AIBU for refusing primary school homework apart from reading?

[AntiPrimaryHomework]

My dc are 7,9 and 13. We’ve never done any homework at primary school. I strongly disagree with it all except reading.

The school aren’t happy but my dc all have ASD and ADHD diagnosed and they are too exhausted every weekday and at weekends we let them play and relax and take them out.

At secondary school we believe homework is necessary and ds1 happily does his but for primary we just don’t agree at all.

Does anyone else feel the same ?

Think I'm an outlier here. My reception aged child gets homework. I think it's a nice bonding experience. We sit together and watch the videos and say the letters and words. And then write the letters down We chat about it and it's nice seeing them learn. Both parents work FT and child attends after school club, 4 extra curricular activities and we fit it in, plus reading for pleasure. We both come from v academic families, so I think that feeds into our attitude to learning.

You chose the school, you shouldn’t then be making your own rules up. Asd is no excuse either, both mine are nd, diagnosed young and they did their homework, in fact workbooks was DD1’s favourite pastime at primary school age

How much homework do they get?

DD started getting homework in year 4. But was just 2 pages of a maths book recapping that weeks work and 6 SPAG questions. Took 15 mins total for both things, and the maths was useful revision for her, and for us to know what had covered. If was hours and hours, I would be saying to the school there needs to be a balance between home and school work. If it's just a small amount like we get, it's really not worth the battle for not doing it.

DD7 has ADHD, and loves doing workbooks. I often found her working through her sisters 11+ practice papers

DD11 is now year 6 and I think they should be doing more, as secondary will be a shock otherwise. But for now we are enjoying letting her doing every club she wants (6 of them!) in the knowledge she will have to cut it back a lot next year.

@Bushmillsbabe good luck with cutting back the clubs....mine seemed to find half a dozen more as soon as Secondary School started. And as they were all put on by the school for free.....i couldn't say no!

I'm really surprised at how many people are anti homework. Surely more time learning is a good thing? Every time they do it they learn a tiny bit more, and I'd worry the gap between those who do and don't do it gets bigger and bigger

as if there is a choice of which school your child will attend 🤣

parents not getting their 1st 2nd or even 3rd choice

There's more to learning and life than homework.

Learning how to cook meals, how to play sports and work as a team, learning to problem solve, learning soft skills, learning to swim, learning to play a game....

..and you know RELAX after a hard day of work.

Do you bring your work home and see it as a brilliant opportunity to learn and do more?

You’re not interested in this and are doing your children a disservice.

Massive assumption there.
I'm out the other side of child rearing.
My DS went on to achieve all A*s at GCSE, A level and a first class STEM degree. Skipping some pointless homework when he was a tired five year old did not impact his education. In fact we chose other ways to educate, things that engaged him but didn't feel like school to him.

Good for...you?

Mine has no ND and does zero homework, she'S 6 and playing is more important than doing spellings..

She meets and exceeds in all areas, reading age of 10 etc.

My child loves learning, she's exceeding in key areas, will independently read and find out about topics that interest her anyway.
Literally no need for us to make her sit down and write a poem about trees just because school ask her to, when she reads poetry, writes her own poems and letters and stories, looks up leaves and uses her nature book to identify them etc

We engage in her school and her learning all without doing the set homework 🤷

You're not being unreasonable at all. I "banned" homework in my house for a multitude of reasons and it's served us all well. Child is happy to study, has no stress over homework, and their school report at the end of the year is always above expectations (with the occasional "as expected").

I can understand the point of homework when there are things where the child needs extra help and practice, but not for the sake of it.

I am happy with my child doing some homework-type exercises at home in preparation for the 11+ exams (that's another story, though) and to make sure they have a good foundation of the stuff they've covered in school. But it's definitely not something I would worry about at the beginning of primary, if there's no actual need for it.

How embarrassing, Finish children are set homework, do you want to choose another country and guess incorrectly again. Th y describe their homework as light, but it's actually more than lots of UK primary schools.

https://www.visitedufinn.com/how-much-homework-do-finnish-students-typically-receive/

Early Primary School (Ages 7–11 / Grades 1–6): Homework is very light, typically taking about 10 to 30 minutes a day or around 2–3 hours a week.

