is homework at age 6 to blame for high levels of parental involvement in homework throughout school?

[thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat]

me and dh were just thinking - if you give a 6 year old homework it is not something they can be responsible for. Rather, it becomes something for which parents must take responsibility. When we were at school, we didn't get homework until we were 11. At that age we were expected to take full responsibility for it. Our parents never even knew what it was. Their involvement comprised no more than the occasional "have you done your homework?" This was the case throughout secondary school. Now that 6 year olds have homework, parental involvement becomes obligatory - children learn that homework is something they do with their parents, not something they do independently. Parents are left having to wean children off parental involvement or - as seems to be the case - letting it continue. And children simply don't get the opportunity to work in a truly independent way and truly take responsibility for their work. what do you think?

Having seen DSS leave school with extremely poor results and not fulfil his potential in any way, shape or form, I will be taking responsibility for ensuring that DS gets into the habit of, and understands the importance of, doing his homework from whenever he starts having it.

An 11 year old is not necessarily reliable enough to get on with it thmselves, and at secondary level, failing to do homeowrk - and then GCSE coursework, isn;t penalised IME, it's just dispaired of, and then ignored.

I don;t disagree that 6 (and amazed at 3/4!) is too early.

DSS & DSD started getting homework at about 9/10 iirc.

i think its impossible with mul;tiple children in different years in infant school to sit them down and do homework - especially if your working outside the home, the teachers said "only 5 mins thats all we ask"
yeah but it takes half an hour to get them satr dwn , get the house quiet enough to lessen distration etc etc. every evening.

i really think parental pressure is too much. i really cant see why my children cant learn at school. if the curriculum is such that they cannot fit in enough reading and writing - then someone needs to look more closely at the curriculum. rather than expecting parents to do this as well as cook and feed only organic whilst getting them to sleep on only hypoallergenie and go to the dentist and ave a holiday - which you can bareyl afford and rarely enjoy - and buy stimulating toys, and try to have 121 timealone with each child. and instil discipline and values. and go shopping. education should be at school. thats why teachers do a good job.

agree with tigermoth - it's not that I don't want to do homework/reading with DD1 but finding time when younger siblings will let us 'form letters etc' is really tough unless i keep her up later - and that's a no-brainer. clearly she's too young to do it by herself and i think it could be detrimental to her love of reading if her bedtime story is constantly replaced by some dull phonics book that school has told us to read.

hat - i think children remain flexible through their teens and can be encouraged to do more homework off their own bat as they mature. learning good time management should be introduced at the same time - (so speaks one who used to finish her homework on the train)...!

I don't think it is a time thing, in terms of what they do at school.
We do one-to-one with our kids, occasionally we even to do two-to-one, which simply is not possible if you're going to run an education "system" like Britain's where educational outcomes come 19th; far below goals like keeping unions happy, doing it education cheaply and pandering to the superstions of parents.

Let's be very clear on this.
In a world where we need to survive on our wits, we are turing out kids with aneducation that would shame some 3rd world countries.
Only today I see that 1/3 of boys don't learn to read properly by their mid teens.

I can't say for certain that homework is the naswer, but it[s pretty bloody obvious that schools alone aren't up to the task ,and aren't going to be fixed any time soon.

I see that some arts graduates in the broadsheets are bleating about "letting kids be kids".

I'd feel more impressed if they did campaigns of the form "why has the education minister not been sakced ?"
Do we see "campaigns" about the atrocioius level of maths and engflish teaching ?
No
Do we see "campiagns" about the fact the chemsitry and physics are now rarely taught at GCSE level ?
No

Do we see campaigns about the fact that a scary % of kids leave school without even the ability to speak English in any way that can be understood ?
No.

Let's blame video games whilst we're at it.

We worked it out today
32 kids in a class one teacher
6 hours in school
take away 1 hour lunch and half an hour break leaves four and a half hours actually doing school work . Dont forget assemblys . so four and a half hours 270 minutes divided by 32 =8.4 mins per child not alot is it . Thats why homework is important .

Apart from reading books I don't think little ones should have any homework. They shouldn't be working towards KS1 sats either, because they should be scrapped.

In years 3 to 6 as well as reading there should be regular spellings & times tables and my be the odd extra piece of homework.

Older nephews and my eldest 2 DC had no more homework than this at primary school. They didn't start full time school until the term after they turned 5 either. They all got very good GCSEs & A levels and good degrees.

Having said that some children need much more input than any teacher can give in school time.

Out of our six, three went to school fluent readers....loved all tests, homework, workbook etc. As parents we did listen to them read throughout primary school, but homework was never a chore and never took up much time.

