can't be 'polite' and good any longer....

[swallowedAfly]

ds goes to a village primary with all the subsequent over-reliance on parents wealth, education, time, etc. re: assuming sahms are the norm, money is plentiful for fanciful trips and activities, we all know how to sew up costumes at the drop of a hat etc.

that's fine. i chose to live here. however....

homework is way over the top in terms of quantity and right from day one of school. one part of homework (there is loads) is the 'learning log' which is pretended to be something children could do indepndently and consolidates learning. except in reality it is not, by a long shot.

i've put up with it and put up with and felt enslaven to doing it until today when i've had enough. this week for ds (6yo and one of the most able in his year) it says, "show me what you've learned about number bonds up to 20 and what patterns you can see". then there's a blank page.

i don't know why (because this is far from the worst that's come home) but today i've had enough and found myself writing on the page that i have no idea what the learning objective is, what outcomes they're hoping for or how the hell they see this as differentiated. i've also asked how they think a parent with numeracy or literacy problems would tackle this task and whether they would actually set this as a task in class to 6yos and expect a meaningful outcome.

there is no context, no structure, no literacy support, no prompts nothing. same as ever. sometimes the tasks don't even relate to anything they've been learning.

am i totally unreasonable or would you after a year or so be fed up too? i am (if it's not obvious) an ex teacher and i know what education is supposed to be about and this is not it. homework should be meaningful. how could a 6yo read that question and face a blank page and do something a teacher could look at and assess to see what they've learnt? they couldn't.

on top of this learning log (given on a friday and expected in by tuesday) daily reading and signing of reading book is expected plus other bits and bobs. he's 6! he's been getting this since 5 at a point where some kids couldn't even write let alone face a blank page and an open ended task and produce something yet they'd get in trouble if they didn't. this is just a test of parents surely? and an unfair one given it assumes knowledge and literacy that some parents won't have?

sorry for long random rant but help! i'm not playing this game anymore and i'm ready to speak up. it's a joke.

[Herisson]

What kind of punishment is it?

[Imsosorryalan]

Very refreshing to hear this. Another teacher here and yet another Sunday morning spent doing spellings, phonics, sight words, reading, handwriting. Oh, and a worksheet full of tens and units facts. How old is my dd? 5..just.

It doesn't matter how jolly I am or how much I try to bring this shit 'alive' her little face falls when it's time to do homework. It breaks my heart. To make it worse, her teacher is newly qualified which makes him more of a try hard with the school. In all fairness he does manage a WALT above the homework!

[NoComet]

YANBU
I'd fill it in every week with some piece of spurious crap it was obvious I'd done if they looked carefully.
Chances are they, won't look carefully, I can't conceive the teachers mark them very studiously,

Small DCs get nothing out of unstructured HW, they are totally paralysed at the thought of doing the wrong thing, doing to much or too little.

DD2 finds it really hard. Even in Y7 she had a fit at a very open ended geography project.

By Y5 or Y6 DCs who can write well and are happy with maths concepts will happily do this sort of thing,if the requirements are clear. But not at 6 and never if the question is vague.

[rabbitstew]

Yes, I'm quite sure that teaching maths is trying to aim at all children understanding that if 2+18=20 then 20-2=18. However, my mind boggles when trying to understand the point of homework asking the child to "show me what you've learned about number bonds up to 20 and what patterns you can see". It's so open ended, it's impossible to tell whether the child has shown you everything they understand about number bonds or the bare minimum, and leaves the child open to drawing you the pattern on their mother's favourite dress, because the question doesn't specify that the patterns seen have to relate to number bonds. In what way does a teacher really benefit from an uncontrolled piece of homework with either boringly predictable results or a completely off-the-wall piece of homework? And in what way does the child benefit? If it really doesn't matter how they interpreted the homework, then what was the point of the homework? To give them something to do if they were bored?

