Homework approaches in secondary school

[Stevie77]

I'm genuinely interested to hear about your child's secondary school approach to homework.

My son started Year 7 in Sept. I also have a Year 11 child in a different school. My son's school uses Seneca and Mathswatch as their main platforms for homework, with other work being on Google Suite, or other platforms. But all on digital platforms.

I've reached out to school (they have a dedicated Yr 7 transition lead) querying it as it seems like the reliance on an automated platforms leads to a lighter-touch approach to homework overall. I can see how it is convenient for teachers not having to mark books, but I am concerned about the lack of written homework, lack of personalised feedback, no teacher-guided assessment or the chance to meaningfully learn from mistakes etc. I also don't think that Seneca alone provides the level of academic challenge or the development of independent study skills needed further down the line. I also don't think it promotes focused work, as the system is really distracting - you get celebratory pop-up memes when you answer correctly, when you type an answer it automatically completes the end of the word for you etc. It seems like a useful for revision and quizzing, but for all homework?

School have so far replied reinforcing (expected, I guess) this school-wide approach, stating that they find Seneca to be a highly effective, interactive online platform that supports learning and revision. They say they also utilise a Seneca Plus model, where while they have a core approach, individual faculties incorporate specific independent learning strategies tailored to their subject area.

So, am I right to be concerned? I can't see how this approach prepares the students for what sitting GCSEs and the level of studying needed in the coming yars - which I am seeing with my older child now. Assuming I am correct in my concerns, where else can I take this next? Governors? Happy to be told I'm wrong!

Homework is always a contentious issue - too much, too little, too hard, too easy. No one wins. Mainly it’a an exercise to recall learning or to check understanding and to support children being disciplined with their own time and helping them with organisational skills which will support them into adulthood. If you need more, yes by all means feedback but where you think this isn’t enough, another parent will think it’s too much. So schools will try and find a happy medium - they cannot please all.

Because pedagogical theory on feedback and moving students on with their learning has changed. Writtwn feedback on work a student did a week ago makes little to no impact on learning. Live marking books in lessons and whole class feedback to fix misconceptions, with dedicated time to reflect and fix up their mistakes, does.

Even in primary, we’re no longer expected to give detailed, personalised feedback for lesson completed in school. Verbal feedback in the moment is most important and known to have most impact.

At my school, homework isn’t usually done in exercise books (we’d never see them again!) and so homework marking and book marking are two separate things. As the demand for book and assessment marking increases, something’s got to give, and that tends to be homework. This is why it has moved online.

In addition, as people have mentioned above, pedagogical theory has evolved and research now tells us that immediate feedback in class is more valuable than feedback on homework completed a few days ago.

Sparx maths is great, we've been using it for years now. It adapts to the needs of the child, so homework is personalised. Videos and instant feedback are much more helpful than completing a worksheet, which could all be wrong without knowing it. Teachers should be regularly checking it to see if there are any areas that need to be covered in class.
I taught 120 students today. We currently have mocks. I have a parents' evening coming up. I am working until midnight everyday as it is, there are simply not enough hours in the day for me to mark homework in top of this!

Year 7 Mum here ....

State secondary...
No online platforms (yet! Maybe next term...)
All written homework...
All graded with feedback...
Loads of it, especially tests.

We seem to be the anomaly here!

For context, our DC are all through at least first degree, (two of them have done masters), so obviously, secondary school, let alone primary, is a while back. For those in schools where most / all - or even some - homework is done online, do you have pupils who don't have use of a suitable device / WiFi outside of school, and if so, how is that issue resolved?

Library and computer room open until 5pm every day.

Same here! London state school, no apps or online homework, all written and all graded with feedback. And loads of it! Didn’t realise that’s unusual.

What a waste of all those teachers' time. They could be marking and grading something meaningful instead.

Im not a teacher so cant comment either way about the best use of their time, just sharing the approach in our school (so far) for OP

Interesting. Unfortunately it sounds like our school uses an inferior system - it doesn’t look to me like it adapts the difficulty level or number of questions. This is a good shout and I’ll bring this up.

No but the teacher setting the mathswatch will set the questions at an appropriate level of difficulty.

Sparx is really expensive. If you are going to badger the school to buy it then what money should be used to pay for it?

I think its ridiculous that nearly all the homework set is via online platforms. The only writing they do is for German.

On my daughters maths app, if you don't understand the question and ask for an explanation, parents have to pay to upgrade because the school only provide the basic app.

Absolutely this

last year I took in a set of class essays I had set for homework. Took me hours to mark them. As I was marking them I realised most of them had used AI to write them. There is no way of me proving this, but I could tell. I realised I was spending hours marking something they hadn’t written, and that had took them each seconds to produce.

