At what age should children be able to do their school work without help?

[elliejjtiny]

Just wondering as we had an email from the head teacher at dc's primary school saying that there are too many children of key workers in school and if you work from home then your children shouldn't be in. It then goes on to moan about children fidgeting during zoom calls and children not doing enough school work at home. It says that parents working from home is no excuse as children from year 2 onwards can do their school work independently after a brief explanation from the parents.

I was surprised at this as I have to help my years 2, 3 and 5 children a lot and there is no way I could work from home at the same time. Luckily I'm a sahm so although I don't have time to do the baking/crafts etc that I would like to do with them we are doing ok, getting the school work done and not too far behind with the housework. I would massively struggle if I had preschool aged dc as well or was trying to work from home.

Meanwhile my mum keeps telling me how lucky I am that my secondary aged dc are getting on with their school work independently as long as I make sure they get up in the morning and check class charts to make sure they have done everything.

I thought what my dc were doing was fairly standard although my 2 youngest have SEN so I am probably giving more help than most. My nt year 5 child still needs help and supervision though which I thought was normal. His friends mums are giving the same kind of help as I am. A lot of parents working from home started off with their children at home but now a lot of them are in school. Year 2 started off with 5 children in at the beginning of January and now there are 15. Year 3 started with 2 children in and now there are 8. I know I have more dc than average but I don't think it's possible for most year 2 children to do 3 hours school work independently while parents do a full time job at home.

Year 2 DD can do it independently but increasingly doesn’t want to. She is bored of the videos and I can’t blame her.

I don’t want to turn it into a battle - we will all be miserable. Will make up a bit at weekends but I can generally only manage 45 minutes a day in the week. I am pretty comfortable with it - she spends lots of time reading and writing for fun too.

Definitely depends on the child. Dd is year 6 and is managing most things independently as long as I'm around to do about 10 minute input/help about 2/3 times a day. She's relatively bright, but not exceptionally so.

Some of the kids I teach in year 11 still need a lot of parental help though, as they struggle more with learning. They also struggle with the tech they need to use. I try to make the work as independent as possible, but in school they would have someone hovering waiting to help when they need it, and they are bound to need the same at home. Other kids I teach are academically able enough to do the work independently, but have little to no motivation. If we were in school I would be checking in on them every few minutes to see how much work they've done. Unfortunately, when they're at home, I literally can't see what they're doing so if they need someone to enforce some work being done that needs to be someone in the house with them. Some of them are working at home entirely alone, they do what they like and ignore the subjects they're less keen on 🤷

I'm working in school with Y6 keyworker children. Of the 5 in my class, 1 could work entirely independently, 1 could work independently but likes to be able to check in with an adult occationally, 1 could work independently but would rush through everything and produce hardly any work, 1 would probably work better if they weren't distracted by the other children all the time, and the other one needs to be handheld and guided through every. single. little. thing.