primary school homework

[screenman]

I don't think anyone is arguing against been involved in their childrens education but there's more to educating a child that what homework is set, in fact my child isn't the great, cracking, brillant, kid that he is because of school, thats all my doing

All? That is a big claim. I do agree that academia is not the be all and end all. But with a better education where would you be in life? I would be retired instead of having to work till I drop.

 

[screenman]

Cooking.... Mine haven't done cooking.... They did food assembly, so when making pizza we had to send in all the ingredients, chopped, and pizza bases, when doing some sort of jam tart, just had to send in pastry and jam! Only a few of the things they ever made at secondary school actually involved an interesting level of food prep and creation.

That sounds like cooking from this uneducated bloke with no culinary skill.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

I don't think anyone is arguing against been involved in their childrens education but there's more to educating a child that what homework is set, in fact my child isn't the great, cracking, brillant, kid that he is because of school, thats all my doing

My greatest success in my children's education is them being able to tell a nobber at 50 yards. And having the confidence to make sure they know it

 

[alecstilleyedye]

You got a bright girl there, you would I guess want her to do her very best, I know I did with my kids. Maybe the teachers feel the same way.

and hard working. she's never got less than a in any public exam, yet still has a good social life and a serious relationship with her boyfriend; the only credit we can take is in giving her the space to do things her way...

 

[screenman]

[QUOTE 4235601, member: 45"]The driver at primary schools is to make academic progress in order to that the school looks good to Ofsted. Same with attendance records. It's not about what's best for the children any more, but purely about academic progress. Academic progress which is being pushed more and more into the home, a place where children should be living the rest of their lives and experiencing equally important development.[/QUOTE]

I disagree, teachers want to turn out the best they can and need the help of parents to do this. I feel that a couple of hours a week of parent and child learning cannot ever be too much.

 

[screenman]

[QUOTE 4235611, member: 45"]I didn't say it was going down. You claim that it's tougher these days.

You're making the mistake of thinking education=academic progress[/QUOTE]


Please explain your last line to this poorly educated bloke whose parents did not help with his homework.

 

[swee'pea99]

Remembering what my sister who'd lived there once told me about education in Denmark, including the fact that children there are not allowed to receive any lessons as such, but to 'learn through playing' until the age of seven - yet the country consistently appears at or near the top of global educational achievement rankings - I googled, to discover a very enlightening account of the equally successful Finnish system, which apparently runs to a similar philosophy, again with exemplary results:

"When I left my 7th grade math classroom for my Fulbright research assignment in Finland I thought I would come back from this experience with more inspiring, engaging, innovative lessons. I expected to have great new ideas on how to teach my mathematics curriculum and I would revamp my lessons so that I could include more curriculum, more math and get students to think more, talk more and do more math.

This drive to do more and More and MORE is a state of existence for most teachers in the US….it is engrained in us from day one. There is a constant pressure to push our students to the next level to have them do bigger and better things. The lessons have to be more exciting, more engaging and cover more content. This phenomena is driven by data, or parents, or administrators or simply by our work-centric society where we gauge our success as a human being by how busy we are and how burnt out we feel at the end of the day. We measure our worth with completed lists and we criminalize down time. We teach this “work till you drop” mentality to our students who either simply give up somewhere along the way or become as burnt out as we find ourselves."

Sound familiar?

By her (very persuasive) account, Finland achieves more by believing in less.

Find out more! https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11-ways-finlands-education-system-shows-us-that-less-is-more/

 

[User10119]

Cooking.... Mine haven't done cooking.... They did food assembly, so when making pizza we had to send in all the ingredients, chopped, and pizza bases, when doing some sort of jam tart, just had to send in pastry and jam! Only a few of the things they ever made at secondary school actually involved an interesting level of food prep and creation.

Oh, this was science/history homeworks when the EldestCub was in primary. It annoys me partly because the kids who don't have involved/engaged parents get really badly shown up by it and there is nothing they can do about it. But also because I'm fundamentally lazy Almost as annoying as the 'make a wormery' one. I went in and asked the teacher where we were supposed to get the soil from, given our outdoor space consists of a few square metres of concrete, and what we were supposed to do with it afterwards. They don't set that one any more...

 

[screenman]

my mistakes are my mistakes no point or need to try and re-live through my kids but I really just want my children to be happy and thats what I try and teach my children, if they do well in school and get a brillant job then great but if they end up doing a minumum wage job then so be it but happiness in ones-self and life is much more important....and yes ALL

I know of plenty of kids who study hard and do homework who are happy.

Education gives you choices, your and mine are limited by our lack of it. I wanted my kids to have a wider one than myself, that way they can choose between minimum wage and a good wage.

