The Schoolfield

Are there schools with no homework policy?

For decades, it has been the practice of many educational practices to give students homework assignments. There are several schools that do not require their students to do homework. There has been a big push lately to stop homework in schools. It has been adopted already by most private schools and even some public schools have jumped on the band wagon. The debate is still out on whether this is going to help or hinder future generations.

Let’s take a look at the concept. The new school thought is that completing homework shows no skill. It is just a habit that is done to appease the teachers. The program that consists of no homework strives to have the kids complete their assignments at school so that they don’t have to go home and do it. They give the kids a little freedom that they can use to complete their homework. The belief is that these kids will learn how to utilize their time better to make sure that the assignments are complete.

Where did the idea come from?

The main premise behind the program is that we spend our whole educational experience doing homework outside of school hours and then we try to complete our real work from our jobs in the allotted time so that we don’t have to bring the work home. This to some seems like a backwards idea. The new system will allow the students to manage their time better in school so that they don’t have to do it at home. If students utilize their time effectively, they will be completing their assignments at school and have free time at home.

What does that change for the traditional classroom?

There obviously has to be a change to the original classroom structure to accommodate this idea. In these no homework classrooms, the structure is a little different. For one school, the structure is way different. They don’t have grade levels but skill levels instead. The children are placed in classrooms in regards to their skill. The teachers must teach the class in a different way as well. They need to incorporate the verbal lesson and written lesson with a hands-on section. So the teacher would teach the lesson and the children would apply it immediately and then they would have free time to explore the lesson on their own. This would allow them to complete what they would have had for homework in school.

This new method has not been studied to see if it is as effective as the old homework method but what has been found is that it is less stressful on the parents who have to make sure their kids finish their two hours of homework in between extracurricular activities and family obligations.