I don’t set essays as homework anymore as it is utterly pointless. The only essays I mark are ones they have done in controlled conditions in front of me. Homework is revision which is then tested in class.

I’m a parent, not a teacher, so I am genuinely interested in getting this right. My DC will go to secondary (state) next year.

When did teachers stop having the time to mark homework and why? Is this AI related? What has now improved in your
lessons, given the extra time now put into planning them as PP mentioned?

I get that things will have moved on since I was at school but obviously want to make sure that I help DC as much as possible.

As a science teacher, I would say Seneca is pretty good up to GCSE level - a lot of passing GCSE science is about fact recall, and Seneca has always been pretty good at training this. It is designed using techniques informed by cognitive psychology research and it's specifically designed to train students to remember key facts.

In terms of marking, in science we no longer mark work done outside of the classroom until a level, and even that is increasingly pointless due to AI. There's very little benefit to giving written feedback on answers someone has clearly googled/got AI to generate, where the language used is nothing like the language used on our exam board spec.

We give written and verbal feedback on key assessments in class, students often don't really take written feedback on board so whole class verbal feedback and improvement time is often more effective. Again this is an evidence based approach and I think most schools have been moving in this direction for the last 10 years or so.

Not that we should do things just to please Ofsted but they are very happy with this approach.

Your son's school will have an assessment and feedback policy, you should ask to see this before complaining. It's very likely this will have been formulated in a way that is both evidence based and takes into account your school's specific context.

@mellongoosein my particular example, It wasn’t about not having time, it’s about it being pointless as students have used AI to generate the work. I will spend my time marking work if it is meaningful, but when it is done outside of the classroom, I can’t guarantee that it is their own work. Why should I spend hours marking the work a computer has produced in seconds?

Because schools had more money, so more staff, so each staff member had more time.

Since 2010 there have been massive funding cuts in education. This means fewer staff in schools.

In the same period there have been massive cuts to all other services and schools have been given more duties to address issues around safeguarding and mental health.

In the same period general family poverty has risen.

Plus curriculum changes.

It is a completely different context to when you were at school.

@Stevie77 welcome to the 21st century and look on the bright side - your children are well on their way to becoming digital natives. They will need to be in order to survive the modern world.

My boys are now at uni, with excellent outcomes behind and ahead of them. However, my one regret, especially for DC2, is that I didn't poke my nose into their English homework a bit more, and do what my teachers (and my Dad, when he got the chance) did for me - pedantically correct their SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar). DS2 was shocked to only get a 7 for his Eng Lang GCSE as he was predicted borderline 8/9. We got the paper to check it over and some of his SPAG errors made me cringe. By then it was too late though.

Thank you to everyone that commented and I am sorry that asking this seems to have upset so many. It was not an attack on teachers. It is actually helpful to know that this approach to homework is common to many schools. I understand that some digital systems are useful for some subjects. I'm not sure I can see how they are for other subjects, but perhaps things will change in the future.

I have some reservations about the system used for Maths and will try to find out whether there is differentiation and adaptation within it. To the person who asked me from which budget do I think school should fund a better system - surely this is not my role to identify? Other schools seem to manage to fund better systems, and there is nothing wrong with me expecting the best for my child from their school. And yes, they are supported at home and have involved parents.

The concern is that I am now seeing and experiencing, the quality of education issues raised in the last OFSTED inspection and it does not seem like the school has addressed these well enough since then. Homework is a manifestation of these. Unfortunately, and without outing myself and school, there is no suitable alternative locally.

I checked with my eldest last night what happened with written homework when they were in Yr 7. So I stand corrected on homework being checked. When they completed homework in booklets (these came home, the ones needed were taken to school every day), it was either checked by the students in class with the teacher, or when the teacher collected these booklets to review work periodically.

I have some reservations about the system used for Maths and will try to find out whether there is differentiation and adaptation within it.

The teacher sets the questions at the appropriate level.

Mathswatch is fine. If your child gets stuck there are videos attached to each question that they can watch for help.

Schools do not have money, a lot of schools are in the middle of making redundancies. So while it is not your job to identify where money can be found for more expensive software, you should probably lower your expectations about what is possible.

That's interesting. How do you suppose pupils should do their homework without googling these days? I helped DC do history HW for example and we absolutely had to google some facts as texts given by the school were very basic and definitely not enough for a proper research. We don't have an extensive home library of books on every single subject to refer to them instead of googling. 🤔

You could use AI to mark it though?