[Herisson]

Well, I don't personally think that homework at this age is of any use at all, bar a bit of reading as often as you can fit it in. So I'm completely in agreement with you there. And I'm pretty sure that 99% of bored children could come up with something to do that they'd enjoy more than that. However, it is true that this homework is probably aiming at something important and good. But they haven't made it fun, they haven't made it something that parents would enjoy doing with their kids and they haven't made it something that children would actually ask to do. So massive homework fail from my marking scheme.

[Mytholmroyd]

Agree with boffinmum - I have to teach students coming out of British schools into university and without any shadow of a doubt I would take a Finnish/Swedish student undergrad or postgrad over a UK one any day - and they don't start formal education until 7 in Finland.

All this stupid homework for primary kids is pointless - I didn't do it and my adult children didn't do it and we all still got into the university of our choice with As at A level. They should be playing and doing other stuff at that age.

My DS is at primary and I refuse to do his homework for him - If schools aren't teaching children everything they need to know during the school day they are significantly disadvantaging the children whose parents can't or won't help them - as others have already mentioned. so if he can't understand it it's tough - it doesn't get done. Won't do him any harm at all in the long run. He will still get into whatever university he wants to go to.

It makes me very cross that parents are made to believe they are failing their kids if they don't do hours of homework every week. I dont know when this became received dogma - I don't think there is any educational research that shows it helps and some countries are considering abolishing it for secondary schools as well.

The lengthy and patronising instructions on how to 'help your child learn' that the school sends home are frankly laughable - they go straight in the bin. My 7 year old DS learns all the time not just through school work - he can can do algebra, scientific notation and geometry - because he likes maths - his 'number bonds' homework is pathetic and only shows his teacher is ticking a box as he has no idea what the kids actually know.

Glad I got that off my chest!

[rabbitstew]

Mytholmroyd - now that is where your ds is going wrong. He should be able to turn his open ended number bonds homework into a showcase for his talents in algebra and geometry.

[NewNameforNewTerm]

Last parental feedback questionnaire we sent out asked questions about our approach to homework. A third of parents thought we've gave too much and a third thought too little and the rest said it was about right. I was astounded at how balanced the percentages were ...

[ancientelm]

How many of the forms did the school 'receive' back?

Not a very high proportion of parents at my DC's school filled them out. Made the results a bit meaningless. Had to read between the lines though...on skim reading alone the results seemed very positive.

[Uppatea]

'The homework myth' by Alfie Kohn is a good read for anyone interested in research on this subject.

[BoffinMum]

I remember when DS1 was in Reception and Y1 one of the mothers took a job as a TA in his class.

We were suddenly bombarded with flash cards, little reading kits, counting kits, homework cards and all sorts. All made out of card and sticky backed plastic, tucked into little tins or brown envelopes. We were required to take these things home, use them to teach our kids to bark at print, not lose any of the tiny pieces, etc.

This TA mother spent ages using them with her own kids, and a few of her cliquey friends did as well. Their kids all got really good at doing the flashcards and so on. The rest of us couldn't be arsed. She got shirty if the rest of us ever began to let on we didn't like using them.

So ten years later, how are they all doing?

There seems to be an inverse relationship between KS1 homework and academic outcomes. For kids in this village, anyway.

There is a different factor at work. The kids who are doing best are the ones with professional mothers, and the ones doing least well are the ones whose mothers left school as soon as they could and stopped studying. The child of the TA is kind of plodding along in the middle.

This tells me that we should spend our time educating mothers rather than faffing about getting them to wave flashcards at their kids and fill in spurious homework sheets. But what do I know? I'm just an educationalist!

[NewNameforNewTerm]

We got just of 75% response.

[NewNameforNewTerm]

From 390 pupils ... I was surprised at the response.

[ancientelm]

BoffinMum Your theory is depressing.

If that were the case we could never escape from our parent's success or lack of it. So much for social mobility...

[Herisson]

It's not just a theory, though, is it? There is a lot of research that says that the biggest factor in a child's educational attainment is the level of education of his or her mother. Obviously that doesn't mean that a bright kid with a less educated/involved mother can't do well for themselves. But it makes it harder for him or her.

