Formally withdrawing child from homework

londonlydia

I went to a grammar school where we had lots of homework. I wasn't the best of students, and so I tended to do it in my fave subjects and let the other fall at the way side. I didnt revise at all during school...I just relied on picking up what I did in lessons. BUT, I have to say the result was that when I went to uni I regretted that and wish I had been more disciplined! It probably depends on what subject you do at uni, im not going to get into a debate over easy and hard subjects... but some subjects you can do well without memorising say, but unless you can study well it's hard to do that memory side of it! So speaking as someone who didnt do much homework, I wish I had done more! I mean I've done well, but I do wonder if I'd learnt to study if I'd be better tbh.

Oh and I would be pretty concerned if someone said they were managing to do their homework at school. Either that means their lessons arent challenging enough, or, they're doing it in breaks and lunchtimes. The latter is very concerning, as school is just as much about social development and should be filled with memories with friends!

balletshoes

bestpud wrote: »

It's all SATS at the moment but probably best not to get me started on that!

SATs - say no more.

valk_scot

koalamummy wrote: »

Unfortunately if you are one of the children with a more natural aptitude for a subject you tend to find that you spend a lot of time sitting bored beyond belief waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.

It adds up to an awful lot of time. M:(

In my DD's primary school if you finish a piece of work before the rest of the class you do the extension exercises for that topic. My DD is bright, she says there's a lot of extension exercises and they're usually more interesting than the original piece of work.

koalamummy

valk_scot wrote: »

In my DD's primary school if you finish a piece of work before the rest of the class you do the extension exercises for that topic. My DD is bright, she says there's a lot of extension exercises and they're usually more interesting than the original piece of work.

I totally understand this as I was in her position almost 30 years ago. However when you finish these you are still left with a lot of free time. This is again intensified if the child in question is an avid reader which means that the spelling element has little if any impact as these words are already fully familiar, also the write sentences part is effortless as prior reading helps put it in context and make it natural text/language.

bestpud

I'm getting the impression that it's not something most parents would dream of doing but it's not uncommon for children to find ways around doing homework at home .

Poppy9

When DD was in primary one mother withdrew her son from homework. Her OH was a head of a neighbouring school and she knew that the school could take no action against her or her son for refusing to do partake in homework. Her reason was she felt it unnecessary as children were in school for most of the day and needed to play after school not study more.

In Wales SATS were abolished so no prepping for them etc. though they did do SAT like tests but the children weren't told when they were doing them, teacher pretended Y6 ones would be their first practice one but they were the real thing.

DD is Y13 and the amount of homework throughout school has varied. In the early years, 7-9 it did appear that some of the homework was homework for the sake of it. Extremely annoying when she was asked to "try" and answer X questions when they had done nothing similar in class.

No course work for any GCSEs done at home, all in school along with the controlled assessments.

6th form homework has at times been totally overwhelming with DD up till past midnight finishing off. She was initially doing 4 A levels but dropped one after AS due to the high volume of homework from the subject (it was a foreign language) leaving her little time for her other 3 subjects.

I think as they move through school and get older they should have more than 5 hours of teaching a day. I would like to see 4 longer school days with 3 clear days off for pupils.

I am the one who tells DD to just leave her homework when I can see her stressed out after spending all night doing it. She's not slow or stupid it's just too much.

Re home-school agreement. Just don't like them, so never signed them. DD attends her local catchment area school. Her attendance is excellent, her behaviour is excellent, her homework completion rate is high. If there have ever been discipline issues I have supported the school even though I think they wesore petty reasons - detention for wearing nail polish and jewellery!! It was a school rule, she knew she shouldn't do it, she continued to do it so she had to take the punishment. However I am not signing a bit of paper that is not enforceable just to keep someone in the school happy!

She's 18 now so she can sign for herself if she wants!

Poppy9

I did hate the "craft" project homework for the school holidays. Neither DD or myself arty and it was a complete chore, waste of time and unrewarding and was looked at for 5 minutes upon return to school and discarded. You could always tell the children who had arty parents!:D

Hermia

claire16c wrote: »

Wouldn't she have been in lessons in school hours? I don't understand why you would have spare time at school.

That stumps me as well. For example, in English in my secondary school we had to do a book report presentation on a book of our choice each term. I'm not sure how I could have done that in school unless I had got permission to stay in on my own each break. I'm sure my teacher would have noticed if I had been reading a novel during a Physics class! And for GCSE sociology we had to do primary research and there is no way I could have done that in school time because of the people I needed to speak to to get my data.

Poppy9

Hermia wrote: »

That stumps me as well. For example, in English in my secondary school we had to do a book report presentation on a book of our choice each term. I'm not sure how I could have done that in school unless I had got permission to stay in on my own each break. I'm sure my teacher would have noticed if I had been reading a novel during a Physics class! And for GCSE sociology we had to do primary research and there is no way I could have done that in school time because of the people I needed to speak to to get my data.

With mixed ability classes pupils often spend time waiting for slower pupils to finish work so some use it as time to start on their homework.

Also sometimes pupils have free lessons because the teacher isn't in and are told to "get on with some work".

When I was in college on day release years ago we would have lecture then we had to so some questions and I always finished way ahead so the lecturer would give me that week's homework to do.

milliebear00001

As a teacher, I would add that in primary most homework is utterly pointless, and children would be far better off learning in other ways at home. I can't comment on secondary as I don't know how the system works there, but it seems feasible that homework could form part of the basis for work required in class and so would be harder to 'get out of'.

If a parent wrote to me asking that their child not be punished for not doing homework, then that would be that. However, it would mean them sitting twiddling their thumbs every Monday morning when we spend half an hour close marking each other's English homework task!