Plan B Forum

Schools should axe homework because it 'pollutes' family life, according to a leading children's author.

Dr Eleanor Updale said the traditional nightly ritual leads to children becoming anxious, tearful and 'cut off' from their families.

She said a a typical 30-minute classroom task took three times as long when parents were forced to 'nag, shout, bully and bribe' children to do it at home.
Homework

Dr Updale, who wrote the award-winning Montmorency series about a Victorian ex-convict turned spy, said homework undermined families' limited time together.

All work should be completed in the classroom instead, she suggested.

The Government, schools and parents should 'break away from the automatic assumption that homework is a good thing', she said.

'Modern families are short of shared time,' she said. 'To pollute their homes with the values and anxieties of the classroom is a mistake.

'Politicians complain that today's children are turning into couch potatoes, slumped in front of their TVs or computer games.

'But what drives those children out of the garden, away from the kitchen table and in front of the screens in the first place?

'What gives them the excuses to cut themselves off? It's homework.'

Government guidelines encourage schools to set one hour of homework a week for five-year-olds, with nine to 11-year-olds completing half an hour a day.

Fourteen to 16-year-olds should be doing up to two-and-a-half hours a night.

While teachers are not forced to set homework, they come under heavy pressure to do so.

The guidelines are 'intended to give a clear idea of what is reasonable to expect at different ages'.

Writing in the Times Educational Supplement, Dr Updale, a Royal Literary Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, said: 'Looking back on my children's early years, my greatest regret is that I always supported their schools.

'In my experience, a task that takes 30 minutes in a classroom takes 90 minutes at home, with all its power play, distractions and interruptions.

'I nagged, shouted, bullied and bribed my children to complete their work.

'I realise now that I should have stood up against homework inflation, and fought for us to spend more time as a family, doing things that related to, and consolidated, our lives together.'

When leading boys' grammar school Tiffin, in Kingston-upon-Thames, slashed nightly homework to allow pupils more time to play sport and watch TV documentaries, not all parents supported the move.

Some wanted boys to continue tackling three to four hours a night.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0nHsGeZkO

Crackpot wrote:I rarely had home work in school do you know why? I did it during the ample time given in school when everyone else was messing around.