Is homework pointless?

Kim Kardashian has sparked a fresh debate about homework, saying she doesn’t “believe in it” because her children are already “in school for eight hours a day”. When they’re not in class, they should “play sports, live their lives” and “spend time with their family”, she said.

The reality star’s wishes for her own children, aged 12, nine, seven and six, have resonated with many British mums and dads, reopening the long-standing homework divide.

‘Unnecessary stress’

Homework for primary school children “doesn’t have a positive effect”, said Victoria Richards in The i Paper. In fact, studies have produced “stark” findings that doing too much homework can “actually send student performance back the other way” and is a “primary source of stress”, affecting “health” and “cutting into time spent with family and friends and hobbies”.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So, why are we “making young kids do blind tests and extra equations on a Saturday when they’d be better off blowing off steam playing football or hanging out with their mates”? My kids are “exhausted” from school and “I don’t want their home” to “become another source of stress”.

Homework is “not compulsory by law”, said Georgina Fuller in The Times, but “many primary schools seem to set it for children as young as four”. In my experience, it “inevitably falls to the parents” and, judging by the queries in my school WhatsApp group about “spelling tests” and “maths equations”, this “causes lots of unnecessary stress for families”.

‘Understand the concepts’

Homework is still “an important part of schooling, if it has purpose”, Dr Emily Levy, a learning and academic skills specialist, told Newsweek. It “allows children to independently practise skills they learned at school and make sure they understand the concepts”.

And it actually has the backing of more adults than it used to. Nearly 70% of people think children should have homework, according to a study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London – a significant increase on 21% in a similar survey in 1937.

Technology has also changed the face of homework: where pupils used to get given a textbook and told to cover them with “bits of old wallpaper to preserve them”, now they’re “issued with passwords, digital logins, dashboards and any number of online resources”, said Jennifer Powers in The Independent.

“The relentless march to digitise education is frustrating parents and harming children”. I think it’s “ironic” that schools “lecture parents and pupils” about “the dangers of too much screen time” but then require the “pervasive use of screens” for homework.