School hours and homework.

[Year11Question]

My youngest is in year 11. She generally likes school and is doing well but they're really piling on the homework so wanted to know if this amount is normal. When my oldest was in year 11, there wasn't anywhere near as much but that was pre covid and school are saying it's still catching up due to lockdowns.

School is 8.30am til 4pm. She gets home just before 5pm. Then the homework, which school have said should take between 2 and 2.5 hours per day. Sometimes it's only 1.5 hours but sometimes 3 hours.

She's doing it, she's predicted good results, she's a good kid but she's tired and feels like she doesn't have much downtime. On top of this, they're also obviously expected to do separate revision for upcoming mocks which are obviously important so has to be done.

Is this the norm now? It seems such a lot for GCSEs.

Sounds like a normal amount of work for schools which perform well at GCSE. DS1 was expected to do around 2.5-3 hours on school nights and then 4 hours a day at weekends in year 11.

The ‘new’ GCSEs are tough and DC who want to do well need to put in the effort. It will be tough but I’m sure you and your DD will be thankful come results day. It will also be really useful experience when it comes to further education.

My DD is in Y11 and has the same sadly. However she's got learning difficulties and may well fail so the homework is probably going to make the difference between failing and not. The first 3 weeks were really really hard as she's also got dance 12hrs a week but she's in a routine now where she stays after school go get as much of it done as possible, then goes straight to dance and finishes what she can on the train. That way she can get home and slump. Revision is always implemented into homework for us. For eg they already had mini mocks in english maths and science last week, will have proper set of mocks again in Dec, but the hw she got that week was all revision the teacher set. But yes it's taking 1.5-3hrs a night, however she has very slow processing so for us it's more the time rather than amount. Your child sounds very academic though so I wonder if there's another reason they're spending so long. They definitely shouldn't be revising on top. Maybe send an email to their tutor? Are you sure they're going to bed on time and there's nothing else happening?
They get used to it and it'll be over quickly.

That's what we've noticed too. This is our 3rd school and the one that gets the best results by far, and has the most hw for GCSEs. The hw was much less in y10 but I think it does give them a very good idea of just how intense A Levels are and this push is important for their resilience. I think a lot of the GCSE COVID cohort missed out on this academic push that happens in y11 and struggled post 16.

@Mumofteenandtween How do the other kids in your child's sport cope? They can't be the only one struggling to juggle it all. DD did swimming till this year and a lot of them would study at galas. Yes it's a large chunk of the weekend but there's lots of waiting around. DD quit and now does 12hrs of dance a week and it's similar, lots of juggling around at first but they're all in the same boat. Maybe find out from the other parents what they're doing?

It seems to be the difference between an academically high perform school vs a school that gets national average.

Yea, I guess I can expect to see the homework increase

My son did no where this amount - he has just done his GCSEs. So easy to burn out early if there is too much pressure now.

It was about 3/4 hours across the whole week and may be two hours at the weekend. It increased the month or so before final exams.