Homework
Homework: To set or not to set...
While one union has branded homework a waste of time, many others argue the benefits. With government guidelines scrapped, Dorothy Lepkowska looks at the pros and cons of setting homework
T
he issue of homework remains a tricky one for schools. Set it and there is a chance it won’t get done. Don’t bother and parents will demand to know why.
Then there are the questions of how much to set, when to set it and what the expectations should be of pupils. Increasingly, it seems, there is debate in primary schools about whether homework should be given at all. With government guidelines on how much homework pupils should
expect now scrapped, it has become a matter for individual schools to decide. This is not necessarily an easy decision to make. Research into the effectiveness and validity of homework is divided, and tends to follow the trends of received wisdom at any particular time.
Under guidelines laid down by the previous Labour government,
children aged five to seven were to be set an hour a week, rising to half- an-hour a night for seven to 11-year-olds. Critics have always maintained that too much homework, set in the wrong way could result in children switching off from learning, while for teachers it creates obvious workload issues.
One of the most recent studies on the subject, carried out for the Department for Education, of more than 3,000 pupils over a 15-year period, found that time spent on homework reflected how much pupils were expected to do, as well as their enjoyment of the subjects. Pat Sammons, professor of education at the University of Oxford, who was one of the academics involved in the study, found that one of the
34
reasons pupils from some ethnic backgrounds, such as Chinese and Indian, performed well at school was because they put more into their homework. So success was found in effort as well as ability. The report, which was jointly conducted by Oxford, and the University of London’s Institute of Education and Birkbeck College, controlled for social class and whether pupils had a quiet place to work, but still found there were some benefits. Researchers discovered that children who did well from disadvantaged backgrounds were supported by parents who valued learning and encouraged extra-curricular activities. However, the research is at odds with some earlier studies. Research from the Institute of Education carried out several years ago by Professor Susan Hallam, found that homework caused friction at home. Her analysis, which examined 75 years’ worth of studies into homework, concluded that schools needed to focus more on the purpose and quality of homework, and not the amount. She also made a case that it should be completed in homework clubs, rather than at home where conditions were not always conducive to learning. The study states: “Homework can cause anxiety, boredom fatigue and emotional exhaustion in children, who resent the encroachment on their free time, even though they think homework helps them do well at school.” Researchers in the United States, meanwhile, where a similar debate ensues about homework, have found that parental involvement was, in
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48