Some of our Year Six children expressed their surprise this week that they are expected to be doing homework – or as we prefer to call it Home Learning. We were surprised that they were surprised (!) as most of them have been right through our school with this expectation in place, right from Reception.
We aren’t hard-line or fanatical on setting tasks and have tried over the years to consult, listen and develop a ‘compromise’ model that works for those who don’t agree with homework and those who really value it.
As a brief reminder, this is largely centres around the expectation of daily reading, some directed practice of spelling and maths and a weekly Literacy or Numeracy task which gets longer as children progress through the school. Year 6 are expected to do additional in the two term run-up to SATs and getting ready for Secondary.
We also have menus of optional tasks, more creative ones related to foundation subjects. We do recognise that this might have been a bit hit and miss recently, certainly in pockets of the school, and will aim to improve,
The core tasks are an expectation and the evidence suggests that these are effective in supporting learning and progress. They’re also part of forming good habits. The others, the menu choices, we’ve kept because many children and families told us they enjoy them.
As an expectation, it is only fair that all children actually do the core homework, including regular reading. Our policy gives teachers the responsibility of allocating time for children who have not done the core homework to do so at breaks or other ‘down’ time. They have been reminded to do this and to apply age appropriate judgement.
The policy also refers to sanctions for repeatedly not doing homework. We’d rather not sanction anyone! Again, we’ve directed teachers to implement this appropriately for the age of their children, but certainly by Year 5 and Year 6 this might start to look like a matter for a detention. Children in these year groups particularly need to be getting into the habits that will see them successfully through Secondary school and being ‘on it’ with homework will be critical to that. Teachers will use their discretion and professional judgement to fulfil, their duties, which remain to get the best outcomes possible for the children in their classes.