Should Homework Be Scrapped?

Source written for Revision Library (original, copyright-free).

Do you dread the moment your teacher says, 'Right, here's tonight's homework'? You are not alone. For as long as anyone can remember, homework has followed every school day home through the front door, and for just as long, pupils, parents and even some teachers have argued about whether it actually does any good. Is homework a genuinely useful part of learning, or is it, as some critics claim, an outdated habit that schools should finally scrap?

Supporters of homework make a straightforward case. Lessons only last a certain number of minutes, they argue, and homework gives pupils extra time to practise what they have learned, whether that means working through maths problems, reading a novel chapter by chapter, or revising key facts before a test. Homework can also teach skills that go beyond any single subject: managing your own time, working without a teacher standing over your shoulder, and building the kind of independent study habits that become essential in secondary school and beyond. Some surveys of secondary school pupils suggest that those who regularly complete homework tend to feel more confident walking into exams, simply because the material feels familiar rather than new.

Critics, however, argue that homework causes more problems than it solves. After a full day of lessons, they say, children need time to rest, play, see their families and get enough sleep, and homework eats into all of these. There is also a fairness problem. A pupil with a quiet bedroom, a reliable laptop and a parent free to help after dinner has a huge advantage over a pupil sharing a noisy living room with younger siblings and no computer at all. Rather than levelling the playing field, critics argue, homework can end up widening the very gaps in achievement that schools are supposed to be closing.

Faced with this disagreement, some schools have started to rethink their approach rather than abandoning homework altogether. At Ashcroft Academy, a secondary school in Leeds, homework was cut back sharply two years ago in favour of shorter, more focused tasks, alongside free after-school homework clubs where pupils without a quiet space at home can work using the school's computers and books. 'We didn't want to scrap homework completely,' explains deputy head teacher Daniel Osoba, 'but we wanted every pupil to have a genuinely fair chance of completing it well, not just the ones lucky enough to have the right conditions at home.'

It is worth asking whether the real argument is not homework versus no homework, but good homework versus bad homework. Twenty identical spelling words copied out five times each teaches a pupil very little except how to hold a pen for longer. A short, carefully chosen task that makes a pupil think, practise a genuine skill, or connect a lesson to their own life is a completely different matter, however long or short it happens to be.

So, should homework be scrapped? Perhaps the fairest answer is that scrapping homework altogether would throw away something genuinely useful, but simply setting more of it is not the answer either. What seems to matter far more than the amount of homework a school sets is its quality, and whether every pupil, whatever their home life looks like, has a fair chance to complete it. The next time homework lands on your desk, it might be worth asking not 'why do I have to do this?' but 'is this actually helping me learn?'