3 hours per week-night and 5 hours per day at the weekend?

[WellAyeNever]

A local (state) secondary school has let it be known via social media that this is the amount of study time it expects its year 10 & 11 students to be averaging.

Is this usual? Surely none but a small handful of their students can be doing that much in anything other than the few weeks running up to their exams? I can only assume they are trying to deter any but the most academically-minded families from applying.

My son is in year 10 in Sept. So I'm just marking my place and would be interested what people say

It is like that in private schools. It is very tiring for the children.

My dd (Yr11) doesn't do that much.
My dd is my 3rd child to do GCSEs.
She does a lot more school work than either of her older siblings did at this age.
to be fair, she often stays at school and does a study period or goes to get some help from someone, and will, on many nights to 3 hours, but then, on other nights she will only do one.
Weekends I doubt if she will do more than 3 hours over the whole weekend.
As I say, she's doing far more than either her brother or sister did at that age.
There's no way that is "average" or even usual, IME.

My DD in year 10 does nowhere near that much. She works in class, so the sort of homework that involves finishing what they started in class doesn't take her long. She's also pretty quick at maths, so rarely needs as long as the School thinks they should take. I'd estimate she does 4 hours per week maximum at the moment, and leaves most of it to do on Sunday afternoons.

DS2 (Y11, state school) is doing about half that, so about 10-15 hours per week. He has been consistently putting in those hours every week since Y10 (including in the school holidays), and seems to be doing OK.

What age is that? We were asked to do three hours a night at a NI grammar school decades ago, only from 15/16 up though.

Son in Y10 in private school. Between an hour and a half and two hours a day. Possibly four hours one day at the weekend.

The workload above is not feasible.

The teaching must be very ineffective in that school. That workload would be tedious and crushing.

No, not usual, and if they're expecting it from the start of Y10 then their kids will be burned out by the time the exams roll around.

If the kids are in school 5 hours of lessons plus half hour form time per day, then that's 27.5 hours work at school, plus the work in the evenings would give a 52.5 hour week. Way more than is sustainable.

I used to do a bir more than that (more like 4 hours a day and up to six a day at the weekend) and nearly had a nervous breakdown in Yr 10, moved schools for 6th Form to less pressured environment which saved me (though my health never seems to have recovered totally). So if they want to achieve sever mental health problems they’re going the right way about it.

I tell all my Yr 11s and Yr 13s to ramp it up over the year, rather then risk burn out by trying to maintain a big workload over the whole year. In my view that’s more appropriate for exam term in Year 11 or for Year 13s, probably appropriate most of the time (as they get fewer taught hours).

Not normal as a general rule. I do like the idea of them revising as they go. I always advise that to avoid cramming later but less than 25% listen to that advice.

It's more common in our more conscientious y11s from March until their exams though. Some in the spring of y11 will have built up to quite heavy timetables.

Not usual. My son barely does an hour per day and only a couple of hours per day at weekend and he's in year 11. We've been constantly surprised at just how little homework they get, and have been waiting for it to be ramped up each year, but if anything, he gets less now than in year 7. Some teachers just set homework as finishing off any class work they didn't have time to finish, or revision for tests (for those teachers who do regular "end of topic" tests every few weeks).

A few teachers set a lot of homework, but that seems to be more a matter of poor teaching, i.e. lack of planning meaning they run behind and the kids have to "teach themselves" topics there's no class time for, or lack of discipline meaning work which could have been done in class wasn't due to disruption etc. This isn't subject-specific, it's teacher specific, i.e. he has a crap history teacher at the moment so is basically teaching himself, whereas last year, they had a brilliant history teacher who set virtually no homework as he was properly planned and got through it all in class. Likewise his current Physics teacher is doing no end of topic tests, whereas last year his Physics teacher did a topical test every 2/3 weeks.

DS is in yr 9 & does around 8 or 9 hours homework across the week. The idea that it could go up to 25 hours next year is the stuff of nightmares.

Mine are at a grammar school and don't do, nor are they expected to do anything near that amount.

Maybe an hour a night (usually done sometime between 5 and 7) and a couple of hours for project type work at the weekend.

Way OTT.
My two never did anything like that even at the end of Y11 with GCSEs imminent. Both got A*s in almost every subject.
They did more at A level but still not on that scale.

Ds was doing 2 hours per night plus 3 hours atvthe weekend in Year 8 of private school. Life has been so much better quality since we removed him from that school & he is able to pursue a cream curricular activities without stress.

Dd would just have not applied to a school like that because of her dance commitments (which she hopes to make a career). She chose vocational school in thevend but a normal academic school would have put off a bright Grade 7-9 potential student with a MENSA level IQ with that kind of homework load.

That’s definitely OTT - that’s how much DS did at A level! Like AlexanderHamilton’s daughter, he’s now at a Conservatoire for dance and danced crazy hours out of school, but he aimed to do 20 hours a week outside of lessons at A level, and got AAA. He didn’t get anywhere near that amount at GCSE and still got a spread of As and As. I would take that with a pinch of salt...

My DS does about an hour a night, he’s yr 10, plus an hour or 2 over the weekend. He has just twigged the need to revise before tests, so does a little more before assessments. I think this is enough, he’s stressed enough, any more would not be healthy.

That's madness. Bright children will get A* s anyway without those hours. That amount of work wouldn't bring less academic children up to the highest grades. Even if some do achieve more, for example, entry at higher level uni by doing that amount of work it probably wouldn't be sustainable and they may struggle when they get there. The only thing that level of work does is take out some of the risk of slipping up ie if an A start student does that amount of homework they will know the whole syllabu backwards and will be guaranteed top marks rather than likely to get them - but is it worth it !!

No, that's ridiculous. DD1 did GCSEs last year and did nowhere near that - she got fabulous grades. DDs is in Yr10 and is doing about 90 minutes on a weeknight, 2 hours a day on weekends and is doing extremely well. GCSEs are a marathon, you have to know when to rest and when to train hard. I agree this school does not have confidence in its own teaching.

DD is in Y10 and she does 1.5h a day in the week and a couple of hours total at the weekend. In the holidays she will sometimes do a bit more each weekday but has the weekends entirely off.

I have no intention of pushing her to do more than that, she has other things in her life (scouting, aerial arts, musical theatre, church, forestry work) that mean she has a pretty busy time of it. These are the things she enjoys and they are the things that make her a fulfilled, happy and rounded person.

The school in question is a fairly new school. Maybe they are hoping for outstanding results?

DD is a yr11 hyper overachiever & not putting in that much time right now. In last 6 weeks before her exams start she might avg that.