What happened when a school made homework optional?

Complaints about homework often fall on deaf ears – but not at Dar Al Marefa School in Dubai, which decided to fundamentally rethink what homework should look like
31st July 2020, 12:15pm

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What happened when a school made homework optional?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/what-happened-when-school-made-homework-optional
Colleges & Schools Should Let Learners Find Hobbies Or Spend Time With Their Family Instead Of Setting Them Homework

Homework is often the bane of teachers, pupils and parents’ lives, eating into personal time and causing friction between all involved.

Yet for time immemorial, it has been set, with the expectation that it is delivered on time and without excuse.

But at Dar Al Marefa School in Dubai, something quite different is happening. Homework is optional.

Well, that’s perhaps a slight exaggeration - reading and maths are still compulsory.

But, for all other subjects, there is no specific requirement for teachers to set homework or pupils to complete it.

A radical idea

Ian Thurston, head of secondary at Dar Al Marefa School, is the man behind this seemingly radical idea, and he explains how it came about in the latest Tes International podcast.

“It started in term one because we identified there was a big problem in that everyone was complaining about homework - parents said there was too much, children were stressed, teachers found the homework timetable didn’t always work for them.”

“So, we looked at it and said ‘why are we doing this traditional model?’ - just because it has been done this way is not a good enough answer. I always look at things and say ‘why do we do this?’ and the answer ‘we always have done it this way’ has never been good enough.”

To fully understand the extent of these issues, the school surveyed staff to ensure it had a clearer idea of what most parents felt about homework.

“The results were clear: more than 70 per cent of parents felt the homework we were setting was having a negative impact on their child’s wellbeing, and 50 to 60 per cent of parents felt homework we were setting was not adding any academic value, which meant we had to look at what are we doing with homework.”  

Reading the research

From here the idea was formed: make all but reading and maths homework optional. To call this a bold move is, perhaps, an understatement.

“It wasn’t simple; it was seen as being a bit out of leftfield and the immediate reaction from teachers, the board and parents, was ‘why?’

“But I go back to ‘why do we want to do something, what do we want to achieve?’

Of course, the decision to do this wasn’t made overnight, with the school spending a lot of time looking at research around homework to truly understand how it helps - and hinders - students, and families, so it knew what the implication would be of the change.

“Every school improvement I want to see happen in my school has to be research-backed - so we looked into a lot around homework, which varied and was very interesting in itself,” Thurston explains.

“Most research will say, yes, homework adds value; at schools that give homework, students do better. But when you dive into it, there are a lot of underlining inconsistencies. It depends on the age of the student - homework works well for older students but less so for younger students. And there is increasing evidence homework adds to stress for not only students but families as well.”

What to keep

From here, the next move was to understand what homework - now termed “home learning” in the school - should remain compulsory and what should become optional.

The decision was that reading and maths would remain.

“The idea was to make reading compulsory every evening, as we are a bilingual school and study in English and in Arabic, we want students to be reading three nights a week in Arabic and three nights a week in English.”

Maths was also chosen because of the positive knock-on impacts the skill has in other areas from business studies to art.

Of course, the question this poses is: how did other teachers feel about this?

“The initial reaction is ‘you don’t value my subject if mine is not compulsory’, but by involving staff...we got a working party together and everyone was involved in the research and everyone found out for themselves that reading does impact on all subjects, [as does] maths,” Thurston explains.

“[And] yes, earlier on there were fears that with optional homework no-one will submit it - but that didn’t happen,” he says, noting that submission rates have remained the same even during lockdown.

A flexible future

Furthermore, the aim is that with removing the need to set homework as a scheduled task, it offers more flexibility to teachers to set more interesting, beneficial and less-pressured homework.

“The research says that homework for homework’s sake does not add much value, but projects, where suitably timed, do add value and students get much more involved in it, [so] we have taken the shackles off teachers.”

Secondly, the change also means parents now have the option to decide what is right for their child with regards to how much work they are doing and when - something Thurston does on a personal level, too.

“Those parents who complained there was too much [homework] can now decide what homework is relevant for their children and some weeks it might be suitable, some weeks it might not.

“I know that I myself have written a note saying ‘they haven’t done their homework as they were too tired’ and that’s a judgement call that I make as a parent that my child is better served getting a good night’s sleep and going into school being more productive during those schools hours than staying up [doing homework].”

More family time

Thurston adds that, particularly in the Middle East, family time is an especially important part of children’s lives and so, for many parents, being able to allow their children to take part in family activities knowing homework can be left for that evening makes everyone happier.

“Some parents have said that is exactly what I want for my kids, I want them to go to school and learn academic subjects but when they finish that school day, I want them to have a life as a child and learn lots of other things and not have to worry about homework.”

The plan now is to continue with this push when school returns to the classroom in September and monitor the submission rates and uptake of homework.

“We will be reviewing very regularly and making sure we are getting things right. With anything new you do, you will never get it 100 per cent right and there will always be things you can improve on...I like to look at data and see what it is showing us,” says Thurston.

“When we test the reading age of students, are they improving faster now, are rates of homework submission rising or falling, in terms of student wellbeing are they reporting they feel happier now then they did last year...all these metrics we can use to analyse whether it’s having a positive impact or not.”

To find out more about the project and how it was implemented - and plans for the future - watch the full interview below on YouTube or listen to the audio podcast on the player below or on your podcast platform of choice.

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