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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

How much homework is too much?

21 replies

chardom · 03/02/2010 20:59

My DS is in Yr7 and is starting to feel a bit down as he gets 12 pieces of homework per week, each piece takes 20-30 minutes to do and as he doesn't get home from school till 6pm approximately every night he feels he has 'no life'! I was wondering how much homework other Yr7's are getting. By the way, his friend who attends a different school only gets 2 pieces a week!!

OP posts:

RatherBeOnThePiste · 03/02/2010 21:54

in Year 7 our DD had three pieces a night in theory so around 1.5 hrs, but it never really felt like that. She was also doing team matches and stuff and getting home late too.

bellavita · 03/02/2010 22:01

DS1 is now in Yr8 but last year he was getting about the same amount of homework as your DS (although he gets home at 4.10pm)

seimum · 03/02/2010 22:10

My DS was meant to get about 8-10 pieces of work per week in yr 7. However, some of it was finishing things not done in class, so he often had less homework if he had finished the classwork. Probably approx 6-8 items/week.
Is your DS in a private school? (just guessing because of the late home time)
In which case I understand the pupils get more homework than the average.

KatieMcFlightly · 03/02/2010 22:11

why is he so late home. I teach secondary adn have a 20 minute drive plus 2 kids to pick up and I'm home for 4

cat64 · 03/02/2010 22:24

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snorkie · 03/02/2010 22:41

Curiously ds always had a fair few homeworks but dd at the same school & with the same teachers rarely has any (or so she claims). I reckon the amount of homework that comes home is more dependant on the diligence of the child than of school policy or what teachers actually set.

seimum · 03/02/2010 22:45

We have had to institute a daily routine of quizzing DS as to why he has not been set homework for each lesson - after discovering that only about 50% of the homework set was getting written down in the homework diary.

I think some still gets done on the bus/in the previous lesson etc, despite our best efforts.

bruffin · 04/02/2010 07:39

We found in YR7 for DS homework took over our lives
DD is now in yr7 and it seems a lot easier but she just gets on with it with so we don't even see it.

roisin · 04/02/2010 15:58

Getting home at 6pm sounds really late. Is that a long train journey or something?

Is there any possibility of him getting himself organised to try and do at least one piece each lunchtime?

ds1 never had anything like this much though, but he tended to have much longer homeworks/projects, but less often.

mebaasmum · 04/02/2010 16:55

Ds1 started year7 with 1x 30 min homework per night finished the year with 2x30. now year 8 2-3 X 30 mins per night. Not everything takes 30 mins though

Original poster

chardom · 04/02/2010 22:35

My DS is not home till 6pm because they have 3 morning lessons then lunch and after lunch have 1 and 1/2 hours of sport till 3.30pm when they start classes again and have lessons 4 & 5 till 5.30pm. By the time he gets his stuff together and gets out to the car park and we have driven home which takes us 20 minutes at that time of day it is 6pm!

OP posts:

cat64 · 05/02/2010 12:37

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Original poster

chardom · 05/02/2010 18:57

cat 64, you have no idea why my DS attends his school so please don't presume you do. It's never helpful, whatever the situation to patronise other people and their situation.

OP posts:

cat64 · 05/02/2010 23:46

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roisin · 06/02/2010 09:47

Do the homeworks have to be always in the next day? With ds1 we encouraged him to batch his homeworks, so he would do a serious/heavy stint a couple of nights a week and on Saturday mornings, and then he could enjoy completely 'free time' on Sundays and the other evenings.

Now he actually seems to prefer to do a bit every night. Especially with quick/short homeworks, he just gets on and gets them completed the first night that he gets them.

cory · 06/02/2010 11:09

Dd was getting larger projects in Yr 7, so probably spending a similar amount of time on them, but able to do them in big batches at the weekend.

The long schoolday you describe would not be the experience of those of us who have children at state schools, though the amount of homework is probably roughly similar. It doesn't seem that he's actually doing more school work than most others; it's the extra sport that makes the difference. Basically, ours don't get the 1 1/2 hrs sport on school premises, but have to pay to do that elsewhere; so our children would count that as leisure activities. So yes, in a way that would make it a longer day than for many other children, but it's not the school work as such that seems excessive.

If this is a private school, it is possible that a majority of parents have chosen it because they want this amount of work and school-organised sport- so it may be difficult to get it changed, even if you don't agree with it.

inthesticks · 06/02/2010 16:26

Sounds similar in quantity to what my Y7 son gets from the local comp. But he's home at 4pm and homework done before six. If he has after school or evening activities he might do less on those nights. It's rare the work has to be handed in next day so he can afford to skip the odd evening and catch up at weekends.

Is the sport compulsory? Could he choose to do homework instaed some days. He must be very tired getting home at 6pm every day, let alone starting more school work.

I think it comes as more of a shock if they have not been used to homework at primary school. DS used to get 2-3 hours a week from year 5 onwards so he's fairly used to it.

MmeBlueberry · 06/02/2010 17:09

I would expect about an hour's homework per night for a Y7 or Y8 child, ie 3 x 20 minutes. The school should have a homework timetable to ensure that homework is given out evenly throughout the week.

You need to look at the school's homework policy. If it is an independent school, the policy should be on the school's website. If he is expected to take 20 minutes for a hw and is consistently spending 30 minutes, you should raise it with the teacher. It is reasonable for him to work up the expected time and then stop.

As for feeling he has 'no life', what does he want to do instead with his time?

LoveRoses · 21/02/2010 09:31

DS1 in yr7 gets an average of 3 pieces of homwork per night. However in reality he sometimes gets 4 pieces per night and on other nights 2 pieces - so roughly works out at 3 per night.

He also participates in a couple of extra curricular sporting/music activities which start about 4:15ish - 5pm, so he uses the time inbetween to get as much homework done in the school library.

Not all set pieces of homework need to be handed in the next day (esp the larger projects/research)

Anyway, things are a lot easier now he's settling in and learnt the essence of "Time Management" / organizing homework.

DS gets home by 5:45ish - so not much different from your ds if that helps...

Winfield123 · 29/07/2019 16:42

When nun DD was in Y7, now I’m Y9, she got 20 pieces of homework a week so 4 a night. She also did school sports after school almost every night so most nights she wouldn’t get home till about 6:30. She didn’t complain about it tho as everyone else was the same

TeenTimesTwo · 29/07/2019 16:59

Winfield This thread is 9 YEARS OLD !

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