AIBU to wish primary schools would do away with homework

[Mondaymoanday]

When I was at primary, kids would be expected to learn some spellings, read, do times tables, maybe do a termly project at home. I hate how much family time is lost to busywork homework.

Also I quite liked it when DS's science homework was to do something helpful at home, like housework (seems they slot emotional social learning into science)

Absolutely detest it. Reading daily, maths practice 3x a week and spelling x3 a week – fine. They also do half termly bigger homework projects that are ‘optional’ but the kids that do ALL the homework get awarded perks so ends up that the kid that don’t/can’t get upset.

It’s bullshit as it penalises underprivileged children and children of working parents.

I was a working single parent. My children did all their homework. It wasn’t a problem to me.

Unfortunately if you want your kid to enter in an academic independent secondary or grammar school, homework and additional tuition are required. Many parents ask for it to understand what they are doing at school and make kids do additional work in preparation for 11+. There are very few kids who can pass 11+ without a lot of extra work. If your kid is going to the local comprehensive it is not required at all, if the kid does not want to do I would not force it and they can do extra work if they aim to go well in GSCE and A level to go to an academic uni. There are kids who enjoy extra work and they do it easily, these are academic kids who will do very well.

You should say it was not a problem for them. Some kids find doing homework easy and they just get on with it, so it’s easy as a parent . Others really hate it, it is a constant fight and loads of tears… in that case it becomes very hard for parents and my view is they should not insist, it is not worth it. Some kids are more academic than others so it has nothing to do with the parents ability to for it or willingness to do it.

I've always refused to do homework with my primary age children - they spend enough of their precious childhood at school.
Our school obviously agreed as they've now abolished it entirely.

My children didn’t take the 11+. I wanted to know what they were doing to take an interest, and to see if they needed help from me, or if I needed to speak to school. I do think how parents approach homework makes a difference, whether children are academic or not.

We just don't put any pressure on it at all.
If there is something they want to do they do it. My eldest will do it all by himself and more when he wants to so I just gently guide and make sure I'm available to print out whatever he wants etc

My middle has additional needs. He just abouts tolerates going to school masks a lot of the day so comes home exhausted. If we started doing homework it would completely overload him. We let him guide us on what he can manage. So timetables and reading we do but at his pace.

I just don't think anyone is learning the moment it becomes stressful or pressured.

My Year 3 DS has spelling, reading and 10 mins time stables a day. The creative stuff is optional at our school and set termly. Some terms we do stuff some we don't depending on what else is going on.
It's still a drama to get him to just to that

Maybe… but I have two kids, for one doing homework has always been difficult, loads of reminders, push back, really hard, for the other one it’s easy, they are mainly independent and it’s done very quickly. I am academic I love studying and I had no issues in doing homework (we had loads in my school, like 2-3 hours a day in secondary plus weekend work) and I love doing them with the kids, but I can see the different attitude (and also different academic results that inevitably follow!)

Our school only sets spelling tests, they are expected to do 20 mins of times tables rockstars and read x3 a week.

They went through a phase of setting work sheets and on parents evening I explained we won’t be doing them, teacher was fine.

I also don’t fill in the reading record, it’s not fit for purpose, it wants a mini book report from the child for each and every reading session. It’s demotivating. They read daily.

When we moved areas we obvioulsy changed primary school - and we suddenly had so much more time just because they only did the craft/project style homeworks once or twice a year in new school rather than every week and research new topic and produce something every half term.

Not doing the homework in first school meant loss of breaks and/or kids getting upset and worried about not having done it.

Completely disagree. My dc primary school have abolished homework, so I don't know where they are, so I struggle with "adding" to what they are currently learning.
I don't mean bombarding them with tons of homework, just a small amount so I know where they are academically.

I think it should be done away with altogether, even at secondary school as it only adds to inequality and low attendance as kids just can't keep up with the huge amount, and all to be done on apps. They could build in independent study periods at school itself- as private schools do! Keep school for school and home for home.

Our old primary school never did homework as the head didn't believe in it.

Pros:

1. Less stress, working parents so nice to have evenings more chilled not having to persuade/nag kids to do work.
2. More time to have fun/enjoy childhood.
3. Teachers taught them what they needed to know during the school day (I presume)

Cons:

1. getting them to do homework once they started at secondary was HARD WORK as they were not used to having to work after 3pm. I was also not used to it and hard to know how much to nag and now much to leave them to it and reap the consequences.

