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!

Actually OP did say all homework in their initial post.

She doesn’t say what the issue is with homework set on Google Suite merely that it’s a digital platform. She specified a particular issue with self-marking homework.

Ok, so addressing the how do you teach them how to study and revise for gcse:

firstly, this is different for different subjects.

some subjects - maths, MFL, science, benefit massively from small amounts of practice each day. Other subjects such as English literature or history are more essay type subjects and students need to learn how to structure and write essays. Art and DT and dance are different again.

so giving my subject, maths as an example:

we used maths watch and dr frost maths for online homework in year 7 8 and 9. Then in year 10 they were used to the platform. We did end of topic tests in year 10 and students when they were given tests back were told which specific skills they had done badly on (eg this test was on area, you could find the area of a square and a rectangle but not triangles. Go watch mathswatch video 23 on triangles and do the questions).
so by year 11 they are used to the process. Their mocks are given back with personalised lists of topics to watch the maths watch videos on and do the questions.

this sort of process also works in science - Seneca and tassomai help review specific topics that are personalised for the student based on topic tests and then mocks. MFL also similar - less online stuff but you can use this process to eg know that you need to review past tense or vocab to do with holidays or whatever.

with the more essay based subjects, it’s more about building a structure for the students to use (the classic is PEE for English with is point, evidence, explanation) but also about simply getting knowledge in. Many students are simply not capable of reading stuff like Shakespeare and understanding it and use cliff’s notes and mr Bruff videos to basically learn the themes in their book/play and memorise essays.

My son did this for English. He had Frankenstein and really didn’t understand it. We got a tutor and he worked his way through the six or seven most common essays set on Frankenstein and she helped him improve them and then he memorised them for the exam. He got a 5.

These are all complex questions that would require a different debate on the prospects of workplace in general. I have never worked for big 4 or IB or other highly demanding environments but I haven't seen much balance even in IT business. Medicine is another example of a workplace that requires tremendous stamina. So where exactly are those jobs and employers that provide amazing balance?

I'd say it's good to be prepared for the real world that is not built with the sole purpose of holding you gently, and it's good to develop stamina early. Work ethic is obviously invaluable in the world where hardly anyone has it and can't be bothered with anything. I'm Gen X though, we are usually considered workhorses :)

I think it's still unclear how the nature of work is going to change and whether the majority of people will be living on universal income being unemployable in the emerging AI economy. It's hard to predict which skills will be valuable but I think stamina and work ethic wouldn't harm even if not needed.

Textbooks:

GCSEs have been revised a few times
textbooks are very, very, expensive
mathswatch is much cheaper and available on every device

certainly in maths most teachers try to get the kids to write down at least a few examples but it’s not always possible.
the online systems are basically an alternative to textbooks. That’s why schools invest time in teaching the kids to use them.

we did used to make each year 11 kid buy a revision workbook (and school paid for the pp kids) which had some explanations in it. But ultimately we didn’t have the money.

But that's sort of my point, getting tutors means there has been a gap in the school's teaching.
Your post doesn't really address my comment about how to prep kids for the independebt study and revision needed for GCSEs. It looks like you're saying that this isn't addresses until Yr 10?
My point is that by giving regular homework + feedback from Yr 7 then kids are in the routine + developing those skills so that it isn't a big effort in Yrs 10 + 11.

@Octavia64 so what you are saying is that kids who want to revise use the videos of these online platforms? Doesn't it take much longer to look something up in a video than on paper?
I understand that books are expensive but I don't like these methods. I think I will continue to buy my kids the study guides, revision guides and whatever various publishers like CGP, Collins etc call their books, and encourage my children to look them up when revising.

Re. suicide, the rate is actually lower in Asian groups https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/mentalhealth/articles/riskfactorsforsuicideinchildrenandyoungpeopleinengland/2025-02-27

For young adults the difference is even more prominent, 13.5 in White vs 4.2 in Chinese.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthinequalities/bulletins/sociodemographicinequalitiesinsuicidesinenglandandwales/2011to2021

There are more complex factors at play though than just parental and school pressure.

Ok.

so imagine gcse maths. The vast majority of students take it. A student who gets a 1 at gcse maths (or a G in old money) is working at around age 6 in maths.

a child who gets a 9 at gcse maths is doing very well.

it just isn’t possible to write a textbook that covers all these students.

most of the students who get a grade 1 are autistic or have learning difficulties. But they often still want to revise and learn and improve. They are often working on basic calculations and word problems - eg Fred has 20 pounds he goes to the store and spends -5 pounds how much does he have left.

the students who are getting grade 9 were able to do that stuff back in infants and don’t need to practice it anymore.

these days the publishers split the books up massively - so eg one publisher has the following books:
aiming for grade 9
aiming for grade 7
aiming for grade 5
aiming for grade 3
foundation.

the online sites enable this to be even more detailed.

yes, you can buy “textbooks” for gcse. But in maths at a minimum they’ll be split foundation/higher.

