More and more, analyses of the state of the world nowadays and the malaise of many societies around the world suggest that such an approach would be useful that an important part of a young person’s education should be to help them engage with other people, of different generations, with books, with their peers in a team environment. Instead students are advised to go home, play football or anything else, read a book, climb a tree, be with their parents, talk, learn to be part of society. In Finland, one of the ‘educational superpowers’ of the world visited by Lucy Crehan and discussed in her book “CleverLands” there is no homework. A massive burden for all, and especially egregious for those of us who have read John Hattie’s Visible Learning and noted that research suggests that the effect on grades of homework is at best small at worst negligible.

It needs to be assessed and feedback needs to be given. It needs to be collected from all, and then arrangements made for extensions or sanctions for those who have not done it. It’s probably the element of teaching which is the most onerous, involves the teacher in more work, and necessitates more follow-up than any other aspect of teaching. We all have our private feelings about homework. So if it is to be useful, the nature of homework a teacher sets needs to be considered very carefully. But I can tell you as a parent as well as a form tutor that a lot of homework is set for its own sake, does nothing of the sort, and is nothing but a tedious, pointless chore. This is a tricky concept for me, as it accepts as fact that homework will, by its very nature, ‘consolidate and extend… knowledge and understanding’.

It is a requirement in UK, in common with many other nations of the world, that teachers “set homework and plan other out-of-class activities to consolidate and extend the knowledge and understanding pupils have acquired”.

Set homework