Schools should draw up ‘homework contracts’ with parents

Schools should draw up ‘homework contracts’ with parents

Parents would commit to ensuring their children finish their homework, whilst teachers would agree on setting ‘high quality’ homework and providing ‘regular contact’ and necessary support to parents, telegraph.co.uk reported.

The report, published by The Social Market Foundation’s commission on inequality in education, found that pupils with parents who make sure they complete their homework before they do other activities, like watching TV, score almost two points (1.93) higher in verbal reasoning tests aged 11.

The report recommended that contracts should be signed in the early weeks of first attending school and then renewed annually with each year’s teachers as the child progresses through the school.

The commission, headed by former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, criticized the homework produced by some schools, and found that “poor quality homework is likely to lead only to a downward spiral of engagement”.

A recent survey of school leaders and pupils for Ofsted found that 50 percent of children said that their homework never, or only some of the time, helped them to make progress.

A fifth of the 100 senior leaders interviewed for the survey acknowledged that the monitoring and evaluation of homework was an area that needed to be improved in their schools.