What is the point of homework?

This was my first thought after reading my goddaughter’s homework assignment.

She is currently in primary school and had been set a project over the half-term that required her parents to understand the instructions, find wooden sticks, schedule time to create a structure with their daughter and then spend more time explaining what they did, and why, so she could repeat it during show and tell.

This, by the way, was a maths project.

Homework: is it worth it?

I was lost as to what this was trying to achieve and it made me think about homework in general: what is any of it designed to achieve? And if we got rid of it, what would happen? Who would benefit? And, let’s be honest, would anyone really miss it?

It is worth rehearsing what it actually takes for a piece of homework to be sent home with a child.

First, a member of staff has to write a homework policy. Not just for English and maths, but for every subject.

One of the first decisions is how much time to assign to each subject’s homework. If children in key stage 3 study 14 subjects, and each subject sets a weekly homework task lasting 30 minutes, that amounts to an additional seven hours of work outside school hours. Seven hours, minimum.

Staff workload

Once the details of the homework policy are finalised, agreed among staff and communicated to parents and students, there is the work of creating the homework itself, the answers, the timetable and the deadlines for each class. This is across five year groups.

Once homework is rolled out, it becomes an additional burden for teachers: remembering which day homework is set for each of five to 20 classes, depending on the subject; what the homework is; finding classroom time to cajole students into writing it down in planners; and then chasing completion before the deadline.

All of this while remembering who was absent when it was set and preparing the next piece of homework.

Resource management

Teachers give reminders at the start and end of lessons. There are homework clubs to support students who need them, which require staffing after school or during breaks. There are text reminders and emails home. Then there are consequences to issue for those who did not hand in their homework, and marking to be done for those who did.

This is all to say that the workload burden of homework, both implementation and oversight, is immense.

And I have not even outlined what it takes for teachers to track down students who have not completed their homework, insisting they do so after the deadline alongside this week’s task, often simply to avoid triggering a behaviour policy that might see the teacher sitting in detention alongside the child.

Homework not completed

We do all of this because the system always has. But when you pause to think about it, it is overwhelming and clearly contributes to workload pressures. And, despite our hopes, not all of these issues are resolved by online homework platforms, which can introduce new complexities of their own.

Despite all this effort, there remains a sizeable minority of children who do not complete one or more subjects’ homework each week. The reasons range from a lack of support or facilities at home to absenteeism, through to outright defiance.

So why do we put ourselves through this? Surely there must be research to show that all this effort delivers meaningful rewards.

The evidence

In The Case Against Homework, the claim is made that “homework has no connection with positive learning outcomes and, for older students, the benefits of homework level off sharply after the first couple of assignments”.

John Hattie’s Visible Learning also shows homework has an effect size of just d = 0.29. There are a few ways to interpret this, but one is to say that if you compare a student who did homework to one who did not, the homework student would score the same or lower in about 42 per cent of comparisons.

But the detail matters. The effect size at primary age is d = 0.15, while for secondary students it rises to d = 0.64, which Hattie considers an excellent effect.

Why such a difference?

Primary versus secondary

Hattie suggests that this is because younger children cannot study independently without adult support. He also shows that what we set matters. Tightly defined, straightforward and closed tasks such as self-quizzing or rehearsal perform best, while open-ended and problem-orientated tasks perform worst as homework.

So, if we do insist on homework?

Primary teachers, no more “homework for parents”, please. But phonics cards and Times Tables Rockstars may be OK, because precise, focused tasks are more likely to support learning.

Secondary leaders, Hattie also found no evidence that homework develops self-discipline or time management. So what is your homework policy for?

Given the steep labour- and time- intensive effort required at every stage, from design to oversight, even in secondary schools, the most effective homework may simply be preparation for a short retrieval quiz. Nothing to hand in. Nothing to chase. If students have done the work, it will show. If they have not, it will not.

Minimal effort. Maximal impact.

But perhaps we should be braver still and get rid of homework altogether?

Naveen Rizvi is chief education officer at Unstoppable Learning

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