takes my kids longer). So there are only two days where they get a full 2 hours between school and tea time, and they can't go straight into school work once they get home, and after that they are often trying to do homework. So, I'm not sure when in the day they are supposed to revise, when they also require a family mealtime, and wind-down time before bed (they still go up at 7:30 but read for 20 mins before going to sleep).)

I'm not ever going to prioritise revision over good sleep or taking time out to de-stress or whatever after school... so I'd be interested to know what other people do at this stage of school.

We don’t do things on days we plan the week for my yr8 son (who does loads of sport too during the week and Saturdays and Sundays).
key thing for us he has learnt if he stops fighting it and focus’ it’s over with quicker 🤣 and it’s not about the academic grades for us but his effort grades. He knows school work comes before other things he wants to do in the evening/weekends so he just gets on with it.
i remember end of year exams all through secondary school 30 years ago and whereas they aren’t official ours were used for what set you were in the following year for streamed subjects.
looking at my sons revision it replaces homework in the build up to exams - he does 20min blocks on different subjects and his teachers generally set ‘themes’ to remind them what to go back over … all good practice for when they have to do it in a few years.
i think your extra challenge to a lot of us is the early bedtime … I’ve always been led by how tired my son is (and how good he gets up in the morning) and his bedtime is now up to 10pm and he gets up fine 6.45am every day for a shower before school

This is all a bit mad. My year 7 goes to a SS grammar and does 1-2 hours of homework a week? If that? 1-2 hours a day would exhaust him.

YANBU, my DS is in year 11 about to do GCSEs and even he doesn't do that much every day!

My DC starts High School in September and this fills me with doom!
The push for SATS is bad enough!
1-2 hours homework a day is far too much. I would be questioning the teachers on what is being taught in the classroom.
My DC have after school activities which are deemed just as important due to mental and physical health.
The school curriculum within the U.K. is totally and utterly dreadful!
I head shake at half the SATS stuff as it’s so nonsensical and useless!

My DD goes to a well thought of academy state school. She is in year 9 and has never had a letter such as this.
Different schools have different expectations.

I don’t know how much work she does as she self manages & I see her revise. She hands everything in on time as she doesn’t get negative comments. It won’t be as much as your school have suggested and she’s in a higher year.

I think you have to do what’s best for your children as extra curricular activities, downtime & sleep are very important.

I’d take it as a guideline that you are expected to not meet (Eg if they say do 1 hours then it’ll be half an hour) & include homework time in it.

It’s important that children don’t burn out or are put off by studies by doing too much.

DS is in year 6 goes to bed at 8.30. I’m sure your child’s bedtime will get later overtime allowing more study time.

Why are they expected to do this in Year 7? My two didn't do anything other than a couple of pieces of homework each week.

Just about to say this 😆 neither of mine bothered revising for any exams before about year 9.

My son is year 8 in an Outstanding school and I don’t think he does anywhere near enough home work. They finish at 2.30pm (early start and reduced lunch break) to allow for extra curricular and homework but he never really seems to get any. Maths every week online but that’s about it other than the odd IT quiz and his reports are great and he’s in all the top classes so I know it’s not being set and he’s not doing it. It was even less in Year 7 and no revision or end of year exams.

I certainly wouldn’t want him to have several hours a night but I think a few hours a week is good practice- especially when he’s home so early!

7:30 is an extremely early bedtime for year 7. Guides and scouts aimed at that age group often don’t begin till then.
But yes, that seems a lot of revision but as there are no exams in normal state comprehensive schools I assume your child is in some type of selective school so basically I guess that’s what you chose.

Independent schools do “prep” after school which is 1-2 hours. Mine have a minimum of an hour per night in year 8 and had the same in year 7. Fitting it around dd3’s dance classes is really hard.

Same here. Tricky as you don't want them burnt out before the important exams.