[BoffinMum]

Ancient, actually it's not just my theory (although I was amused to see it play out under my nose), it's sociological theory and pretty well established. It's why we got rid of grammar schools etc. and tried to ensure all kids got a similar academic programme via the National Curriculum. Because otherwise people just do end up replicating the paths of their parents more often than we would like.

However the fragmentation of the state sector risks changing that. I am not saying people shouldn't get some choice in how they educate their kids, but if it means undermining the fairly decent level of social equality we were starting to move towards, then I think that's terribly disappointing.

[BoffinMum]

Herrison, it is so incredibly hard for the offspring of the undereducated to change their educational destiny, that it breaks my heart.

[Periwinkle007]

the problem is that if parents don't value education then it is very hard to convince a child that it is WORTH something.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Don't you just scribble a load of made up logs in the reading book the morning the books are due to be changed like most parents?

I'm pretty sure I would just leave the homework to my kids and tell them they just had to fill the blank page with pretty much ANYTHING he found relevant.

For that, ds would draw some fractals and dd would probably do a print of all of her fingers and toes and then glue glitter onto it.

[Herisson]

Herrison, it is so incredibly hard for the offspring of the undereducated to change their educational destiny, that it breaks my heart.

I am completely in agreement and so is my heart. It is a terrible thing and so very hard to change. But this is why I love the homework that my DD's school sets because it is not aimed at ticking a box or practising a skill. It is aimed at getting parents engaged in doing an enjoyable task with their children and hopefully talking about it and having a bit of fun with it. This is what most educated mothers do without even thinking about it, isn't it?

[BoffinMum]

But if the school experience is a good solid one, that levels the playing field. But if you are relying on parents to do the teaching indirectly, via homework, you immediately disadvantage the offspring of families who aren't educated already.

Germany found this - about 10 years ago it did pretty badly in the PISA tests because basically it had developed a system that assumed a non working, German educated mother would be sitting at home waiting to give all kids a hot lunch and then coach their homework all afternoon. However they have an economy predicated on immigration, and the children and grandchildren of these immigrants were doing pretty badly at school. So they fell down on international tests really badly. It gave them quite a shock as they hadn't realised the disparity on their own doorstep.

[Mytholmroyd]

Rabbitstew! I'm not that pushy mum! I don't care enough and at 7 neither does he! If he was my first I might but have a different longer term perspective with three older kids I suppose. One of them didn't read until she was 8 but that didn't bother me either - she's caught up now. Kids develop at different ages.

It worries me that my DSs school seems to be subtly sending out the message that it's the parents fault (not the schools) if the child isn't progressing and frightening them into doing loads of work at home in the belief that it is necessary or their child will fail in life.

[noblegiraffe]

Maths teacher here, agree you are correct and this homework is bollocks. It isn't open ended at all and doesn't invite you to go off on a glorious exploration of negative numbers, it asks you to repeat what you have learned at school.

The teacher clearly expects a neat list of number bonds, in order. This would make the next question, about pattern spotting, make sense.
The child who only remembers a few number bonds or who doesn't write them in order is going to be a bit stuck looking for patterns where none exist. Waste of their time.

If the teacher wants that outcome they should have asked 'list all the number bonds to 20, from 1-20 in order. Describe any patterns in the numbers you can see in your list'

Or, for an open ended task 'list pairs of numbers that add to 20. Can you think of any that aren't between 1 and 20?'

[MerryMarigold]

As a parent (not teacher trained), I think a little bit of homework (20 mins a week) from Y1 is good. It opened my eyes to some of my ds1's difficulties in comprehension of problems, writing, focussing and then be able to address them in parents' evenings. Sadly, these days teachers a. get sidetracked by v big classes and children with considerable learning difficulties and b. have to be so positive all the time that it's hard to actually deal with issues head on.

Homework helped me to deal with the issues.

Agree though, that this homework was rubbish in the way it was set.

[ancientelm]

The assumption that this will happen does not help either though. Assessment is not exactly objective. Aspirations held about children that can affect their attainment can include teacher's aspirations. These may affect achievement even more since it is teachers and schools who provide children with educational opportunities.