At my sons school he is year 7 also, they use Seneca for homework apart from maths which is set on Sparx. I like the online Maths as they have to answer correctly to complete the home work also the vidoes are handy if they are stuck. This is great for my son otherwise he would literally guess every question just to get it done. Seneca sends me notifications too so I can also see what he's up to with his home work. Most of the time I think he does just guess to get it done but I always encourage him to go back through and try to bump his score % to 80 or higher. Homework is not compulsory for yr7 at my sons school but I encourage it to get him in practise for later years. They do often get positives points for completing it too. That being said my friends daughter who is in yr10 uses Google to do her homework she copy's the question and it tells her the answer, obviously this is the down side to the online platforms. I don't feel my son needs feed back for every piece of homework he's set, teachers have enough to do.

@Ubertomusic You misunderstand. I said I don't envy certain Asian societies. I wasn't referring to Asian communities in the UK but to Asian countries. The level of pressure in some of those societies is not healthy

@Octavia64 yes, the books will be split between foundation and higher. This doesn't mean it's not possible to create textbooks. As you say, kind of contradicting yourself, such textbooks do exist
Not does it mean that looking up a video us better than revising on a book

The quality of maths textbooks is absolutely terrible, we stopped buying them because they were really bad and have paid subscriptions to websites that contain worksheets we can use in lessons. Don’t waste your money on textbooks for maths.

Revision guides are great for revision, they are not textbooks. For maths you would need to also buy (if CGP) a workbook as the revision guide has the revision notes but not very many questions to practice.

Some kids really love revision guides for maths revision. Some never even open them because they prefer corbettmaths or mathsgenie videos and worksheets. Some hate Corbettmaths and would rather do mathswatch with the self-marking. Some do a bit of everything. We encourage them to find something that works for them for revision. But regular homework will be mathswatch.

I see but we were discussing top schools here and the amount of homework they set. In London many of those schools have predominantly Asian and S Asian intake, apparently they don't mind the pressure and hard work.

That's probably why China and India are on the rise whilst the West is in decline. Hard work pays :)

@Octavia64 My issue is that what you describe can probably work well for those kids who take foundation maths and then don't go on to study subjects which require you to study lots of material.

However, for those who do, the system you describe doesn't prepare them well.

I have a few academics in my circle of friends and they all complain about this. Students are not used to the concept of putting their ass on a chair, with no distraction, and reading a long text for 2 hours straight.

I am not an academic, but I see it with young graduates at work.
If you tell them that a new piece of regulation affecting our work has become effective, and that they need to read a 50-page summary (not the whole regulation, but a summary which lawyers and consultants prepared for clients), their jaw drops; a few ask if there isn't an online training.
If you tell them that sometimes the job requires going with a fine comb over a 50-page contract setting out all the terms and conditions to agree with a client, similar reaction.

And no, AI cannot do these for them now. Maybe in 10 years, but certainly not now.

Erm, I was a maths teacher for over two decades.

for the last five years I was involved in supporting maths departments in other schools to improve their practice.

I’m describing what schools do (or did, I’ve been out a couple of years).

maths, and science, at all levels is taught and learnt like this. My DD has just finished a degree in physics at Newcastle and major portions of her modules were through online systems.

this style of teaching and learning really isn’t just for foundation gcse students.

on a personal level, I have undergraduate degrees in both economics and maths. For the economics one, yes I needed to read a lot. For the maths one, less so. Maths is much more terse than English and significantly more visual.

very few people can read long documents (and yes fifty pages is quite long) and process them effectively. In practice as research has demonstrated this is a very knowledge dependent task.

if you don’t agree maybe look at this (35 pages) and see how long it takes you to work out what it means?

https://arxiv.org/pdf/math.RT/9807160

I don’t think hwk for my subject has any benefit at KS3 however regular practice of exam style questions at KS4 is very valuable. Revision is also important. I think hwk at KS3 is about preparing them for the individual study required in years 10 and 11.
I know I am out of step with modern teaching styles because I regularly mark books and provide written feedback. I am often told that studies show this is pointless but I personally find it very effective. This is definitely more useful for classwork though as homework tend to be amazing or rubbish with nothing in between.

maths, and science, at all levels is taught and learnt like this.