It's a no from me.
Homework is already a form of revision. Revision in STEM subjects is built in naturally as every new concept relies on understanding of the previous one so zero point to revise if the concept is already well understood.
"Tell me what you learned today in your history class" at dinner table is surely plenty at this point.

What is it a good practice for, though? He clearly achieves in school and it doesn't matter whether he is home early or not. If my work day finishes at 2.30, I don't go home and spend a few more hours providing occupational assessment to my dog or writing imaginary PIP support letters because it is "good practice".

That's what my kids' school recommended for Year 10s & 11s. My Year 7's homework for the whole week takes 1-2 hours, not including free reading and just talking about school.

There is little benefit to practicing hours of revision in Year 7, that just perpetuates the idea that all secondary education is for is exams and that the only thing worth learning is the academics the school choses. Families are meant to teach more beyond that, but it's a time and energy balance with what's going on in school.

It also ignores that - much like building a muscle - an important part of the learning process is the rest between the spaced repetitions of active recall, especially at that age.

OP the technique mentioned - is it the bloody Pomodoro technique? That has never ever worked for my ADHD - it breaks me out of my concentration just as soon as I've got it established. Utter shit.

So I don’t have an opinion on how long to revise for but I just wanna stick my nose in as someone late diagnosed with adhd that somehow completed a masters in biomedical science with 0 help or understanding that no not everyone around me struggled as much as I did. Find a way, any way to teach them how to actually study and revise independently! I never really had to throughout all of school and college because if I enjoyed the subject I would look it up for fun (yeh I was a cool kid) or if I didn’t I would somehow manage to sponge up enough to do well. I’m pretty sure the only reason I didn’t fail is because of how structured classroom teaching is, if a worksheet is put in front of you you’re gunna have to figure out the answers.
When I got to uni it was all lectures and independent study (as if I was an adult or something). Obviously there were question banks and textbooks but there wasn’t the same kind of peripheral learning I’d been taking advantage of. No one was gunna shove a nice bite size worksheet under my nose to fill out until it counted for a chunk of my grade and honestly it took me far to long to understand that’s why I was struggling. That’s not to say I wasn’t trying to study, I had highlighters in all the colours but that doesn’t help when you highlight the whole page yellow. Post it notes everywhere that I’d write then not look at again. I realised well after uni that instead of starting from a basic understanding and working out I’d just try and read everything then do all the questions instead of reading a subject then working on those questions. 😅 it didn’t help that a lecture really isn’t the most adhd friendly environment and because I just assumed everyone was like me I didn’t know to ask for reasonable adjustments like a dictaphone or someone to write my notes for me so I wasn’t still trying to write about what was said on page 3 when we’d already moved to page 7.

Btw I’m not just sharing this because your kids are neurodivergent because I know we are all different. I just think it’s important for all kids to have the tools to direct their own learning.

also before the 0 help comment gets blasted. I don’t really blame anyone, I didn’t even know I needed help I just thought I wasn’t very smart 😂 Unfortunately I loved biology and as a science it tends to be difficult, I just assumed the bits I loved learning about were the easy bits 😂

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’m a very recent ex teacher and after a full day at school that is far too much for a year 7!

It will have come about because one of the performance management targets of a senior leader will be to improve GCSE results by improving pupils’ ability to revise independently and part of this will be to start it earlier and have a more structured way of doing it. Before I left my school had just introduced a revision technique focus for each half term and each subject had to set homework and cover each strategy in class.

Surely Y7 they are just learning not revising?

Yes it's a lot. I wouldn't support that.

My year 7 has end of year exams coming up and at parents evening we were told which topics to revise for these.

This goes into their report and informs sets for maths next year.

However all that said the tests are after half term and we've not started revising as t all.

Its a selective grammar school and I think there's about 2hours homework a week.

