To be pleasantly surprised by how little homework my DS brings home

[Brandybucks]

For various reasons we followed a more Scandinavian approach to education with our son so he was home educated until 7 and joined year 3 this academic year.

Ive been really surprised (and frankly delighted) about how little homework he is given. He has weekly spellings, a bit of timetables and apart from a very occasional other piece of work that’s it. I went to a private school and remember at times having 3-4 subjects per night (definitely worse in secondary but not great in primary). Is it common to have so little homework these days? Previously I had heard many parents bemoaning how much homework they had to assist with and I had psyched myself up for helping a lot more than I have actually needed to. I’m really pleased because I think homework in primary school isn’t great for pupils (or teachers frankly) and I love that my son still has plenty of evening time to read/watch tv/generally relax.

Yeah Sats when I was in primary school were really low-key, no stress, but nowadays I hear that so much of year 6 seems to be about Sats.
That big exam pressure is avoidable here though, if you're not academic you don't have to go down the matriculation route and so you don't have high pressure exams at all.

@Mumoftwoinprimary I remember my DD doing "pencil work" (as her teacher called it) in nursery the year before moving to preschool, though that was at 5 years old. My son is in nursery now and the 5/6 year olds are starting the preparatory work for preschool now, something about reading skills so I think that's starting earlier than it did when DD was in nursery. Actually, come to think of it, he gets 'homework' from nursery too! If he has a day off because of illness or whatever they've asked me to get him to do his 15 minutes on the language app (extra support he gets as a half-foreign child)

Same I’m really pleased how little my kids have too:

year 3: half-termly grid where you have to do at least one piece from each column (so 5 pieces across a half term). Spellings weekly and daily reading but these aren’t really policed.

reception: daily reading, some sheets which are never followed up on (we don’t do them generally), a box of letter sounds and tricky words.