A couple of years ago, my colleague and I were asked to have a debate about homework to ‘get the conversation started’. I chose to argue against homework and here is what I said. I post it now as there seems to be some discussion about the future of homework due to Ofsted cutting homework checks.
Good morning everybody. I want to put my case against homework using a holy trinity approach…not the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost but the teacher, the parent and most obviously the student, who should be at the heart of everything we do.
So I will start with us as teachers. We have had continual discussions at this school about workload and as a profession we should be looking for solutions to address the situation that has seen the numbers leaving teaching increase by 11% over the past 3 years. Sometimes that means challenging ‘conventional wisdom’.
Homework is a time stealer and as I’ll come to later on, it gives us a false impression of students and is therefore not ‘fit for purpose’. This is particularly the case with a homework timetable. A study in 2004 by Hallam showed that the setting of homework was poor due to teachers feeling pressurised, regardless of the stage of work that has been reached in class, to set homework on a stated day. Creating homework takes time and another problem we have is that research shows that students only see the value of homework if it is monitored and marked by the teacher. Research by Keys in 1995 showed that multiple feedback was deemed to be best but how much time do we have? Surely we can just do this with classroom assessments which has the added benefit of knowing that the work handed in has actually been done by the student and not someone else. The opportunity cost of setting and marking homework is huge and the time is surely better spent becoming a better teacher (preparing ‘outstanding’ lessons) or looking after your emotional well-being. In a recent survey 83% of teachers had reported workplace stress and 89% of teachers said that the key area was workload. I argue homework adds to this enormously.
Now on to parents. And there are many parents of students at this school in this room and I’m sure nearly all of them will recognise a scenario I had last Sunday evening where I found myself berating my kids as they suddenly had homework to do just before bedtime. Not only did it raise my stress levels as I tried to get them to do the work, I also found myself aiding and abetting them. Suddenly their success (hopefully) was my success. But they are the lucky ones…I consider myself to be a mildly supportive parent and I like to think I can help them with different areas of study. Imagine the frustration you must feel when you don’t know how to help them or haven’t got time to help them. Researchers from Brown University found that stress and tension (as reported by the parents) increased most when parents perceived themselves as unable to help with homework, when the child disliked doing the homework and when the homework caused arguments, either between the child and the adults or among the adults in the household. Why do schools create a scenario that creates additional stress for parents on top of the stress they probably have from their own jobs?
Finally students. I asked my form, how many of them thought homework helped them learn. I had 8 positive responses but even they were not that positive. I asked my form whether homework was their biggest stress factor at school. 18 students put their hands up. We are creating a nation where mental illness amongst our children is on the rise. A recent survey by the Association of School and College Leaders showed that 55% of school leaders had seen a large rise in pupils with anxiety and stress. Over the past 5 years, 79% of Heads saw an increase in self harm or suicidal thoughts. A study conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Education found that excessive homework causes high stress levels and physical health problems. Now, you may say that the important word there is excessive and we have limits on our homework activities but do we really. Do students really stop after 20 minutes? And do we really know what a 20 minute homework looks like? In a recent column by Oliver Burkeman, I read about ‘Hofstadter’s Law’ which states that things always take longer than you think EVEN WHEN you take into account ‘Hofstadter’s Law’. In other words: you will underestimate how much time a task requires, even when you know that’s what you always do and try to plan accordingly. But remember…that’s for us! We’re trying to second guess how long an activity takes for a student who has only just learnt some of the information we are asking them to do a homework on OR in some cases, they are finding out something that they’ve never even been taught about. Is that flipped learning? I will tell you now…your 20 minutes is not their 20 minutes. Einstein was right!!! Therefore if we genuinely care about our students and their well-being, we need to give them time to be themselves. Let kids be kids! What’s wrong with play? Learning will take place but in a different context.
But you may argue that by not setting them homework we let them down in the future because they do not get the grades that they want to, in order to have a ‘truly useful life’. But I will disagree with any data related to the power of homework on learning. Why? Simply put, the data is pretty ambiguous. A recent report from Victoria, Australia came up with this conclusion after three days of public inquiry – ‘it is not possible from the available data to make unequivocal statements about the effectiveness of homework overall in assisting student learning’. The main reason behind this has got to be because correlation does not mean causation. But there are others…how do we really know how much homework kids do? Most studies claim they know how much homework students do but we all know that a student may have looked to have done their homework but haven’t. As a student in my form said ‘everyone copies homework’ and with Snapchat/Instagram/Instant Messaging, this spreading of information gets easier and easier to do. That’s why they don’t see the value of homework as a learning tool because it provides false information. I have a number of other reasons why data on homework is so poor but time limits me. Even if we DO agree that there are positive effects from homework, we then have to reflect whether the payoff for working several more hours is worthwhile on a wider scale. There are many reports that show that reading more widely boosts performance, doing extra-curricular activities boost performance and so on. I would argue that these activities should be encouraged more and from a well-being perspective, offer much greater value than anything homework can offer. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
So there you have it…the case against homework. And the common theme across all three stakeholders is that of well-being. The current school model is broken and we have to fix it. Scrapping homework is the first step in building a more sustainable schooling model.
On Teaching... 