Changes needed how we teach

[BDUSETW]

I watched years ago on a tv documentary about how children were taught in schools in countries like Sweden, Norway, scandinavia in general, and then thought, our schools are so draconian and self destroying of our pupils. They did not have homework, not like our country, our children coming home with many pieces of homework a night, staying up late to finish it, struggling with it, and the same again every day. Then teachers having to mark not just one classes homework, but many daily, piling up on their desk during teaching hours , and pupils needing any help during class are not able to get the one to one assistance because the teacher is too busy marking homework daily during class.
The amount of homework is huge, and our children are tired, been at school all day, then have to come home, eat dinner and start school all over again, sometimes up to and even beyond midnight 2 to 4 or more lots of homework.
Its unbelievable.
In the other countries they do not believe in homework, the countries in scandinavia. They say their work is finished at the end of the day, and the children go home, to then relax, and come back refreshed the next day. The homework is not even necessary, because it is not going to be of any consequence towards their eventual exams, nothing in the homework is at all worth learning, as what matters are the basic literal knowlwege of common sense in their education.
Yes learn maths, but not maths that becomes so far fetched in respect of it never being part of an adults life at all.
I remember my child asking how to work out a maths question, my husband was good at maths at school but could not comprehend those questions as were just so rediculous, so I asked the teacher about it, she quietly said I do not even understand it. So what is going on ...??
Who are the people who create these newfangled rediculous mathematical questions that even the teachers do not get? Also, the schools are not preparing the children for the real world, all they want is top marks from children in drumming in so much information that they will never need in their life after school.
The other countries ie scandinavia do not do homework, they even stick with the same teacher from primary to leaving school, no uniform but sensibly dressed, the teacher is called by his or her christian name, they learn alot outside the class as opposed to always being in the classroom, so they are hands on in reality of life of what is to come, they also eat fresh good lunch at school, so they eat well, are treated as equals with the teacher, and respect is between both the teacher and pupil, no homework!!!
So the children do not have to be so tired the next day coming into school after doing several pieces of homework every night. So if you wonder how do they do in their exams, well they are the highest achieving in results in europe and beyond. That is why our schools are failing, our teachers are stressed, our children having mental issues and labelled this that and the other, its our way of education that fails.!!! Change it.
No more homework , teach what they need to know in life, do workshops in and out of school that teach different hands on subjects, they will understand and enjoy, but will need. Teach French and if want other countries languages but not one or 2 lessons a week and expect them to take those exams and pass! Teach in primary classes, daily, because all French and other European countries do this so then they can speak fluent English by the time they've left school.!! Ours have to struggle to try and put a sentence together in any other language.!

And when she burns out in her late teens or early twenties, of course it'll be down to all that resilience you taught her. 🙄

My kids primary school doesn't even set homework other than in year 6 - just reading. No one is up until midnight doing homework in primary school! As for marking - my experience at secondary is it's mostly online so there is no marking for teachers.

It's hard to take seriously a post about how you think education should be run when you can't spell ridiculous.

What age do these children have ridiculous homework schedules that keep them up until midnight?
How is one teacher teacher a whole class from age 5 up to 18 across all the subjects they learn?
Why French? Most Secondary Schools here have ditched French in favour of Spanish.

Did your child go to school in East Asia? Homework until midnight is not something that my kids ever knew and they went to English schools to age 18. Primary homework was 10/15 mins of reading a night, 5 minutes on a maths worksheet and maybe 15 mins tops of spelling or times table practice over the week. Secondary homework was also light at their comp - a heavy load was an hour a night and that was rare.

Ime most hw right up till about 14, was ‘finish the work we did in class’. I would double check with your child, because if they’re up till midnight doing this (unless started at 11.55), then something is going wrong somewhere.

We used to give out 10 spelling words and a maths worksheet per week as well as reading twice a week

If we'd done a poll, the parents would probably have been split equally between those who thought it was too much, too little and just fine.
You will never please everyone.

No child would be up until midnight doing the homework I saw in multiple schools.