The other three (all summer born boys), were the complete opposite.They really struggled to learn to read and are still very poor at written english.
The school have tried with various catch up schemes and different spelling programmes.
No class teacher could give them the time/attention they need in class.There are others with similar problems in the class as well.I accepted that I &(DH) would need to do much of the teaching ourselves. We still spend several hours per week reading with and to the boys even though they are at secondary school. We have also paid for tutors to help at various times. This is in addition to the normal homework from school.Luckly the hard work as paid off and all 3 can read well enough to cope at secondary level.

ds aged 5 and 2 months came home from school tonight (just started in year 1 with ...wait for it...
spellings-3 to learn
a worksheet to fill in
a reading book to read
..all before Monday!
when is he supposed to have fun?

Hard to exactly work out how long to get 3 words spelt correctly, but in my experience a 5yo can learn that in about 20 minutes.
Books vary, but the Oxford learning tree my 5yo just completed took about 15-20 minutes each.

Worksheets vary hugely but again about 20 minutes.

So we're talking about 1 hour here...

You've got about 20 waking hours, from Friday PM to Monday AM, so guess we're talking 5%, or about half the time they might spend wating a DVD.

I'm conscious that I may be painting myself as a pushy parent, but an hour, maybe 90 minutes spread over a weekend is not a big thing to us.

A solid block of 90 minutes would be both cruel and pointless, so in between our 2yo will reprise his role as the "beautiful pirate king" which largely seems to consist of running around shouting his identity and hitting things with swords.
the 5yo wil play, and read, and as part of a speical treat for achievement is getting to s
ee the Tunderbirds film for the first time.

Am I being judgemental of other parents here ?

Apart from shared book reading which is very important and should have started well before a child starts school I still cannot see the need for formal homework until year 3 at the earliest.

Some children enjoy homework and can do it easily 3 X 20mins ...or probably much less.
Other little ones take hours,(spread throughout the week) to learn the weeks spelling & will have forgotten them by the time they do the test.

No matter what teachers say LOOK,SAY,COVER, WRITE,CHECK doesn't always work and neither does writing words out 10,20,30.... or any number of bloody times. I tried this with my 3 sons. When does it become cruel to do this to small children?

Personally DC I think you are being incredibly pushy and not really understanding of some peoples situation. IMHO children should NOT get homework in reception/Y1/Y2 and when DD1 came home with it, we would do it if poss, usually not though!!

Now she is in y3 and I have told her she MUST do her homework. ATM she has spellings (16 of them) reading EVERYNIGHT, and tiomes tables EVRYNIGHT!! If she doesn't do BOTH reading AND Times Tables she won't get excellents (Our star system). Personally when combined with her spellings AND other maths homework it is too much.

DD2 is just n Y1 and has spellings (8 of them) and reading EVERY NIGHT!!

ATM I am a SAHM and all this takes us at least 30 mins when we get home. Usual;y I am not gettimg home until 6.30, when am I supposed to find the time????

Hat, I think it's a really interesting point.

I have to say I get embarrassed sometimes on MN that DD1's laidback school gives them reading, and tells us a bit about the keywords of the week (I always forget what these are, but DD1 appears to be remembering them) and a few projects to do over the half term. She seems to be doing splendidly, as far as I can tell from my not frightfully hands-on attitude to it all.

And homework - the worries about doing it, and getting it done, and sparing the time for it - is a crucial factor in my decision to work short days when both Inferiorettes are in school (I currently do four fairly standard ones). I honestly cannot see when they'll get it done if I don't.

Definitely don't think dc should get homework over the weekend.

As for weekdays, I'm still keeping an open mind (dd is 5 and just had 3 weeks of school), so I can't judge yet whether it's good or not. Here (in Germany) her homework won't kick off till December we were told. The school planned on setting no homework for the first years (usually aged 6) but the parents in our class pushed for it, so we get a little something now (5-10 minutes a day max). No idea what happens after Dec.

DS2 had no homework to speak of right through primary school - he occasionally had projecty things but I don't think he bothered with them much either. (I don't class KS1 reading as "homework")

He's just starting Y9 and has no problems with homework - and it's a high-achieving selective grammar and he only seems to get 30-60 mins a night tops. So maybe twinset has a point about no homeowrk until KS4

Georgina, I so agree with you about sparkling homework obviously done by parents. What's the point???

Spellings in KS1 is just wrong - so is nightly reading come to that, ours used to bring books home twice a week and I think they read in class once. Schools have been turned into results factories and there's hardly any time left for them to do extra-curricular activities as my older kids did (embroidery, guitar, model-making, orchestra etc.) and that's tragic.

