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Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:47 am
by Waiting_For_Godot
I've been reading a few threads recently, not on here I add although it may have been mentioned, about the workload teenage children have. Now I don't blame the parents for this but the expectations from the schools - all schools. Time and time again I hear of 13-18 year olds getting to bed around 11pm after all their homework is done, this especially so in the A'level years. I feel this is wrong because how many adults (teachers at times being the exception) are still working at 11pm in the evenings? I don't mean making meals or doing the ironing but taking work home, and yet we expect children who are physically changing to be doing this extreme amount of work. Reasons vary why a child has not completed work until 11pm: usually the main reason is workload set by school, others include time the school day ends/travel time to and from school, extra-curric hobbies in the evening. One could argue that a child shouldn't have extra-curric activities but I think that would be very unhealthy for them. When DS starts senior school in September I believe his homework in Year 9 will be timetabled to end at 9:30pm - how depressing!

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:38 am
by hermanmunster
I agree children shouldn't be doing too much - but in all the years DS and DD have been at GS they have never been up at 11pm doing homework - in fact it seems to get done reasonably promptly in the evening. It may help that we live less than 100 yards from their schools and hence they are home quickly and can start early - I remember ghastly long trips home when I was at school so really wanted to be avoid that for them.

Most of the kids struggling to get home work done tend to be those with large amounts of extra curric ... working (the tea shops of the dales would shut down if they stopped) / young farmers (very time consuming) / local amateur dramatics / sport etc etc + long distances to school etc .

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:49 am
by daughter
Agree with you both - I have one first year uni and DD2 in lower sixth. Both work and worked way harder than either DH or I (both graduates) ... at every stage of their schooling (and uni so far - admittedly only 1 term).

I think 11pm is excessive and I agee with Herman that this happens mainly with those with heavy out-of-school hours commitments including travel, paid work and activities. I think it is also more likely to happen to the procrastinators and in that way arts subjects can be worse - you can spend an awful lot of time reading around and "thinking" before putting pen to paper , or fingers to keyboard to write an essay. Thankfully DD2 is doing sciences and the workload although very large and challenging is easier to approach e.g. worksheets, practice questions and of course some reading around the subject.

WFG - I think the boarding school "prep" experience will instil good work habits (less "thinking" more action).

It does really annoy me though when people speak of dumbed down A levels etc. The course content is much larger than when we sat them.

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:38 am
by Sportsmum
It can be further exacerbated when teachers give pupils less than 48 hours to prepare a PowerPoint presentation to give as part of their GCSE English exam, whilst others preparing for the same exam have in excess of a week - and the pupils are still expected to represent their school in fixtures, whilst completing all other homeworks. My own DC1 has just spent 10 hours of the last two nights preparing for their short notice exam....

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:13 am
by Waiting_For_Godot
Daughter,

You have convinced me that maths and science is the way to go!!! :lol:

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:18 am
by hermanmunster
Oh yes..... GCSE coursework :? :roll: - relentless

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:24 pm
by dani*
If a child is doing homework until 11 Pm something is not right.

Perhaps it is just bad planning i/e leaving all to the last minute or perhaps the child has difficulties with the level of the work set. One child can take 10 minutes to complete something whilst it takes an other child 2 hours.

Our DD occasionally has a piece of homework that needs to be in the next day but normally she has a few days to complete her work. From our experience planning is the key.

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:27 pm
by scary mum
I always worry that mine don't seem to have very much homework :lol: :lol: (except every now and again when they have coursework to get done).

Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:37 pm
by Belinda
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Re: Are we being fair on our children?

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 5:02 pm
by 999 mum
Hi,

Could it be that different children see the homework differently?

My DS and another go to the same school and are in the same class, the other mum says there is a lot of homework and it takes him all evening whereas my DS rarely spends 20 mins or more doing his homework. (Having seen DS's books, I think they work very hard while at school.)

They are only in Y7 at the moment, so I can't comment about further up the school at the moment.