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The Homework Debate 2021: Do Primary Schoolers Really Need Homework?

The homework debate resurfaces every year without fail. It is a popular topic with parents, primary school teachers, online tutors, and politicians alike. Should homework be banned? Is homework at primary school necessary? Do pupils receive enough education in class that homework is nothing but a waste of time? – These are all questions that you have no doubt heard before.

Is the homework debate even relevant in the context of COVID-19? As an  online maths tuition service  for KS1 and KS2 pupils, we believe so! Sometimes we set our students homework. We believe that this debate is more relevant now than it has ever been. Let’s discover why…

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“Homework should be banned!” – The call to action

Our children are too tired!

Is it the case that we put too much pressure on children these days? At the age of 7, UK primary school pupils are expected to sit their Key Stage 1 SATs test. This continues in primary school up until Year 6 when they are expected to prepare for and sit their Key Stage 2 SATs test.

Some parents argue that this leaves little time for kids to wind down at home. When can they find the time to indulge in sports, hobbies, and creative interests if their time is consumed by homework? Let’s not forget the added stress caused by the UK Coronavirus lockdown.

Primary school homework does more harm than good:

A BBC Newsround report from 2018 consulted education experts on their views of the homework debate. Nansi Ellis, Assistant General Secretary at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers argued that homework gets in the way of all the good things kids enjoy. It does not always boost performance in class.

She also highlighted that it demands a lot of parents, not only their time but also of their own educational understanding. This sometimes backfires as the methods of learning in school twenty or thirty years ago are likely not the same as those taught nowadays. This can risk causing further confusion.

BBC Newsround’s own survey of the homework debate and how much homework primary school pupils receive found that parents thought:

Where is the proof?

The same BBC report saw Ellis claim that while teachers setting homework is in theory supposed to better results, there is no proof of this being the case. Rosamund McNeil from the teacher’s organisation NUT highlighted that cases abroad support this. In Finland, pupils are set minimal homework but it remains one of the most educationally successful countries in the world.

The homework debate is not just about students – it’s about teachers too!

Homework is time-consuming. Teachers must plan it and mark it, in addition to preparing their classroom lessons and reporting on pupils’ progress. Time constraints can force teachers to work late into the night at home which opens an entirely new can of worms. Overworked teachers are less effective in class. Perhaps it would be more efficient for schools to ban homework altogether.

The other side of the homework debate: Why our kids need homework

It has long been the view that homework acts as a supplement to what has been taught in class. It is an opportunity for pupils to review areas of work they might not understand, focusing their learning.

Homework for primary school students is a good thing!

Homework can be fun and imaginative, an opportunity for parents to bond with their children over education. Take the classic example of counting peas on the dinner plate to learn multiplication tables. Homework does not always have to be completed in a book or on a worksheet. It can often reflect the creativity of the teacher who can inspire children to take their learnings and apply them to the real world. Pricing a shopping list is an awesome way to practise maths while acquiring life skills!

In May 2021 we asked our social media community for their thoughts on this debate. More than two-thirds agreed that homework should not be banned. 

The UK is falling behind the rest of the world:

Once upon a time the UK may have had the best education system in the world. Now is not that time. Studies suggest that  UK literacy and maths rates are falling  while in other countries they continue to rise.

As a result, many teachers and parents agree that our children require further encouragement. This is not the time to ban homework in the UK. Especially when we take into consideration the months of lost learning caused by the COVID-19 UK lockdown. This is the time to help primary school children catch up, and homework can support the effort.

The homework debate in the context of COVID-19

We touched on this earlier before considering both sides of the argument in the UK homework debate. However, with home learning more popular than ever, is there still a place for homework in UK primary school education?

The homework debate solution: Online tuition

It’s engaging for children; it reflects what they have been learning in class and saves time for both parents and teachers.  Online tuition has soared in popularity through 2020  and 2021, and could be the solution for people on both sides of the homework debate.

Read more :  How online maths tutors are helping KS1 & KS2 pupils succeed.

In the UK there are tons of tuition services helping to provide kids with a competitive edge using an extracurricular push. You can view a list of the top 15 here:  Discover the UK’s best online tutors.

If you have any comments or questions regarding this topic, please feel free to let us know in the comment below or in our Facebook group  UK Primary School Maths – Tutoring & Tips,  we will reply to you as soon as we can.  

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The Homework Debate

Should you have more, less or none at all? Homework is given out in more than 90% of primary schools in the UK, but for a hundred years experts have been trying to decide whether or not it’s a good thing for you do it. Some people think homework puts too much pressure on you.  A recent online vote about the amount of homework you get: whether it is not enough, just right or too much by BBC Newsround resulted in 8.9% saying there was not enough homework; 28.9 said it was just right and 62.2 said it was too much. They say research suggests that homework in primary school isn’t helpful for students. But others say homework is an important part of learning how to work on your own and gives you time to practice what you’ve learnt in the classroom.

Paul Kinsella, headteacher, St Monicas Catholic Primary School

It is understandable why the amount of homework given is a contentious issue. There are fair arguments on both sides. From a schools perspective, teachers know that those pupils who are motivated and prepared to produce additional extension work really benefit from their efforts in terms of their successes. This applies particularly at the first instance when early years children are given letters and words to learn as well as moving through their reading books. The home school link at this stage is vital and homework, in this format, produces positive learning and relations for all parties. This then builds as they grow up in their primary school and applies to all their years in primary school, not just at key exam points such as Year 2 and Year 6 SATs. For parents, they no doubt want their children to be happy and have a positive attitude to school, yet sometimes, homework can create tensions at home. The demands placed can be the source of real concern from parents about their children’s happiness and emotional welfare. Primary schools are now finding more and more that their children, despite their young ages, are facing enormous additional pressures from social media and they spend hours on it at home each night. Time spent here on phones and tablets can run ahead of them, causing a panic that they have no time to do their homework, leading to more stresses! This is a new challenge for both schools and parents and achieving a fair balance is the way forward. Looking at these figures, the concerns from many parents isn’t about banning homework altogether, it is about getting the balance right so their children can enjoy other hobbies and pastimes beyond their school. This is absolutely vital for a happy family life so achieving this balance is the real challenge for everyone. When schools and parents do this together, for the benefit of their children, everyone wins. The homework debate will probably never go away, but one thing is for certain, and this may well upset the pupils, while homework may change in style and substance in the future to meet their new lifestyles and ways of learning, alas for them, it will probably never go away!

Michael Kennedy, principal, St Mary’s College

Ask a teenager about homework tonight and you are likely to elicit a range of responses, some of them unrepeatable. Ask a parent, and the reply will probably be more measured but equally emphatic. It has to be done so let’s get on with it. But why bother? Why not leave it out and do something preferable? After all, Hollyoaks is more entertaining and there is more scandal and controversy to discuss on social media. Homework has always been one of those things we have to put up with; as a pupil back in the dark ages I thought the same. Yet life is like that: the challenges we need to undertake to achieve better things in the future often involve unpalatable groundwork that we can’t immediately see the purpose of. Who wants to do housework? Who wants to queue at the supermarket tills?; or fill in tax forms? Seeing the long-term benefit of any task has to be the key to persevering now. Homework tasks don’t need to be tedious anyway. Teachers increasingly set more varied tasks that are designed to reinforce learning in the classroom and extend it at home. The satisfaction gained in solving a problem or completing an assignment can be truly rewarding, even for teenagers who might feel it is not cool to agree. The value of homework is truly appreciated when the rewards are tangible: success is the great justifier and it is the steps we take in getting there that make it all possible.

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