To think academic success is 90% of the time down to the parents

[TameSacha]

Sparked by a conversation I had at the school gates last week about how another parent wouldn’t be bothering with half term homework (which was making a collage).

I have DS8 and DD6. I read with each of them daily (they read to me and vice versa, takes about ten minutes per child), we do five minutes on their maths apps each day, and things like times tables songs in the car. We try to do at least one educational trip a term that matches with what one of them is learning about (think looking at and drawing a bridge or going to the local museum for Victorians, not going to Egypt for Egyptians). I read their syllabus each term so we can talk about the topics at home.

To me this is a perfectly normal part of child-rearing and supports the education they get at school, where underpaid teachers are on crowd control with thirty kids, some of whom don’t want to or aren’t able to learn.

AIBU to think it’s a parent’s responsibility to support their child’s learning outside of school?

Parental and support is important, but it's more complicated that just making sure primary school hw is done. It's more about an attitude to learning and supporting the school.

My parents just wanted me to behave at school. That was it. They but left school at 15.But they were both interested in everything around them and both big readers. That kind of rubs off.

I've done the uni thing and I'm a teacher. I don't agree with homework for primary kids, other than reading. Unless it's optional- in which case ds would have avoided and dd would have killed herself to make it perfect.

Ds frustrates me as a teen, because he has more advantages than I had, and yet he's not doing as well in school as I did. All the parental engagement here- including offers of free tuition in English and French from me! But he's not that interested. Perhaps if he grew up like I did, he'd have more motivation.

My kids are 19&24 now so this stage is well and truly in the past, thank god!

Both had identical upbringings under the same circumstances.

We never pushed homework beyond the minimum.
But we all ate together, talked together and generally spent a lot of time together.
We used to visit museums and art galleries, listened to radio 4, had mad kitchen discos at the weekend.
Gave them all kinds of opportunities, sailing, horse riding, dancing etc.
I'm sure you get the picture!

Now one has graduated and another is at uni.
One absolutely thrived on what we offered, the other couldn't wait to go and play silly buggers in the garden rolling in the mud with the dog.

Absolutely none of this was due to the prescribed homework.

So if you're judging your parenting by homework I fear you're in for a bit of a shock.

School is only a tiny part of education

Hmmmm. Teacher and parent of 3 dyslexic children here. Yes as a parent we can help our children and vastly improve their outcomes. But there are many other factors that come into play. So I’d agree with you but not the 90%.

At primary age I'd say 95% yes.
I briefly volunteered at a school helping the kids read and the ones who actually practiced at home were miles better than those who didn't. Of course there were a few kids with learning disabilities that did practice at home but still couldn't read very well bless them that's why I wouldn't say 100%

Parental encouragement can be a help to a child's education, but we have to recognise that a lot of homework could happily be ignored at the primary stage, and often at secondary.

Whether or not this child's parents make a collage with them will make no difference at all. Who knows they might have more interesting things planned? And at primary stage it is often the parent in reality who makes these things as we all know!

If a child has homework and asks for some advice or help then that is fine - I spend lots of time helping GC remember tables/spellings etc. But the most important thing is that the child does the homework themselves. They might need encouraging to do so, but over involvement by parents gives the school a false impression of their capabilities, when the teacher needs to be able to judge the child's needs.

Some homework is nonsense and just ticking a box. As parents it is our job to judge what is in our child's best interests in terms of how they spend their time out of school.

I wouldn't know percentage wise.
But i do think attitude impacts a lot. If you are positive towards education and learning. Even if your plate is full but ask questions about their subjects at school and give positive engagement and not making reading, learning to sound like a pointless chore. I think that encourages a curiosity and a drive for wanting to learn.

It's the disinterest in their education that would feel unmotivating. As I always felt you lead by example. I don't think hard working parents not being present for everything would be included as rather then doing x amount of activities they are providing the action of the importance of education by the results and what it can offer long-term. They can still speak positively and engaged around learning and facilitate independent activities and opportunities.

So basically I believe it is mainly attitudes.

that sounds really hard. And I'm pretty sure you're not failing your kids.

Kids get out what the parents put in.

If your kid is a loser, chances are you are too.

Fair enough if you're pulling ten jobs and don't have the time, but many parents these days outsource to gadgets and blame teachers.

There is certainly a lot of evidence that reading to young children matters and makes a difference.

How do you define loser?

We of course help Ds and I do think they get a huge amount of education from home.