Right, well ok... I got the countries wrong , but this is where I should of said.. Copied from online... "Countries with no- or low-homework policies for some or all primary students include Finland, Estonia, and Poland, which have seen success with their approaches focusing on student well-being and shorter school days. While Finland emphasizes short school days, professional teacher independence, and encourages family time, Estonia has short school days and high learning productivity, and Poland implemented a ban on required homework for grades 1-3 and optional homework for other primary grades in 2024 to reduce stress and increase time for development. "
I also did not mean primary school in uk age children having alot of homework, I meant secondary aged school children. Mine actually came home with alot of homework a week. They went to a secondary school in Witley Surrey. So much homework.!
I also did not like the Milford school in Surrey back in early 2000s remembering teachers were told by the head who was actually awful as I remember, who brought in a ruling that any child even slightly doing something in the classroom, for eg, a child waslooking out of the window when it was snowing!! ( which the teacher decided was a mark against them,) which is put in their book that they take home,ie homework book, to then have their parents see it, so then getting possibly told off again. It was disgusting. Wether anyone believes it or not, makes no difference to me, as I know this happened. I am not here to pull apart the education system, I believe in it working better in schools for both teachers and children. The actual fact teachers did mark homework in the classes when my children were at school happened during lessons. I saw this,. I went in to take something for my child during lessons and the teacher was sat marking book loads of homework on her desk, while several children were standing in a queue waiting to ask a question. She was short tempered with them, as she was having to juggle teaching and marking so much homework. That was the late 1990s in a school in elstead. If I know what I know now, and the stress it all was, I would of considered teaching my children from home. Say what you all wish to say about my comments, its supposedly a free country.. 🤔

There's no homework at the school I teach at or at DS'S school. At DS'S school they don't wear school uniform!

So now we compare schools in Surrey
late 1990s/early 2000s with Finland, Poland and Estonia today? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

By kids had 3 or 4 subjects oer night from year 7, but it rarely took more than a couple of hours often around 1 hour.
As a teacher, i can tell you i would not be allowed to sit at my desk and mark during class time. Certainly teachers should not be teaching something they dont understand!

I have never encountered a teacher sitting in a class of children ignoring them while they mark homework.

Also, it may have been your experience but I don’t think teachers teach stuff they don’t understand. A) that is why you have subject teachers from secondary. B) and primary schools have a subject lead whose job it is to make sure a subject is taught well across the school and if necessary support individual teachers.
I don’t believe that kids have the same teacher right through either. It’s not what (little) I know about schools in Scandinavia. A teacher teaching high school level physics would not then switch to literature or art. Or vice versa.

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Homework isn't banned in Finland. The pupils have homework.

Finland (and the Nordic countries) is quite different from UK so education can't be compared 1:1.

https://www.thehomeeddaily.co.uk/file/191 this is a piece of the documentary I was talking about. These children also speak fluent English, our children in uk do not learn from a young age to speak another language, as in uk its not seen as a real necessity, yet due to to that our children are only taught a few times a week for a lesson in French or German, when they are older, which is harder to learn a language by then, and in exams it is not easy because of this. My child took German at school, but hardly learned enough as only a few lessons in the language, she did a German exchange, and said it was difficult to understand, keep up with the German child while over there, and became isolated in the discussions because of that , when the german child came to stay with is, she could speak fluent English, and it really shows that other European countries teach their children at a young age, at primary school with daily education of learning English than we do in teaching our children another language like French or German. Our children need to learn these languages to help them in their future opportunities of working in foreign countries, and in workplaces they find themselves possibly needing to be. But also if the full documentary was available as I have added the link about, then it would give even more insight into the way education is for those children, much better than here in the UK.

The Nordic countries have a different approach to foreign languages as their mothertongues aren't spoken around the world and English is considered the global lingua fraca.

Finnish schools require pupils learning their mother tongue and the other national language as well as English. Children are taught Finnish, Swedish and English.
Other optional foreign languages are offered in general upper secondary education.

English is widely spoken and a part of the Nordic societies Children are familar with English from a young age from television, music, computer games and travelling. Few British children are exposed to a foreign language in the same way as Nordic children are on a daily basis.

