Homework not always being marked- aibu?

[twoandahalftimesthree]

Dd is in yr6 and we always make sure she does her homework properly and to the best of her ability. The homework that she did over half term however, came back this week unmarked. Dd was annoyed as she had put a lot of effort in and doesn't know how she has done.
This happened at Christmas too. The last week of term they had to do a 6 page project (with contents page and references) to be handed in by the end of term and also do a presentation to the class on their project. I thought it was a great homework but in the last week of term before Xmas it was a massive challenge to get it done (both dh and I work in retail so that time of year is a total nightmare and dc inevitably end up pushed from pillar to post that week!) dd wanted to do hers on Xmas food which was a great idea but added the challenge of actually cooking something too. So, she stayed up very late one night and made enough gingerbread to give out to the whole class as part of her presentation and also handed in (what I thought) was a really good project which she'd worked very hard on. But, the teacher has never given them the projects back, nor commented on their presentations. So absolutely no feedback at all.
I understand that teachers are very busy but surely they should only set homework that they are prepared to mark? (At the risk of a flaming I will say the teacher had her 2 weeks off over Xmas and has no kids so surely could have found the time? Dh and I worked all over Xmas and had the dc off school, ds has sn so we can't access any childcare but we muddled through it)
It's definitely de motivating dd and undermining us when we tell her how important it is to do her best. If it doesn't get marked it seems to her that there's not much point in doing the work.

You are not being unreasonable.

My child's Y2 teacher ignored a far shorter piece of creative homework, which also required input from the parents. My child very excited, put in a lot of effort, but teacher gave back unmarked. The children were really disappointed and the parents were furious and there was a small riot in the playground! A group met the teacher to discuss. In this particular case, it was part of a wider pattern of the teacher's behaviour, and very soon after he was 'moved on'.

I would raise with teacher, and explain that it's demotivating, and ask when they're coming back. Nicely, in case the teacher is having a crisis at home, or has lost them (though even then the children deserve some kind of explanation).

Agree, YANBU about the homework generally, but the comments about the teacher's Christmas holiday/fmaily commitments are unnecessary and unreasonable.

I knew I was going to get slammed about the holiday comment, it's just that both dh and I had major work pressures all month yet we made a real effort to support dd with the homework the teacher set so it feels like a bit of a let down that she hasn't found time to mark it in almost three months. There was no need to set it if she didn't want to mark it.
I also wonder about her marking when she does do it. Its usually just a few corrections to punctuation and awarding a house point or two. No real comment about what parts were good and how dd could improve further- is this usual or should there be a bit more constructive feedback?

Most teachers hate setting homework but have to because it's school policy! General day to day marking takes a couple of hours a day, homework is extra on top of that!! ( Having said that, if it was set, it should be marked!)
Oh,and the holiday comment was completely uncalled for, I have grown up children but , when not planning for the next term during the holidays, I care for my elderly parents. Not exactly sitting around with my feet up either!

Although, spaniel, there's nothing wrong with sitting around with your feet up either!

Chance would be a fine thing! I'm multi-tasking at the moment, mark 3 extended essays and then I'm allowed 5 minutes on here! Should be finished by lunchtime

I'm still in bed! Planning for this week is scheduled for this afternoon.
What happened to the "Save Our Sundays" campaign?

Never happened! Teaching year 6 this time of the year is not a good idea, they write so much!!
I'm off, I've overdone my 5 minutes!! ( Planning this afternoon too, don't you just love Sundays!)

dd does like to write a lot so I can imagine yr 6 marking takes a long time which is why I thought it so bizzare for her teacher to specifically request 6 pages for this project and for the children to hand it in on the last day of term, thus guaranteeing herself 180 pages of marking for the xmas hols! I'm not that surprised she didn't do it over xmas but it was no one's idea but her own- she could have sent home a quick printed out comprehension work sheet like usual.

