1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7692256/School-homework-is-polluting-
family-life.html
All essays and worksheets should be completed at school amid claims they put too much
pressure on families’ limited time.
Eleanor Updale, author of the award-winning Montmorency series of books, said a typical
30-minute classroom task often took three times as long after being “subcontracted” to
parents.
She also claimed that homework was turning children into “couch potatoes” as they spent an
increasing amount of time in their bedrooms instead of playing outside.
The comments will fuel the debate over the amount of school work completed at home.
According to government guidelines, homework is not compulsory but it is encouraged.
Advice for schools in England says five-year-olds should do one hour a week, rising to 90 to
150 minutes a day at 16. Ten and 11-year-olds should complete half an hour of homework
every day.
However, research has cast doubt on its effectiveness, and has even suggested that too much
is counter-productive.
Last year, the Association for Teachers and Lecturers called for all homework for primary
school children to be axed amid claims young pupils find the burden too “upsetting”.
Dr Updale, who is also a fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, said the educational
establishment had to “break away from the automatic assumption that homework is a good
thing”.
“Modern families are short of shared time,” she said. “To pollute their homes with the values
and anxieties of the classroom is a mistake.
“Children need space to themselves, free from the imperative to perform. In the muddle of
undirected activity they may discover interests that last a lifetime.”
Writing in the Times Educational Supplement on Friday, she added: “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 excuse to cut themselves off? It’s
homework.”
Dr Updale, whose Montmorency series of historical novels is currently being adapted for TV
and won a Blue Peter award, said that schools themselves were often "victims of homework”.
“It needs setting, marking, policing and feedback, which eat time from the school day,” she
said. “Cutting homework would reduce the burden teachers have to take home with them,
diminishing the negative effect of their jobs on their own families.”