Nordic schools don't teach English on a daily basis.
Danish pupils are taught English for a total of 630 hours from 1st to 9th grade.

I am sure the Scandinavian countries or countries in Northern Europe are wonderful and amazing places to live but regularly I notice people grouping them altogether as the be all and end all of the way the world should live, and the line usually comes from people who drag reports and links from the internet, whether it be the education system or the endless parenting leave they get

But what is it really like from people who have experienced and it what is really the outcome for the children when they leave school, who pays for all this amazing schooling/care/leave? the government for free or the tax payers? what is their crime statistics? how happy are people who live their both children and adults? what is the whole experience like?

The tax payers pay.
Nothing is free not even in the Nordic countries.
As far as I know the UK's crime rate is generally higher than that of the Nordic countries but of course you can work it out using google.
The Nordic countries are known for a high degree of work-life balance but also for high taxes.

I'm in Finland, I have a teenager and a 1st grader in Finnish schools. There is no policy at all on homework in Finland, it is entirely up to the teachers, who have a lot of freedom in how they teach - some don't give much while others give a lot. My 1st grader, 7 years old and just started school, has already had to stay behind after school twice to attend homework club for not doing his homework, or not doing it to the required standard. My teenager is in upper school and gets plenty of homework and has an exam (sometimes more than one exam) most weeks that she needs to study for in the evenings. My 7 year old just had his first exam yesterday, which he was supposed to study for.

In the other documentary, the girl that was speaking fluent English is clearly a bilingual child, with an English speaking parent, as they do not speak English fluently at that age here unless they have English speaking parents or have a special interest in the language. By the end of comprehensive (15/16) they can speak it well (most of them, some never learn well) but not in primary school except for the odd child. They don't get taught English (or Swedish or any other language) daily, 1st grade is just an hour a week, later increases to 2 or 3 hours, but they watch TV which isn't dubbed here (except for very little children) so they are exposed to English a lot, and Finnglish is very common with the youth (cracks me up when I hear them talking on the train, suddenly coming out with English phrases spoken in either a Rally English accent or an American accent)

School days are short, 21 hours a week in 1st grade but increases and my 14 year old has 7 hour days some days of the week, and some days even longer if she stays for tutoring for an exam (her maths teacher always gives tutoring sessions before exams for anyone who wants some extra help studying)

Dd in ks2 primary has a few weekly spellings, reads each day and brings home a maths game. Not much at all.

Taxes pay for it all - in Finland education, by law, has to be entirely free for the children, which means parents cannot be asked to pay for books and materials or lunches or anything like that, only PE equipment (ice skates and skis) but even then schools will have loaners for those children who can't afford them.

Apparently top the happiest country in the world league every year, though its more contentness than happiness. Crime isn't too bad but unemployment is terrible right now but there's a whole lot of contributing factors to that, mostly from outside the country (covid, Russia, imports lowering due to other countries having economic downswings, Trump and his tariffs, limits on logging etc.) but I wouldn't move back to the UK if you paid me - life is far better here despite the problems.

As a primary school teacher, my 30 pupils work in 4 or 5 books a day. That's a lot of marking!

How much exactly do primary school children write in a day? How old are these children. When mine were at primary, they might have worked across 4/5 books in a day but there weren't necessarily 4/5 completed pieces of work.

DD teaches GCSE and doesn't find marking onerous. DS can have 15 3000 word assignments to turn around quickly which require significant feedback.

MIL used to complain about marking when she taught ten year olds. She just didn't get on with it and prevaricated about what comments to write. She didn't seem to have a stock of them.

Teachers don't mark homework at the expense of teaching children 🤣

Maybe if you had done your homework then your spelling would be better...

Im thinking about dd's schools where in a day it could be:

Maths
Times tables
MOT- which is like extra maths on areas they might be finding tricky.
English
Guided reading
Spellings
Then probably two topic subjects per afternoon.

They write more than you'd think at primary and probably make a lot of errors needing guidance in SPaG.

Largely maths and English then . Times tables can't be more than 12 ticks x 30. Mine used to swap books and they marked each other's