YANBU. DD also worked really hard on a piece of creative writing over the holidays which has not been marked or returned. I really think if you can't mark it you shouldn't set it.

In your case it sounds like a very extensive piece of work and it's not right to leave anyone without feedback. I wouldn't do that to the adults who work for me and who get paid to do so, let alone children.

So you and your Dh had major work pressures but still had time to support your ONE child, a teacher has to mark 30 kids worth of work which if each kid produces 4 a4 sheets of writing is 120 pages to read spell check and grade. God forbid a teacher having a few days rest over Christmas.
there is a limit to the hours in a day you know

"but it was no one's idea but her own-"

Possibly!

*somewheresomehow" the teacher's job is to manage the work of 30 kids. It's not comparable to a parent's job.

Absolutely teachers should have a rest like everyone else. But they should also not set projects which demand some of the home time of students (and parents) and then not do anything with them.

I used up quite a lot of our half term holiday crawling through a project with my 5 year old who is simply too young to be expected to write stuff about polar exploration on his own. It has not been marked, returned, remarked upon, anything. Ditto the Christmas project. I don't think that's ok.

Sounds a bit like Mum needs to know if she got a merit for her project rather than the child ;)

Runs to take cover.

I do agree though that some sort of feed back should be given for any work asked for and submitted.

Somewhere somehow- the teacher specified 6 pages per child so ended up with 180 pages of marking. And no, I don't know why she set herself up for it either!

I think I would have had to speak to the teacher by now. How about have a word and see what they say?

Regardless of what the teacher was up to over the holiday (and I come from a teaching family) YADNBU to object to unmarked homework. I have lost count of the number of times I have made sure homework got done, through tantrums and tears, only for it not to be marked, or for the kids to forget to hand it in and no mention ever to be made of it. It teaches the kids that they don't need to bother, and it leaves them without feedback on the work they've done. It makes my blood boil because our family time ends up strained for no reason at all. And yet I can't bring myself to tell them not to do it, especially at secondary level, where it continues to happen.

I totally agree with the frustration and get that your child just wants to understand whether they did well or not.

But...

I fear homework is something of a political football ever since the Sutton Trust & Education Endowment Trust (bless their cotton socks) reported that doing homework in primary was of little or no benefit. source: educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/toolkit/Teaching_and_Learning_Toolkit_%28Spring_2013%29.pdf - scroll down to homework on first table - in primary believed to only add 1 month's benefit.

Now there are several problems with this conclusion - but mostly it's based on no evluation of the quality of the homework being sent home.

I seriously doubt any teacher would say reading for 15 minutes + a night in YearR/ KS1 is of little or no benefit - but this study could be interpretted as such.

So a dose of common sense is rather needed here folks.

Moreover Sarah Montague (of Radio 4's Today Programme) did an amazing series of interviews with educators including John Hattie (Professor of Education at Melbourne who is behind the metadata analyses which support things like the Sutton Trust/ EEF tool kit) - have a listen to the interview and his thoughts on homework: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dmxwl

I personally have no problem with practice - for sport/ music/ art/ dance and education. I think that getting secure at reading and maths takes practice - repeating to build confidence/ fluency, challenge to apply skills in new ways and design elements (so encouraging imagination/ artistic skills/ etc....).

I fear most homework (and there wasn't much) St. Mediocre sent home didn't really fulfill a lot except repetition. We weathered 6.5 years of only green ticks on homework with no feedback for DD1 - the 0.5 period was in the run-up to a well announced OFSTED inspection - suddenly feedback was effusive.

Having been there and done that I think schools have a few issues:

1. tendency to set the same homework for all pupils (resulting in a poor fit for some ability groups - e.g. too hard for struggling pupils and too easy for highly able pupils)

2. tendency to set projects or research topics - which tend to necessitate parental & computer involvement. Not all parents enjoy that (and frankly many are surprised they have to be so invovled, as their parents weren't in the slightest when they were kids). Not all children have access to a computer.

