Two parents can walk out of the same parent-teacher meeting with opposite complaints. One says: there’s not enough homework, how will she practise? The other says: he was crying at nine last night over a page of sums.
Both are being honest. And both are describing the same thing from different ends. So let us set out plainly what we think homework is for, how much is right, and what to do when it’s clearly not working in your house.
What homework is actually for
Homework has exactly two jobs. It should give a child practice at something already understood, and it should build the habit of sitting down and finishing a piece of work alone.
That’s it. Homework is not for:
- Teaching something the class didn’t get to
- Proving to parents that the school is strict
- Keeping children occupied
- Punishment
If a child has to be taught the concept at home before they can start the homework, the homework has failed — and honestly, so has that day’s lesson. That is a school problem, not a parent problem, and it is entirely fair to say so.
Roughly how much is right
There is no law here, but the rule of thumb used by most thoughtful schools worldwide is about ten minutes per grade, per night:
- Grades I–II: 10–20 minutes, plus reading
- Grades III–V: 30–50 minutes
- Grades VI–VIII: 60–80 minutes
- Grades IX–X: 90–120 minutes, more in the board year
Two things about these numbers. First, they assume a child working at a reasonable pace, not a child who has already spent two hours at tuition. Second, they are a ceiling to notice, not a target to hit. A Grade 3 child who finishes good work in twenty minutes has not been short-changed.
If your Grade 4 child is regularly working past 8:30 PM on school work, something is wrong. It might be the quantity, it might be the difficulty, it might be how the evening is organised — but it is worth finding out which.
Three different problems that look identical
“My child struggles with homework” usually turns out to be one of three quite different things. They need different fixes, so it’s worth working out which one you have.
1. It’s too much
Your child understands the work and does it correctly, but there’s simply too much of it and it eats the evening. Tell the class teacher. Be specific: “This took him seventy minutes on Tuesday and fifty on Wednesday.” A number is very hard for a school to argue with.
2. It’s too hard
Your child sits down willingly and then stalls, or asks you to explain from scratch. This is not a homework problem — it’s a signal that a concept didn’t land in class. Don’t solve it silently at home for weeks. Tell the teacher, because if your child is lost, roughly six others are too.
3. It’s a battle of wills
Your child can do it, in a reasonable time, and simply doesn’t want to. This is the most common of the three and the least serious. It needs a routine, not a lecture.
The routine that fixes most homework arguments
Almost every homework war we’ve helped a family end came down to the same four changes:
- A fixed time, decided once. Not “after you finish playing”. An actual time — 5:30, say — negotiated once and then never renegotiated. The daily argument is the exhausting part, not the homework.
- A fixed place, with nothing else on it. The same table, clear of everything except that one subject. No phone in the room. Not on silent — not in the room.
- You nearby, not over their shoulder. Sit in the same room doing your own work. Present enough that they don’t drift, far enough that they own it. This one change transforms things in most homes.
- A hard stop. If the agreed time is up and the work isn’t done, stop anyway. Write a one-line note to the teacher: “We worked for 45 minutes and got through half.” No good teacher will punish a child for that, and the note tells us something we need to know.
That last one worries parents most, and it shouldn’t. We would far rather have the information than a completed page finished at 10 PM by an exhausted parent.
Please don’t do it for them
We say this gently, because the impulse comes from love. When you complete the diagram or work out the sums yourself, the notebook looks perfect and we learn nothing about what your child can actually do. We then teach the next lesson assuming they followed the last one. The gap widens quietly for months.
A wrong answer in your child’s own handwriting is worth more to us than a right one in yours. Truly.
Where reading fits in
In the primary years, if you can only protect one thing in the evening, protect reading over written homework. Fifteen minutes of a book — read to them, or by them — does more for a child’s long-term academic life than an extra worksheet ever will. We’ve written about how to build that habit in this post.
How we think about it here
We set homework because practice matters and because learning to finish something on your own is a real skill. But we try to keep it purposeful rather than heavy, and our teachers would much rather hear from you than have you struggle silently. A short note in the diary saying “this took too long” is not a complaint. It is useful information, and we treat it that way.
A child’s evening should still have some room in it — for play, for a meal with the family, for being bored. That isn’t wasted time. It’s part of the kind of education we believe in.
If homework is a nightly battle in your home, talk to your child’s class teacher first. And if you’d like to know how we approach it here, come and ask us.
