Only English / Maths / Science homework in Year 7?

[WhenDoISleep]

DS1 is in year 5 and I have been looking around secondary schools in preparation for decision making this time next year.

I viewed one this morning, and was told that year 7 are only given homework in the core subjects of English / Maths /Science. At the time I accepted it, but now I am wondering how usual this is and the reasoning behind it. We have viewed a number of other schools in the area, and none of them take this approach with homework.

Does anyone have experience of this fairly restricted homework and how it works in practice?

I think my ds now in year 9 would have thought that was great apparently his school are now only giving homework for these subjects for the first part of year 7 . Tbh a lot of the homework set is a waste of time and just leads to arguments - so some to get them into the swing if it is good . I think revision for tests etc plus the time to write longer essays is the most valuable homework ds has been set so far

I would rather good quality homework in only the core subjects, than homework for the sake of it across all subjects.

So for me it depends on the quality of homework set.

Even now ds still rates his days by how much homework he gets . in year 7 it caused a lot of stress ( especially if they are busy outside of school too)

DS2 just started secondary- has homework in wider range of subjects than you mention, but certainly sticking to the key academic marker subjects...Spanish twice a week. You really do have to keep up with a language as you go along. Maths only once a week. Science twice a week- already rote learning the facts my other DS learned for GCSEs last summer. Starting them very early....
He's had geography every week and a history test. But no English yet, or dance, drama, food tech or textiles. Just at a bog standard city secondary school

Yes I agree about keeping up with the language learning . It was all a bit hit and miss in years 7 and 8 ( and of course the students didn’t revise as they went along then had loads to revise for tests !!) this year seems much better with regular mini tests so they keep on top of things !! So maybe language homework is good too .
Quality over quantity every time too !!

Thanks for the views.

I have been digging back through my memories to ye olden days when I was in year 7 and outside of the core subjects and MFL, most of the homework I seem to remember was along the lines of either finishing work from the lesson or very short pieces building on the lesson topic. Other than that I think we were set a couple of projects/extended pieces in the humanities subject, mostly over holidays or longer periods of time.

I do agree with the point about language study outside of class being important. MFL is another strange area at the school I viewed. In the first term of year 7, they do half a term each of 2 languages then choose which of the languages to study for the remaining portion of the year. I have not heard of any other school taking this approach.

Sounds amazing!!!

What is the PURPOSE of homework?
If the curriculum can be covered in class, why is homework needed ?
It just adds to the hours that teachers spend putting meaningless ticks into books.

Online maths homework = great, as it marks itself
but much other stuff is pointless

My school has just started giving regular homework in English, Maths, Science and MFL.

However, student may get longer term tasks in their other subjects.

We’ve had maths, English, geography, RE, history and tech so far!

At least they are offered a language choice. At my son's' school they are assigned Spanish or French depending on which form they are in. Both of mine have been assigned Spanish- and I have a degree... in French...

Talkin We don't get on with online maths in our house.
It requires you to be able to do things in your head and imo doesn't encourage good layout of workings. Plus DD2 gets panicked by too many questions on one page.

I like homework that

• practices/reinforces key skills
• learns a few key facts
• provides prep for next lesson

I don't like homework where the learning gets lost in the task e.g.

• make a castle
• make a cell
• make a (except for tech)

Teentimestwo
Yup, those are valid homework reasons.
And when used properly its excellent
but homework for homework sake is just a pain.

Interesting about online maths - both my two loved it (but then they both did Maths A levels !!)

Interesting thoughts. DS1 gets a wider range of homework - some of it sounds interesting but there have been too many introductory for the sake of it "make a poster" tasks!

I noticed that DS1 reached for a piece of paper when doing his online maths and did his workings on that, then noticed he could have used a calculator!

Some very interesting points and it has made me think about homework a little more. I agree with TeenTimesTwo about the good reasons for homework.

DS1 currently gets 1 piece each of Maths and English plus spellings, per week. The Maths & English pieces are generally reinforcing work that has been completed during the week, very occasionally the English h/w is cross-curricular in finding out a few facts about a forthcoming topic in Science / Geography / History and writing them up. He occasionally gets a longer extended piece which is 'go and learn about x and make a presentation / model / other thing' which I dislike strongly as the scope is usually too broad and he gets lost in the doing rather than actually learning anything. Plus atm he doesn't have the skills needed to find and condense a lot of information, so he needs a lot of help with any task along these lines.

Interesting about the online maths - I also don't like it. Our primary introduced it a couple of years ago, and for nearly a whole year all maths homework was done via the online site. The following year they switched back to more traditional homework, with occasional online pieces. I personally dislike it as a main homework tool as DS1 tends to rush the actual tasks set, and not really pay attention to what he is meant to do, in order to do more exercises to gain more points for certificates. Plus it never seemed to matter if he was getting low scores - there was no feedback from either the program or the teacher, whereas in a book you can see comments from the teacher.

We don’t like online maths here either . Ds hates it and I know that he needs to work on setting out his work so he doesn’t make silly mistakes . Interestingly his teacher this year expects ( and marks) the workings out in their books - but they complete it online . This seems like a good compromise and it’s going better this year

For online Maths homework I am thinking year 9 and upwards - when its individually targeted per student and the teacher gets to see how long they took to get each question right ...
at that level it was very useful