These notes record the content of a discussion between members of the full governing body of the school during a meeting on 10/03/04. As well as the general points recorded here governors offered criticism of the questionnaire of parents due to be distributed shortly. Questionnaires were completed by governors and the form amended in the light of responses and suggestions.
Governors' comments
- Parents want to know what homework is set
- There is a need for a declared regular pattern, e.g. 'spellings on Mondays'
- Children don't always know what has been set: regularity helps parents check that homework is completed
- There is a difference of patterns between one class and another
- Criticism of practice expressed in inspection questionnaire (January 2003) might relate to historical practice...
- ...especially relating to differing experience of a split year group at the time...
- ...criticism might be less pointed now (no split year groups)
- Split years will occur again in the future
- Don't want to overload children
- Need for liaison between teachers (not such an issue in the primary phase)
- Homework tasks should normally support the teaching in classes
- If teachers have a problem offering a broad and balanced curriculum in school time (pressure of time) perhaps homework allows additional breadth by using out-of-school hours...
- ...a back-door route to an enriched curriculum
- Good idea to do one questionnaire form per child (responses may well vary for siblings)
- Should assume that people will not read things the way you intend
- What do you mean by 'punishment' (question reworded to improve clarity)
- Should reading be emphasised as homework?
- Should there be a consequence in school for not completing homework?...
- ...remove privilege time?
- Offer rewards to children who do complete homework
- Far better to reward than punish...
- ...but reward must be significant enough to be influential
- Wouldn't it be a fair trade-off to not gain 5 minutes of privilege time in school if the cost was 30 minutes of own time out of school?
- Accept measure of non-compliance?
- But erosive of practice if the case
- What rewards are available? (Privilege time, verbal praise, peer group pressure/kudos, self-reward)
- There will be those who don't bother (admittedly pessimistic)
- Need for teachers to establish a climate in which completion is the norm: children enjoy teacher recognition of effort
- Must not adopt practices that demotivate those who do want to complete homework
- Raffle ticket system (secondary phase practice)
- Persistent non-completion of homework tasks requires contact with parents to challenge at source
- Parents need encouragement to help take homework seriously
- Non-completion of homework may be symptomatic of wider issues getting in the way of learning and/or good relationships between 'home' and 'school'.