 

[screenman]

[QUOTE 4235636, member: 45"]You can disagree. If you'd spent time in and around primary schools recently, and watched a school's responses to Ofsted and SATS, you'd know differently.

Most of us spend far more than a couple of hours a week helping our children to learn. Homework takes a small part in this.[/QUOTE]

I have not been a governor for the past 15 years so things may have changed. I always consider ofsted a farce, instant inspections not 3 months notice would have been my preferred way.

Also, your children never stop being your children so do not think education is only for youngsters.

 

[summerdays]

At some point children have to start to take more responsibility for their own learning though not in primary education so much, (IMO), else they are suddenly floundering when they head off to Uni and Mum and Dad aren't there to help.

I think some of the things parents can help to do, is to encourage the child to want to discover more, to respect the school and pass on that respect to their children. I think children can be spoon fed too much and somehow we seem to be producing children without the ability to think for themselves, they rely too much on help from someone else.

 

[User10119]

I have not been a governor for the past 15 years so things may have changed. I always consider ofsted a farce, instant inspections not 3 months notice would have been my preferred way.

Also, your children never stop being your children so do not think education is only for youngsters.

Things have changed a lot! Schools don't get three months notice, for a start.

In some schools where 'they' are due there's an almost palpable sense of relief on Wednesday afternoons when you've made it past lunch without The Call - as they generally do 2 day inspections so while you're eating your school dinner on a Wednesday is when you find out about a thurs/fri visit. If they ring on Friday they'll turn up on Monday and you get an extra 2 whole days notice.

 

[swee'pea99]

Finland's '11 ways', in brief:

1. Less Formal Schooling = More Options
2. Less Time in School = More Rest
3. Fewer Instruction Hours = More Planning Time
4. Fewer Teachers = More Consistency and Care
5. Fewer Accepted Applicants= More Confidence in Teachers
6. Fewer Classes= More Breaks
7. Less Testing = More Learning
8. Fewer Topics = More Depth
9. Less Homework = More Participation
10. Fewer Students = More Individual Attention
11. Less Structure = More Trust

 

[RedRider]

I think you may find that the parents have more involvement though.

Ate you an expert in this?

 

[growingvegetables]

I've worked in supply teaching for nearly 20 years - so a lot of the time, mercifully, at some distance from having to set and mark homework as a regular, day-to-day, chore. I don't have managers chasing performance indicators, targets, data collection points, and all the other statistical games for league tables and OFSTED.

Homework (as in QUALITY homework) can be very valuable. Two (admittedly VERY extreme!) examples:-

1. A supposedly one-off science class I covered, on the solar system; I gave homework. Next day, "little Johnny" yelled across a crowded corridor, "Mr ****, Mr ****, I did my homework! It was f***ing brilliant!"; I went over for a wee chat, and sure enough, he'd done it and he was ..... buzzing.

I headed for the staffroom, to be greeted by a deathly hush - and then questions. "How ...?" "What ....?" "How ....? Turns out "little Johnny" was reckoned to be far and away the most recalcitrant, uncooperative, disengaged, renegade little ******* in year 7. Wouldn't do anything he was asked, in class, let alone for homework.

The homework? "Go outside about 9.30 tonight, and look up in this direction. You should see Jupiter - and IF you're lucky, you'll see one, maybe more, of Jupiter's moons." Little Johnny had borrowed grandpa's binoculars, and spotted a couple more! Result. He was a dream student, for the next couple of lessons I had him. Couldn't stop his questions and curiosity about planets and stars!

2. Another supposedly short-term cover - this time in maths. Again a supposedly lower ability group.

Supposedly teaching long-division. And failing. Two lessons - and none of the kids "got it". The third lesson - I gave up; wrote up a couple of examples on the board, with the answers - and told the kids to work out for themselves how I'd got there.

Not a recommended teaching technique - but damn it, it worked. All it took was a wee lass to jump in the air, throw her chair back, and yell "YES! I get it!" And she had indeed 'got it'; the pair of us worked the room, until the others had got it too.

I offered them the option. No hassle, no pressure - it wasn't a timetabled maths homework night; but if they wanted, I'd get the maths office to print off an exercise by the end of the day, for anybody who wanted to practice/consolidate. All but two out of the thirty students went to the office, and hassled them mercilessly for the homework sheet. (And a bemused maths department signed me up for three months straight work. )


Bottom lines -

• Quality homework (that challenges, excites, or "serves a purpose") works.

• Quantity homework (set to fill an OFSTED "expectation" of any number of statistical hours "filled") is (more than likely) a waste of time, and (again more than likely) a nasty tactic to draw parents into the statistical game-playing "needed" by the league tables.