3. tendency to avoid 'flipped' learning. There are some fantastic and short educational videos out there - many of which could be accessed by a smart phone (which most people do have access to). So in theory you could suggest children watch a clip explaining how fractions work or what pi (sorry no symbol) actually is (the ratio of the diameter of the circle to the circumference - 3 and a bit). Learn about this at home- and then apply it in class and solve a few problems?

4. tendency to poorly adopt new technologies - my maths/ bug club/ etc... all have brilliant games/ activities that more than qualify as homework/ can be tracked by the schools (proof the work is being done & information on achievement). Schools should be embracing this more - and again avoiding assigning the same exact piece of work to all the children - this can be differentiated. If a kid already knows how to add fractions - go to the next step for them. One real bug-a-bear is that often the homework or book (bug club) isn't uploaded. Schools should be making it a priority that staff can use these new technologies comfortably - not roll them out with little or no training.

The beauty of something like my maths or bug club is feedback to the pupil is instantaneous (know they got it wrong then and there) (the drawback of these programmes of course is there is no explanation to the child about what they got wrong - they just go away and try again).

I suspect that time to design a differentiated/ structured and entertaining homework policy for any topic (but let's just take maths) is extremely limited. But schools are teaching virtually the same skills year on year and subject Lead/ Heads are paid more for being subject Head/ Lead - so why doesn't that include leading on homework design for that subject?

So in primary where the context really is teaching the same thing (with minor changes) year on year, my question remains why not adopt something for homework that allows children to be challenged/ entertained whilst providing opportunity at practice which can be rolled out year after year. Sure one year you may not need to spend so much time on x3 (they all got that lickity split) - but you may be grateful of x7 resources or inverse multiplication fact resources, etc... or you may have a year where they don't get x3 or tripling and need extra work/ games/ ideas to improve. Again shouldn't those resources be in place already? You've been teaching x3 at that school for 100+ years.

At core, my experience has been homeworks are poorly explained, poorly thought out, often poorly photocopied worksheets out of Heinemann maths workbooks and rarely differentiated. Our primary was particularly problematic in that teachers did not share their resources - so a new teacher for that year had to reinvent the wheel (which strikes me as an enormous waste of time). I totally accept that isn't everywhere - but if educators wonder why homework in primary only adds 1 months' improvement - I suspect these are some of the reasons.

My feeling is that the teacher should have ensured that the children understood the way in which feedback would be given whether that was via 'marking', peer feedback or was not going to be assessed but simply shared with the rest of the class.

John Hattie, as mentioned by PastSellByDate is big on the impact of feedback, not necessarily marking. I would agree that it is unreasonable of a teacher to set lots of homework if there was never any intention of quality feedback of some sort being given but I don't see that everything has to be marked by the teacher.

Homework is something that I am not a particular fan of beyond reading, rehearsal of things such as time telling, multiplication facts, bus timetable reading and other activities that don't eat into playing time. If I am teaching at a school where homework is required (more often than not this is in response to parents' requests rather than because the school staff believe it helps children progress), I tend to go for open-ended tasks along the lines of, 'produce something to do with the Vikings' which are set at the start of a school term and handed in after the next half-term holiday i.e. children have 6+ weeks in which to do something. From the outset I make it very clear to children and parents that whatever is produced will be shared with, and assessed by, the children. There will be no written feedback from me but there will be lots of post-it note feedback from peers. I also make it clear that anything goes, that I will provide card, pens, glue, googly eyes etc. if needed and that children who want to do something but don't have the space/support to do so at home are welcome to make use of the classroom whilst I'm marking 60 books every lunchtime.

OP, before the Easter holiday happens speak to the teacher and ask about the style of feedback your DD can expect to receive when homework is handed in. At least that way, you can more easily manage your/her expectations or just not bother to do the work if homework is being set for no clear reason.