Christmas WS's!A poll of 1,000 11-18 year-olds commissioned by O2’s Think Big youth program, found that almost two-thirds admitted they needed to do two more hours of homework per week to succeed at school.
Other Factors Affecting Them
13% complained they didn’t have a large enough space at home to do their school work and 23% said they did not get support from home to keep them focused and encourage them to work hard.
What about the US?
This week, the College Board announced the combined reading and math SAT scores for the 2011 high school graduates fell to their lowest point since 1995 and that the SAT reading scores were the lowest on record.
Internationally the US continues to fall behind competing nations. The 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked the US at 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, behind countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China and Finland.
There’s a quagmire of expert discussions around why the US is loosing its academic leadership and about the programs and initiatives undertaken by government for schools to help students – No Child Left Behind, for example, is now criticized by some pundits as it promotes too much test preparation in schools. In this complex web of discussions, it’s hard to try to find a tangible route to take ‘for’ or ‘against’ homework.
Does Homework Hurt or Help?
However, as parents putting our common sense hats on for a minute, does it not make sense that the more time our kids spend on learning the essential reading and math skills they need, the more likely they are to succeed?
Little and often is the recommended approach by education experts to commit learned skills to long-term memory. So does ½ hour of homework every day for a grade 3 student, for example, hurt? What do you think? I’d be curious to find out how US Students would respond to the questions posed to the UK students.
