Downe House School Deputy Head Academic Hugh Grant on how schools set homework tasks that are fit for purpose in the modern age
With California issuing a ban on homework earlier this year on the grounds of addressing a global decline in teenage mental wellbeing, a number of mental health experts in the UK have urged a similar policy. Most schools would continue to argue that homework remains a vital pedagogical tool – facilitating independent learning and providing opportunities for reinforcement, practice and extension. Rather than banning homework, the question should be: how do schools ensure that the work set outside of the classroom is purposeful and manageable for students?
Setting meaningful homework tasks requires us to know our students well, to understand the time constraints they work under and to encourage honest feedback. Allowing students to develop skills and to learn the facts that underpin those skills is important. This happens during the task, rather than as a result of the end product. I have files full of essays written at school and university which I do not read regularly, but the skills I developed while writing them have proved useful every day.
This distinction is not always clear when you are the one doing the homework. It is easy for students to fixate on the end product and the sense of achievement that comes with submitting a task – and herein lies the moral hazard. Years ago, students could take a short cut to the end product by copying from books; more recently this evolved into copying from websites. This sort of plagiarism reduced the thinking required, also resulting in reduced learning.
These past plagiarism short cuts are nothing compared to the current and future potential of AI. This means that schools must be mindful of how students are likely to approach the homework set. We must be explicit about the skills we want our students to develop. It means making a clear distinction between judging a task’s success from the end product and the process they have undergone to arrive there. By valuing the journey rather than the destination, we encourage students to avoid short cuts and maximise their development.
AI does have its place in the school of course, in allowing us to provide students with a wider range of multimedia tasks, but we need to teach students how to use it effectively. With the variety of adaptive platforms available, we can set tasks that differentiate and adapt to individual needs. These platforms also encourage a ‘little and often’ approach, which can space out topics and give rapid feedback to students on how they can improve.
To be purposeful then, homework needs to provide sufficient challenge to promote development without becoming boring. Setting dozens of repetitive questions week after week will not inspire students. Unfortunately, it is difficult to guard against a student responding to an increase in challenge by taking more time over the task than intended. This makes it helpful to foster a culture where our expectations of time spent on a task are clearly explained and understood. Gathering feedback from students also helps, allowing us to set better tasks in future and promote a healthy relationship with homework among young people.
Downe House School downehouse.net
Further reading: St George’s Ascot on achieving a technology balance
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