Not necessarily. DC has been doing all maths work on paper only, they use Inspire and STP books. HW is set after every lesson and gets marked but without extended feedback. Maths is pretty much straightforward for marking and easy to understand what's wrong without long feedback, unlike essays.

It's much better for kids doing maths to have the answers immediately which they can check as they go along to see if they are doing it correctly or not. Otherwise they can do a whole load of incorrect work, hand it in, wait for it to be marked, get it back a few days later and then find that it was rubbish. Then they have to try to fix it.

Better that they get instant feedback, either through an online system, or through having the answers available to the work they're doing (e.g. corbettmaths worksheets) and where they are expected to check the answers themselves as they do the work. This is the most effective way of practising maths.

They should also have some way of getting immediate extra help if their answer is incorrect, e.g. fully worked solutions or a video.

@Octavia64 Terence Tao is a Fields medallist (a bit like the Nobel prize for mathematicians). I am honestly unsure what you think that sharing the preprint of a mathematics publication by one of the planet's leading mathematicians is meant to prove. Asking someone, who for all you know is a layperson, to "see what they think" of the scientific publication of one of the world's leading experts in their field is either very, very silly or very, very bad faith!

maths, and science, at all levels is taught and learnt like this.

not exactly true. The approach you mention is common in the UK and is more common in the UK than elsewhere, but it's not the only one.

When I asked my circle of friends and acquaintances, a few in private schools told me they used the STP Mathematics books by Oxford University Press (this was a few years ago).

The person who used to run the Curriculum and Qualification Agency wrote a policy paper "why textbooks count" https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/insights/why-do-students-still-need-textbooks/
where he points to the many countries with good results, from Finland to Singapore, still using textbooks.

very few people can read long documents (and yes fifty pages is quite long) and process them effectively.

And that's wrong. And no, please don't conflate complex maths publications in the mix.

That's why no one reads any more.
That's why university professors in the US complain that their students are unable / unwilling to read books https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/

Maybe at the next recruiting round I should ask graduates if they can read a 50-page document in one morning.

PS I would have fewer objections if students who have a doubt and want to revise had clear access to some material somewhere. It may be better elsewhere, but at my kids' school it isn't like this. There is no textbook. No handout. Onlline videos don't always cover what you need, and finding the right time in a longer video is not the same as looking at the picture on page 43

ok.

your friends and acquaintances beat research and experience.

@Octavia64 your friends and acquaintances beat research and experience.

Are you for real? This is such a strawman I am left speechless. That it comes from someone who studied maths is disheartening. Was it the lack of textbooks which prevents you from spotting logical fallacies? :)

I asked you what was the point of sharing the preprint of a mathematics paper by one of the world's leading mathematicians. You did not answer.

I shared a policy paper, by someone involved in education policy, which points to the examples of countries which have textbooks and do very well, and also points to some research on the benefits of textbooks.

You reply with the strawman
your friends and acquaintances beat research and experience

Could you please be so kind as to share this "research" you imply on why textbooks wouldn't be necessary?
At most you could say that opinions vary and there is no consensus.

But you seemed to imply that research showed a consensus supporting your view. No.

There is no textbook. No handout. Onlline videos don't always cover what you need, and finding the right time in a longer video is not the same as looking at the picture on page 43

Funny that you think that a video won't have the explanation that you need, but a textbook will. I've used textbooks to teach, I have no objections to textbooks. But there hasn't been a good GCSE maths textbook written since about 2000.

On the other hand, online videos for maths are getting better and more numerous all the time. E.g. https://corbettmaths.com/contents/ or https://www.mathsgenie.co.uk/gcse.php are completely free, before you even get to paid-for stuff.

@noblegiraffe Let me rephrase. It should go without saying that good videos can exist, and that some video material can be better than some textbooks.
But my experience has been that finding what we needed was more time consuming with videos than with textbooks, and quality left much to be desired.

Someone else mentioned that textbooks are irrelevant if students take notes. I disagree, because the odds of students taking the wrong notes are not low.

I am sceptical of those who say that decent textbooks are so rare, or that no single textbook might possibly cater to the uber-specific needs of their class. Last I checked, fractions in 2025 London don't work too differently from how they worked in India 200 years ago

I am sceptical of those who say that decent textbooks are so rare

Because of your extensive experience? Or because you reckon there are good textbooks?

I've told you that there were good maths textbooks written in about 2000. However, while you could dip in and out of them today, they're not set up for the current GCSE, they are still split into Foundation, Intermediate and Higher, they were written when there was maths coursework, they contain stuff that isn't in the current GCSE and they don't contain stuff that is.