2.The school didn't do as well on sats/phonics stats or Ofsted as other nearby schools with similar socio-economic intake. (Was this to do with homework? Who knows).

3Had NO idea what they were doing in school so couldn't help them in any way (unless children told me but they usually "couldnt remember"

Overall. I think I'm still glad we had no homework at primary

My kids school has it just right - basically what you say in your OP - 10 mins maths/Irish/English/reading - all of which most kids can do without input (apart from the reading when they're little and it's out loud), apart from being in the room and occasionally wandering over to comment. It's perfect.

They don't even do 'projects' until the last 2 years (when they're prepping them for secondary).

Oh, and no homework on Fridays, so your weekends are always family time.

I think reading at home is essential. Online games for timetables really useful, and some time, even if it’s 10 minutes or so to do something structured, like writing out spellings - which sometimes seems pointless.

If you can get them used to some routine or familiarity with independent leaning it helps a lot when secondary school arrives.

I never felt we got the right kind of homework to know where they were or what they were doing academically- and when we raised concerns they were dismissed.

So we did our own stuff at home with basics - when realised kids were behind in some areas - and the school busy homework just sucked time and engery from these programs that had reaserch behind then and seemed to actually help the kids.

What homework there is and how good it was varried between teachers and definetly between schools. It took moving schcools to realise what a huge burden and timesink we were actually dealing with in first school.

My DD is in Y2 and, thankfully, no homework yet apart from a weekly reading book. Which I'm pleased about as she always comes home from school exhausted. I don't think it's beneficial at all in primary school. They should gradually introduce it in secondary.

I'm going to respectfully disagree here. My daughters have had homework all the way through. I remember chatting one day with the head and this came up.

He said it's not about the work, it's about the habit. My girls are year 7 and 8 now, both are on top of homework with minimal support from me. The girls who have fed in from other schools find it a hell of a shock.

Unless they are feeling particularly inspired, they do roughly the timings that are set and I pop a note on the work if they haven't finished confirming how much time they have spent on it.

I agree that it was a slog in primary school, but I think that it has paid dividends now.

Agreed. In the 70s we had zero homework in primary and we all coped fine in secondary. I think reading with your kids is good but homework completely unnecessary. Let them be children. Now the curriculum is so jam packed from day one. No wonder so many are burning out halfway through secondary school.

There is inconsistency too. It can be that one holiday, it’s nothing and the next holiday it’s get your wallet out and do hours and hours.
One of their teachers sets homework on a Friday for a Monday. It sometimes feels like they haven’t had time to cover a part of the curriculum, so that is sent home. It was such a battle with one of my children one weekend and he said he’d rather have the consequence (being kept in to do it at break) as that would only be fifteen minutes. He came home without a break, but obviously break was not long enough for the work set, so he had to do it that evening too.
It doesn’t necessarily reflect what they’ve been doing recently either. E.g. if they’ve been doing long division, maths homework might be general arithmetic. If they’ve been learning very dry grammar, homework might be to research Egyptians, make a poster of it and build a model of the pyramids.
If a child can count and do number bonds standing on their head, how is realms of busywork on that helping them, rather than a homework that might challenge them a little bit - it’s like smashing rocks. Some say it’s about cementing the building blocks and learning concepts - so why not ensure all kids have to do letter sounds or counting for an extra year or two so it’s cemented for them etc?

Obviously the incessant deluge of viruses from school impacting on holidays doesn’t help either.

Both sets of schools should.

If they’ve been learning very dry grammar, homework might be to research Egyptians, make a poster of it and build a model of the pyramids.

Is it a topic they are moving to - as we used to get that make x and research topic every half term and it would be the topic they were doing next. They were too young to do it themsleves so I'd have to find books, tv shows appropriate for their ages for information then do a poster or art thing that would get taken in often needing resources and money to do.

I was at home with the kids so even with three kids could just about manage it but I know a lot of the working parents who had kid in childcare of with DGP actually found the hoildays extremely stressful with more school work than usual and no extra time to do it in.

Under one teacher it got so bad - it just crept up and up - that parents talked to the head and it was cut right back again.