What is it good practice for? Erm the next few years where work outside of school hours ramps right up. Others in his year group have homework, he just happens to have most of the teachers who don’t set it. My nieces and nephews at the same school in older years are swamped and have to manage their time accordingly to complete it. I believe that the level mentioned by the OP is far far too much but going from almost nothing straight to the levels he’ll be expected to do in coming years isn’t great and hasn’t allowed him to learn the skills he’ll clearly need.

And I bet your dog is well chuffed that it’s not on a performance improvement plan

It seems an excessive amount of homework to be doing in year 7, even before one adds homework into the mix as well! My eldest is 12 and in year 8 at a very selective private school. He has about 3-5 hours of ‘homework’ a week split across all the subjects but before the biannual exams (January & June) most subjects replace the homework with revision. In year 7 he had no homework at all for the first term, and then 1-2 hours a week (split across the 16 subjects they do, although some, like Pe, obviously don’t give homework). He comes home between 4:45 and 5pm 3 nights a week after school sports training or fixtures, and often has out of school sports training as he’s a swimmer so spends a ridiculous amount of time in the pool. He tends to crack straight on with his homework if he needs to, and does a good amount on the one day a week he has no sports at all. He goes to bed at about 9pm on week nights (in year 7 he went at 8-8:30pm depending on when we got in from training), and for context he is about the youngest one can be in year 8 and gets up at 6:30am. On that point, he gets up fairly early as he hates rushing but usually ends up with 45mins spare and uses that time for homework or revision as his evenings are so busy.

Revising for what? Yes I’d say it probably is a lot for year 7, unless it’s for 1-2wks to study for end of year exams kind of thing

How to make year 7s despise school and demotivate them for the next four years 😒

As for the school, tell me you’re shit at delivering a good quality education without telling me you’re shit at delivering a good quality education…

Stipulate that 11 and 12 year olds should be doing 1-2 hours of revision per (to make up for our shortfall in delivering of education over the rest of the year?) in addition to homework, for exams that make no difference to their GCSEs (that are four years away) but make our own internal results look good.

Unless they’re passionate about academia, teens need to be interested and motivated to hear, read, understand, absorb, retain and recollect knowledge on at least eight twelve different subjects (English lang, English lit, maths, science, history, geography, RE, music, MFL, D&T, IT, any I’ve missed?). Piling on the homework and demands for two hours of revision after a 5 hour day in the classroom, 5 days per week (plus weekends?) is not conducive to motivating most kids IMHO. Especially for exams that are only for school’s own end of year KPIs and/or student assessment.

I agree with an intensive revision schedule for critical-to-your-future GCSEs and A Level exams, but on study weeks (ie no classroom work) and no homework. And I’m perplexed as to why a school would ask/need kids to revise intensively for end of year exams. Surely results that represent the overall quality of teaching/student capacity throughout the year are more useful than results that are influenced by coercing the kids to cram in two hours a day’s revision before the exam 🤔

Also, OP what sort of system are you operating to get your 11 plus aged kids up into bed at 7.30pm 🤔 I would’ve been and my kids would be bullied mercilessly if their year 7 and above peers knew they went to bed at the same time as toddlers do. Where do they get time to chill and socialise, let alone 1-3 hours revision, if they’ve only got 3.5 hours between home from school and bed time, and have evening meal, homework and extra curricular activities eating into that time too?

My son is year 9 and has diagnosed ADHD. He does two sports 5 nights a week and goes to bed around 10.30. He’s never done homework, part of his currently support is looking at strategies to prepare him to revise as he approaches GCSE years. But it won’t be 1-2 hours a night!

My DS2 is Year 8, so year above your DC. He does have significant SEN, to the point of having a 1-1 with him most lessons.

He has just had end-of-year exams & he did revise the amount you were advised. Mainly using BBC Bitesize as he is a visual/audio learner, but also some reading through his school books. He did so very willingly, came in from school & got straight on it, although he did moan about it sometimes! Still enough time for afterschool activities and free play.

I think it's important to get them into this way of studying well ahead of the big exam years. Especially for DS2 as everything takes him longer to do & get used to, although he is capable.