Is school homework just a waste of our time?

WHEN I was a biology teacher, marking homework was the bane of my life, but it was also the most useful part of the job. There is no point in classroom teaching unless the lessons learned are practised in isolation and without assistance. For homework, my students had to write essays, report on experiments and interpret their findings. This helped develop opinions and foster scepticism, the best way of dealing with fake news. So ask yourself if homework is worth doing (Mail), or is it better to have teachers chivvying children through uniform worksheets, using ticks instead of words or ideas? Is marking by the teacher more useful than adding up the ticks? r. J. ANDrEWS, Farnborough, Hants. THE homework I did for ten years at school and five years at college was a waste of time. As a tradesman, I realised all the theory, quadratic equations and calculus were useless when it came to day-to-day maintenance and installation. The sooner that teachers cotton on to the fact that we simply couldn’t care less what happened in 1137 and realise that arithmetic is far more useful than mathematics, the better. I spent hours in French classes, but can only count to ten and order a beer in the language. Relevant, useful homework would be worthwhile, but forcing all children to study academic subjects bullies the potential out of practical youngsters.

tONY BALL, High Wycombe, Bucks.