I recently did some teaching at a secondary school where there was no homework being set in most subjects. If there was it was never collected or marked.
I was teaching pupils of age 15 who were supposed to be amongst the highest achieving in the year group. They certainly seemed very bright and keen, but the standard of written work was appalling, bad punctuation, bad grammar, and illegible handwriting. Plus when asked to do some work at home, pupils seemed to have a complete mental block, even when repeatedly asked to do simple tasks they either failed to produce anything or did it incredibly badly. These are students who participate really well in class and seem very keen! I really did think they had been badly let down by the school to be so incapable - they will really struggle to do further/higher education.
I know too much homework can be counterproductive, but for this age group, not to get them in the habit of doing something at home and especially to get their writing up to standard, seems like negligence. Can anyone who is involved in teaching secondary comment as to whether this is normal?