I really agree with this. Also out the other side with three, one in their last year of medicine at Oxbridge, one Ivy League, and one at Edinburgh. If you engage with your children - talk to them, eat with them, read with them, discuss what they're doing in school, take them places, do lego and puzzles and play games, they are not going to fall behind because they haven't done some more schoolwork after a 6 hour day of school.

None of mine struggled to adjust at secondary.

Who cares? Besides I said for 5 year olds, which is true for Finland, including in your example.

Even so, If you feel the need to make your kids do even more work after a 6+ hour school day, crack on. I'm sure you enjoy bringing work home to do in your free time too and enjoy that.

Personally I won't be making my 6 year old sit down and do spellings, when she's already done them in school all week, or make her write a letter to an imaginary person, or write out sums. She already writes letters to her family, she already works out maths in real life etc she is outside playing, or relaxing and reading, or drawing a picture of a pony etc

Well you did when you quoted me with your fabrication.

But I'll bet you will be the first to cry and blame teachers when she isn't achieving or when you struggle to get her to adhere to your rules. I'm not going to try to educate you, frankly the less effort people put into their children the easier they make it for mine to excel. Crack on with easy parenting.

Do you really think not wanting your children to do homework in primary necessarily equals not putting effort into your children? That's some incredibly black and white thinking.

😂

She's doing fine, reads far ahead of her age, is exceeding in all key areas etc
School is definitely important, no denying that. But it's not so important that I am going to make a 6 year old sit down every evening and do even more work... for what? To get a tick in a column on piece of paper that says "exceeding"? To get a mark of 120 in their sats? For what?
So what if your kids excel? Who cares if your kids get 13 GCSES at grade 9? What does that prove? They're not better people than the kid who got 6s and 7s or the kids that moves onto vocational courses.

It is all meaningless puffery..

Wow, so your kids might get a first class degree in finance and then work ridiculous hours to earn ridiculous money.... So what?

There's more to life than working.

.

I think homework is important, which is backed by lots of available studies, the easy route is not doing it and people frequently pretend Finish education is something it isn't. The rest seems to be your own fabrication of my comment.

I don't think you're being unreasonable. I'm starting to question the homework set for my year 1. I read every night and complete the weekly homework tasks but there's so much more on the various portals.
I think you're supporting the school by reading and sending into school calm regulated well rested children. I think we still have rights as parents to set the pace at home so don't beat yourself up x

5 year olds can get homework in Finland, many children are 5 when they start preschool and some preschool teachers gives homework at least occasionally. But otherwise its a bit silly to say it about 5 year olds. children are only 5 for a very short time in primary school, the rest of the time they are older and there is absolutely nothing wrong with expecting a child of 6/7 upwards to learn to take some responsibility for their own learning by doing homework and developing good study habits. Homework should not take up too much time so there is still time to do all the other things children should be doing.

Ok?

I don't agree that we should make them do more.

I have said literally nothing about Finnish education, so I'm not sure why you're aiming that at me?

You said frankly the less effort people put into their children the easier they make it for mine to excel. Crack on with easy parenting.

I asked Do you really think not wanting your children to do homework in primary necessarily equals not putting effort into your children?

A question based on your own words.

think homework is important, which is backed by lots of available studies, the easy route is not doing it

For every study that shows it to be beneficial, there's one that shows it's not. In the ones that do show a positive, at primary age, the benefits are largely about consolidation and parental engagement. It's possible to do times tables on your way to the park for a runaround and also to engage fully with your children without needing a directive from school on the specific of how to do it. In fact, some might say that's actually the easy route.

They should do more than nothing, which is what this thread is about.

Though perhaps you need to do a little more homework before you make claims about other country's education systems.

I feel sorry for the parents who don't do their child's homework with them. It can be comedy gold sometimes.

My oldest had his "words" homework, which was a list of words they had to make a sentence with. So he did it then asked us to "check" it. One of the words was "dug". So I thought he'd maybe written something like "my dad dug the garden".

No. It was "dug is a Scottish name for a dog". 😁

So I left it. Didn't say a word. Rolled about laughing with my husband.

Next day the teacher got me in the playground and just said "dug" to me and started laughing. She said it was one of the funniest sentences she'd ever read but she wondered whether to correct it or leave it. She left it because she thought he was technically correct. 😅