BUT I grew up in a house where my parents couldnt even read and we did no homework ever, and I could still read early, went to grammar school, got good a levels. So all my education was school or just reading myself. I had very little extra curricular and it actually didn’t hinder me at all

I wouldn’t rush to make a primary school age do a collage in half term no. I would rather spend the week reading, swimming, hiking, sports, gardening, teaching to cook, visiting interesting places and learning new things. I wouldn’t stop those to make a collage

Supporting learning and respect for education is a massive part of their success.
But there's always that one kid in a great while who succeeds in spite of their upbringing.

I did this too in the past and it’s very, very clear which children read at home before even opening their reading diaries. Unsurprisingly, these are almost always the children who end up doing well in school. There’s always outliers but not that many.

i agree OP- my 7 year old has massively struggled with maths this term, we’re having to put in so much time to get her up to a standard level. No way would 1-2 teachers in a class of 30 have the time.

We did the reading/spellings/tables and any other homework they were set - we instilled in them that homework was non negotiable and they need to do what they were asked. But we've been lucky with two NT DC who could do most of the homework within 20 mins or so and didn't find it a struggle. Friends with ND DC could have an hour battle on their hands to get their DC to sit down in the first place, then getting through what was supposed be 20mins of homework might take another hour at least with lots of shouting/crying/distressed DC (and parents). I didn't judge them at all for sacking it off some nights - I'd not be able to face a 2 hr battle every night either.

OP your confident use of very loaded, judgemental words ("lazy", "bad parenting") highlights a lack of emotional intelligence.

Perhaps you'd do well working on yourself, rather than judging other humans of whose circumstances you know nothing if.

We have two children in P7 and none of them do prescribed homework.

DD is in mainstream education, but has ASD and is non-verbal, so we support her in different ways.

DS breezes through work, finds it exceedingly easy and as reads for fun, so would find it frustrating and bizarre to have someone read with/to him.

We also focus on topics outside the syllabus, including working on that emotional intelligence and skills like the empathy you seem to be sorely missing there.

supoorting them academically isn’t always as going to be as easy as reading to 6 and 8 year olds…wait until they are doing advanced highers and A levels in subjects you have no clue about

Going to really burst your bubble here.

My youngest has an autoimmune condition and between that and medication he is utterly incapable of doing any work out of school. He’s barely capable of getting through the school day. Yet despite that he’s exceeding expectations in all areas. Fortunately for us the primary school recognises that there is very little evidence that homework in primary improves outcome. The only thing they ask us to do is read with kids which as parents we all know we should be doing anyway. It’s not a prescribed homework and there is no log.

If you want to do extra work / lots of my homework go for it but there are definitely better ways to spend your time with your kids - homework is not a game changer.

At my offspring’s school the homework is never marked, so she doesn’t do it. She does other learning at home, and goes to educational things, but pointless busywork is not on my agenda!

Sorry, I did miss your post. There’s always outliers and people who are genuinely doing their best like you hence why I put 90%. I hope things get easier for you and your family soon.

Very much depends on the child. I don’t make a big deal of it with my kids but I do ask them to read things while out and about. Add things up. Silly quizzes in the car and so on.
However holiday homework is another thing. My kids could do the collage/build a house/ make a poster this holiday. However on May half term we have family visiting and I doubt it will happen.

It depends on the child. And the school set up. And lots of other factors.

Some children need a lot of support and still struggle. Some children need virtually no support and do fantastically well.

Sometimes as parents we think we've got it all worked out and we can be (rightly) proud of what we've done. And other times we feel like we've done terribly badly and failed our children.

I have about equal amounts of both feelings, sometimes in the same day, sometimes within the space of one hour, so I generally tend to just try to manage my own smuggery/guilt and do my best and not be too hard on myself, and it probably evens out in the end.

This "children are exhausted by school" trope is such a poor excuse for not bothering with homework. It's not just the work itself, it's the discipline of doing it every night and pushing through. SEN aside, there's really no excuse. DD8 manages with no problem despite after-school activities every day and two instruments to practice daily.

Completely agree that there will always be outliers where children or parents have disabilities or learning difficulties, but surely that’s the minority. The vast majority of children benefit from parents supporting their learning outside of school and the vast majority of parents are capable of providing that support.

Your kids are six and eight I wouldn't count your chickens before they hatch I did everything I could to help my sin too but he isn't academic and missed a lot of year 11 due to being in intensive care so didn't do great in GCSE,s