Is homework affecting extracurricular activities? By Priyasha aged 13
Is homework affecting extra-curricular activities? Introduction: Learning occurs throughout a person s lifetime, none more so than through childhood. One way to achieve this is through extra-curricular activities. The definition of extra curricular activities is wide; it can vary from learning a new language, to training in a sport. The limit is endless, anything which constitutes as learning. At school, some of these opportunities are being given, but as learning takes place in so many forms, a lot of learning takes place outside of school. Many students enjoying learning in their spare time as they have a freedom of choice to do anything they want. But I feel that that is being hampered by homework, which is taking up a lot of time. The Homework: guidelines for primary and secondary schools, from the government states that: Homework need not, and should not, get in the way of other activities that they may do after school such as sport, music and clubs of all kinds. These activities can be very beneficial and one of the aims of the Government s proposals for the development of study support (see Extending Opportunity: A national Framework for Study Support * published earlier this year) is that a wide range of after school activities should be available to children who have not had access to them in the past. (Homework: guidelines for primary and secondary schools Source DFES): I chose to do this topic because I personally feel that I can t achieve all the things I would like to do because I have to do homework. I also wanted to find out what students thought about the amount of homework they get and homework in general so I could find out if it was affecting everyone in the same way. Method (questionnaire): My first data collection method was a questionnaire. I piloted my questionnaire to my tutor group first and then, after checking it through with Mrs X, and then went round the tutor groups giving them my questionnaire. I decided to give it to tutor groups rather then classes because you get a varied age range. I stayed with them while they completed the questionnaire so that I would get them all back, and I could help them if needed. This worked quite well, however, due to time restraints, I only visited two tutor groups, and if I had a bigger sample, I might have got a better average. I didn t ask for names so to keep the questionnaire anonymous. I used as many open questions as I could because I wanted the students to give their own opinion rather than pick one that I had given them. I also used the Likert scale for a few questions and that gave me good graph data. With one of the questions, a lot of the students got quite confused and didn t give and answer which gave me incomplete data. Findings (questionnaire): This graph shows the students perception of the average amount of time they spend on Average Amount of time spent on each piece of homework 150 128 120 Minutes 90 60 81 53 55 78 30 0 7 8 9 10 11 Year Group
homework. This is the recommended homework guidelines (Homework: guidelines for primary and secondary schools Source DFES): Years 7 & 8 Year 9 Years 10 & 11 45-90 minutes per day 1-2 hours a day 1.5-2.5 hours a day This graph shows the students opinion on the amount of homework they get. Just over half the students think that they get too much homework. None of the students felt they didn t get enough homework. 40% of students do their homework straight after school. This graph shows the students opinion on homework. 43% of students thought that homework was okay. The 54% disliked, or hated it. Only one person said they liked it. I asked the students to comment on why they thought this, and 76% of students gave negative comments, such as: it wastes time; pointless; repetitive; boring; and it never gets marked. I asked the students how many pieces of homework they thought we should get, and the response was to get less homework than we do now, and only for necessary subjects, or exams and coursework. The range was from none to 7 pieces of homework, and the mode was 4/5 or none.
Method (focus group): After looking at the responses to my questionnaire, I saw that not many people had taken the last few questions seriously, and they were the questions linked to extra-curricular activities. So I decided that I needed to find out what extra-curricular activities students do, and would like to do. I was inspired by a drawing of I similar thing that I had done, and thought doing that in a focus group would give me the results I wanted. I wanted them to draw everything they currently were learning and everything they wanted to learn. I sent an email out to the whole school but only a few replied, because many students don t check their emails. In the end, only four people arrived, but I still got a good set of results. The participants conversed during the task, and found that they had a lot in common. Three of them already knew each other and it was very relaxing. Findings (focus group): The focus group findings were very detailed and consistent. The main themes were creative subjects such as music, art, cooking; learning languages; and future careers. The ideas were pretty much the same, showing that many people want to do the same things. The first thing everyone started off drawing is music, which could show that is a main extra-curricular activity that is very popular. Three of the drawings were randomly structured with the ideas not grouped, and one was structured into sections. There were a lot of things on the drawing, and the girls commented that they couldn t do all of them and that they prefer out of school clubs. They also supported the view of the questionnaire results, and said that they would like to scrap homework because they didn t think they needed it, but they didn t mind doing revision and coursework. Discussion: What is quite surprising is that younger students are spending more time on homework than older students are. According to the guidelines, Years 7 & 8 are spending too much time, Year 9 are spending the almost the right amount of time, and Year 10 & 11 are not spending enough time. This may be because as students get older they may not value homework as important as they did when they were younger. The recommended time for homework is 30 minutes. Another reason might be because students are not interested in the task and therefore put it off and spend a long time doing it. In additional comments, a lot of people asked for homework to be decreased, or for it to be removed. As I was conducting the questionnaire, I was often asked if this was going to stop homework. A quote from the additional comments is to be honest homework kind of gets me depressed. A lot of children thought that homework was only being given for the sake of being given instead of having a purpose. They expressed that they would be happy to do homework if it was needed, such as revision and finishing classwork. In the SchoolHomework Policy, these two statements are made (School Parent Handbook): Set tasks that are suitable and achievable within the time available Mark homework and give feedback The time allocation for homework is 30 mins, but 81% of students spend more than that on average, on each piece of homework. Also, as the comments show homework does not tend to get marked. If I redid this, I would include a question to ask about how often work gets marked. Conclusion:
From my research, I can conclude that most students spend quite a lot of time over homework, and they think it wastes time. Most students don t think homework has a purpose, and it is boring and repetitive. However, 82% do know why we have homework. Most students dislike homework, and all students want homework to be decreased. I found that students thought homework was useful if it was revision for exams, and coursework, but generally thought that homework was being given for the sake of giving it. They mainly thought this because it hardly ever gets marked. (I didn t ask a question on this but this was a common theme in additional comments.) Students, including myself, do want to learn things outside of school but the main reason is they don t have enough time. If they didn t have to do homework then maybe they would be able to participate in more extra-curricular activities, adding diversity in the people that attend this school. Bibliography Homework: guidelines for primary and secondary schools Source DFES (http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm?id=12761 ) School Homework Policy