Homework used to appease parents, says teaching body
Pupils could actually benefit from less out-of-classroom work
HOMEWORK is being meted out to children in order to indulge their parents, a teachers’ body has claimed as leading experts say pupils benefit from doing less afterschool study.
The advice comes after the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, released last month, revealed a negative correlation between homework and achievement in science.
But British students were performing less well in science than pupils from countries such as Japan and Finland, where students were given 13.6 and 11.9 hours of homework a week respectively, compared to British pupils who do upwards of 17 hours after school.
It found that youngsters in Thailand were completing 23.5 hours of homework a week, but doing far worse than students in Britain, Japan and Finland, despite the heavy workload.
However, Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, said homework should be an extension of what was being done in class and should only be handed out when it is a benefit.
He said: “Children spend long enough at school anyway and they need time to be children. You have to ask sometimes – what’s it adding to the situation? I think sometimes parents ask children what they have done in class, and say “nothing”. Sometimes homework is then set to appease parents.
“It’s better when teachers can get students to go home and explain what they’ve been doing to somebody else – to have a dialogue between children and their parents, where they summarise what they have been doing in a short space of time.”
Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “What doesn’t work is having a rigid requirement for homework – saying you have to do 30 minutes of maths on a Wednesday evening. This is not appropriate. It’s important that young people take on homework that builds on their understanding. One of the key aspects is the quality of the homework. If students have a weak conceptual understanding from school, the misunderstandings will simply multiply.”
In September 2016, Philip Morant School and College in Colchester, Essex, became one of the first state secondaries to put a blanket ban on homework.
Principal Catherine Hutley said the change would give teachers more time to deliver inspiring lessons, and added that out-ofschool-hours learning would still be encouraged through the school’s website.
She said: “[Teachers] are working every hour God sends but planning lessons can fall by the wayside.
“We want it to be the number one priority so teachers can plan for students’ individual needs and keep on top of their progress.”
Eileen Prior, director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said: “I think parents like to see homework because it can be one of the few ways they get an understanding of what happens at school.
“If parents really need that to tell them what their children are doing, it is a failure of the system. Schools need to be a lot smarter about how they communicate with parents.
“There is an interesting debate about traditional homework and whether it does progress learning. But there are lots of ways that children can demonstrate what they are learning and share that with parents at home.”