Homework

Michael Gove has announced that headteachers can decide upon their own school's homework policy based upon their clientele rather than being set guidelines from Whitehall. My initial reaction: that's good of him, to allow schools to make some decisions. My second reaction: what use is homework anyway?

Homework is arguably the most time-consuming part of a teacher's job. Teachers rarely like setting it and students rarely like doing it, so why does it exist? There are a number of reasons:

1. The most important one: parents expect it. It makes no difference what is set, but if a school had a policy of not setting the stuff, and there are good reasons for having such a policy which I will cover later, many parents would moan and the school's numbers would begin to fall, with the end result being its closure. Parental perception of homework is that it shows them what their child is learning in class, despite the fact that the parents themselves spend hours doing the stuff to dig their offspring put of a potential detention.
2. It should reinforce what a child has learnt in school, but many homeworks are set for the sake of it, which is ultimately a waste of time. Current guidelines suggest that a 14 to 16 year old should have around 2-3 hours per night of homework. This is ridiculous - homeworks should be around 10 minutes long if a child fully understands what to do, and a little longer if they have to learn it again because they weren't paying attention in class.
3. It gives the teacher some results and evidence (it's that word "data" again) to track a child's progress and performance over a year and possibly identify weaknesses in their knowledge. This is useful for the teacher and child, assuming that the child has the gumption to actually make an effort to fill these holes in their learning. Tests in class can also do this.

Why should homework be scrapped?

1. There's not a student or teacher who "loves", or dare I say even "likes" homework. It worsens the work/life balance for both parties and is generally a pain in the rear end to do and mark.
2. The amount of time teachers spend chasing up missing homework could be far better utilised planning "outstanding" lessons.
3. It prevents school children from having a childhood, like running around the park or playing sport apparently, or so the report on the BBC website said. I would possibly swap the two activities mentioned with "drinking cheap cider and smoking at the park" and "playing XBox", but I know what they mean. Children ought to be allowed to have a childhood is the point.

My solution:

Teachers should set homework, when it's relevent, but no more than once per week and it shouldn't be very time consuming. Children can do the homework if they want to, and if they do, it will get marked. If a child chooses not to do the homework, even on time, then that's their loss. The same should go for coursework.

Thank you Michael for allowing schools this opportunity. Let's see who's brave enough to make use of it.