Do any of the political parties have "scrapping national curriculum and SATs" in their manifesto?

I hope you are talking about as separate subjects, DC - otherwise I'll have to suspect you of BBC-style journalism. They are compulsory at GCSE (in the form of single- or dual-award science)

It's very interesting to see the differences in how much homework is set. At dd's school they onlyhave reading h/w until KS 2. Still get excellent results though...

I loathe the fact that homework is set at primary age when kids are too young to take responsibility for it. DS has 4 bits of homework (he's 7) to complete this weekend - it's going to take about 3 hours tomorrow (we were too busy having some quality family time together today to do it. And er... maybe I need to do other stuff than his homework tomorrow too). Also because I feel at this age, it's my homework,not his.

Also totally disagree with Polly Toynbee's view. The most disadvantaged kids don't have parents who do the homework anyway. So what happens, is that all the middle class kids do the homework, all the respectable working class kids do the homework, and all the really disadvantaged members of the lumpenproletariat get left behind because their parents don't do it. Instead of levelling the field, it actually makes the differences worse, imo. My brother taught in a school where the same book was returned unread for the whole term by five or six of the kids (because their parents weren't doing the reading with them) while the rest of the kids sailed through to the next stage. Terrible, and totally opposite to what is supposed to be being acheived.

I was reminded of this when I read about parents obviously doing their child's homework.
When dd1 was in yr4 their half term project was to design and make a musical instrument.
She spent a lot of time on it and was quite pleased with her 'banjo', which was a cut up cereal box with some elastic bands stretched across it.
Walking into the playground the following Monday I'll never forget the sight of a boy holding a homemade full size wooden acoustic guitar!
I'm giggling now just thinking about it, and he had the nerve to say he'd done it all himself!

ds is finding the whole being back at school thing really difficult. Coupled with that he is still at the age where when he is worried or unhappy-it shows in his behaviour. Getting him to concentrate on homework for even a mere 90 minutes in those circumstances is tortuous. For both of us.
it takes me a good 30 minutes plus many arguments to get ds to sit down and concentrate on his homework-so that has to be added to the time it takes to do it.
it is too much for MY ds at this stage and at his age.

I am resolutely ignoring dd1's 'homework' - she is in reception and gets reading and flashcard things. We could have been doing her flashcards, but instead we went out into the garden and she found some flint, and I said it looked like it could have been knapped, and she asked what that was, so I explained about people a long time ago making tools out of it, and then people discovered they could make tools out of iron or bronze...now that is homework in my book.

For reading I let her choose her own book until we have to use theirs once she is starting to read words rather than just look at pictures (she loves school but says their books are boring ).

My ds is in year 2 and had homework on the first day of the new term along with spellings to learn for a test on Friday. I was really shocked. I have to sit with him to do it as otherwise he does not know the words but I do give him look, cover sheets to do it on his own which is less stress but I have to make sure he knows the words. He is only just six so I think it is unreasonable to expect that he would be able to do it on his own. I also have a toddler and work so it is fairly stress. Be even worse when DD starts school. However, if I don't do it am concerned he will get left behind. Already struggling as one of the youngest in the year. However, am making him check things now and trying to leave it alone. Difficult though. The kids with sahms are doing really well but the best child is the son of a very laid-back single mum who works really hard and does not have time to do his homework with him and he is now streets ahead in reading. Therefore maybe homework not really a leveller or he is just more mature and does it on his own. Good example of how stereotyping gets things wrong.

To me the workd "homework" brings up the image of being severely hassled by teachers for not doing it.

At 6, are kids given a bad time if they don't ?

On the occasions we haven't had the time (or lost the book), there has been no feedback at all to us or DC.

At our school children even in reception are expected to do regular homework.

Parents are expected to do reading books (sometimes with work sheets)and word cards.Children are heard read 3 times per week and that is when homework is set.Better readers are expected to read 2 books. If homework is not done a note is sent home asking parents to ensure children do their homework or parents contacted by the class teacher. Children are not punished but parents are labled 'as not helpful'......even bad parents if their children regularly fail to complete homework.

In Yr1 & Yr2 Spellings are given every week. Children get a week to learn them. This is homework I object to most .....

The children either,

1.Know them already,or learn them easily and do well in the test.

2. Don't learn them and don't worry about it.

3. Try very hard (1/2 hour every day even sat & sun).Still get most wrong! Therfore no stars no certificates at the end of term. They think have failed.....This is a weekly failure not the once a year one when someone comes last in the egg & spoon race!

My sons were no.3

Parents are of course expected to do the work sheet & word cards WITH their children!