Canceling Homework in Primary school

[CambsMummy]

I am looking for advice/opinions on the decision that the headteacher of my sons school has made regarding homework. Due to some parents complaints and abusive behaviour towards teachers regarding making their children complete homework tasks the head teacher has now stopped homework altogether. To me this seems outrageous, I am aware there is no legal obligiation, but to me this seems absolutley crazy?

I never got homework in primary school but always wished I did. I used to get my parents to set me some and to tell my friends who came round to call that I couldn't come out because I was "doing my homework". . Hated it at secondary though, probably because we did enough during the day to knacker me out.

Ds in yr 2 refuses to do homework. Says it is too difficult - whatever it is. We then have a battle to get it done. Some evenings I can't be bothered to fight. The stuff he gets to do is pointless and adds nothing to his learning at school. His teacher knows I will ask Ds to do it but no more than that now. If doing homework seriously made a difference to his learning I would be having serious words with the school.

'I love that homework abr1de
'

Shame we didn't know you then, Ingles! WE could have sent them over to you. :)

I think Bramshott's point is a good one.

"Tiffin expects pupils in years 7 ? 11 to usually have two subjects traditional
homework a night. In years 7 to 9, each homework should take around 20 minutes to complete. For years 10 & 11, each homework should take about 40 minutes to complete. In all years, Modern Foreign Language homework is set every lesson, but is designed to match the overall time allocation of other subjects, following the philosophy of little and often being the best way to learn vocabulary.

In addition to time spent on this homework pupils should spend 30 minutes on their Independent Study."

Yeah, right Tiffin sets no homework. They set homework and then some.

I'm firmly in the no homework camp. When I was growing up we had no homework until secondary, it was introduced in Yr7, starting small and gradually working up. By my pre-A-lvel year I was doing maybe 2 hours on a busy night, no more - much of that was long-term project work, essay practice for exams and research and so was useful.
There is no evidence that homework has any positive effects in primary, and the evidence for secondaries is tenuous. It's a shame the change had to come through pressure and abuse, but I wish more primaries would follow suit. I support the homework my children do because I've signed up for it by putting them in their schools and so it would be dishonest not to, but it does blight our already short evenings and weekends. Gradual introduction in Year 7 would be far more sensible.

TBH the homework being set was not vast, it on the whole took 20 mins to complete set on a friday and to be handed in by the following thursday (this was done on top of home reading which is to be done daily), with longer projects for holiday work. Perhaps my opinions has been coloured by the fact my son has never really complained abt it and has taken it to be a matter of fact, homework is set therefore homework must be completed. I find it hard to believe that parents whether working or not cannot find 20 mins in a week to supervise/assist with the homework. After emailing the head teacher a few times about this it is clear that in 'the short term' her decision will not change, I am just concerned that the effective bullying by parents has forced her hand in this decision and this may well be opening the flood gates, for tantruming parents to dictate how the school will be run. In her email she stipulated she had been considering this for some time however discussions with parent governors and other parents within the school suggests otherwise.

Oh huzzah. Good decision.

Too much homework is completed by parents and not the child so it doesnt help the teacher to know if the child has understood the work or not.

When as a parent your child does the homework without complaint you dont see it as an issue and assume all children are the same and cant see what the problem is.

However, so many children will not do the work at home, no matter how easy and trivial it is, and instead of being a 10-20 minute task it takes hours, lots of tears tantrums and arguments.

I happily support my children to do extra learning at home, but they will not/refuse to be forced into filling in sheets of paper that are either too easy or boring to do.

I was one of the many that wanted homework, but over the years have realised there is no benefit to it. I now do "homework" in talking about practical questions in real life situations