do students usually complete homework in australia

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Opinion: What’s the point of homework?

The following opinion piece authored by Dr Katina Zammit, Deputy Dean, School of Education was first published with full links on  The Conversation (opens in a new window).

Homework hasn’t changed much in the past few decades. Most children are still sent home with about an hour’s worth of homework each day, mostly practising what they were taught in class.

If we look internationally, homework is assigned in every country that participated in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012.

Across the participating countries, 15-year-old students reported spending almost five hours per week doing homework in 2012. Australian students spent six hours per week on average on homework. Students in Singapore spent seven hours on homework, and in Shanghai, China they did homework for about 14 hours per week on average.

Shanghai and Singapore routinely score higher than Australia in the PISA maths, science and reading tests. But homework could just be one of the factors leading to higher results. In Finland, which also scores higher than Australia, students spent less than three hours on homework per week.

So, what’s the purpose of homework and what does the evidence say about whether it fulfils its purpose?

Why do teachers set homework?

Each school in Australia has its own homework policy developed in consultation with teachers and parents or caregivers, under the guiding principles of state or regional education departments.

For instance, according to the New South Wales homework policy “… tasks should be assigned by teachers with a specific, explicit learning purpose”.

Homework in NSW should also be “purposeful and designed to meet specific learning goals”, and “built on knowledge, skills and understanding developed in class”. But there is limited, if any, guidance on how often homework should be set.

Research based on teacher interviews shows they set homework for a range of reasons. These include to:

• establish and improve communication between parents and children about learning
• help children be more responsible, confident and disciplined
• practise or review material from class
• determine children’s understanding of the lesson and/or skills
• introduce new material to be presented in class
• provide students with opportunities to apply and integrate skills to new situations or interest areas
• get students to use their own skills to create work.

So, does homework achieve what teachers intend it to?

Do we know if it ‘works’?

Studies on homework are frequently quite general, and don’t consider specific types of homework tasks. So it isn’t easy to measure how effective homework could be, or to compare studies.

But there are several things we can say.

First, it’s better if every student gets the kind of homework task that benefits them personally, such as one that helps them answer questions they had, or understand a problem they couldn’t quite grasp in class. This promotes students’ confidence and control of their own learning.

Giving students repetitive tasks may not have much value. For instance, calculating the answer to 120 similar algorithms, such as adding two different numbers 120 times may make the student think maths is irrelevant and boring. In this case, children are not being encouraged to find solutions but simply applying a formula they learnt in school.

In primary schools, homework that aims to improve children’s confidence and learning discipline can be beneficial. For example, children can be asked to practise giving a presentation on a topic of their interest. This could help build their competence in speaking in front of a class.

Homework can also highlight equity issues. It can be particularly burdensome for socioeconomically disadvantaged students who may not have a space, the resources or as much time due to family and work commitments. Their parents may also not feel capable of supporting them or have their own work commitments.

According to the PISA studies mentioned earlier, socioeconomically disadvantaged 15 year olds spend nearly three hours less on homework each week than their advantaged peers.

What kind of homework is best?

Homework can be engaging and contribute to learning if it is more than just a sheet of maths or list of spelling words not linked to class learning. From summarising various studies’ findings, “good” homework should be:

• personalised to each child rather than the same for all students in the class. This is more likely to make a difference to a child’s learning and performance
• achievable, so the child can complete it independently, building skills in managing their time and behaviour
• aligned to the learning in the classroom.

If you aren’t happy with the homework your child is given then approach the school. If your child is having difficulty with doing the homework, the teacher needs to know. It shouldn’t be burdensome for you or your children.

1 September 2021

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Education News

The pros and cons of homework.

John Hattie is Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the author of Visible Learning , a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement in education.

When deciding on how much, and what, homework to hand out, Hattie says there are quite a few things teachers should consider.

“Homework in primary school has a measurable effect of around zero,” Hattie told BBC Radio 4 Journalist Sarah Montague.

“In high school it does have a larger measurable effect, which is why we need to get it right, not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking at in our primary schools to say ‘Is it really making a difference?”’

Hattie looked at research studies from all over the world that have tried to measure the impact of various factors on education, including the optimal time students should be spending on homework.

He found homework appears to be more effective for higher-ability rather than lower-ability students, and for older rather than younger students.

CensusAtSchool is a collaborative project involving teachers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Education, which examines the lives of children in year four to 12.

A comparison of the findings from 2008 to 2013, reveals that Australian children are spending more time doing homework than they were five years ago.

In 2008, Australian children spent an average of 5.3 hours a week doing their homework. Today that has jumped to seven hours a week. Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said he was concerned by the trend that kids were spending an increasing amount of time on homework, and believes the trend is linked to higher levels of anxiety.

“I actually think less is more with homework, because there seems to be so much stress around school,” he said.

A number of primary schools in Australia are effectively handing the decision-making power over to parents, allowing parents to permanently excuse children from homework.

Some primary schools have even sent letters home to parents outlining their reasoning for setting homework, but ultimately recognising that parents are best placed to make decisions about whether or not their children have the capacity or time to complete it.

Hattie is more positive about giving secondary school aged children homework.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that high-school aged Australian students are also spending more hours doing homework each week.

The report found that 15-year-old Australian students spend an average of six hours a week doing homework. That marks an increase of 0.3 hours per week from the 2003 study.

Australia and Austria were the only countries to report a statistically significant increase in the amount of time students spend doing homework.

“The overall effect of homework on achievement in older students is positive, but there are quite a few qualifications to that,” Hattie writes in Visible Learning . Qualifications included things like the age of the learner, the amount of homework, and whether the homework was task-oriented or complex and unstructured.

Neurologist and former classroom teacher Judy Willis says if a teacher knows a bit about the brain, he or she can plan homework to suit the needs of students as they develop.

“During early school years, for example, the brain is focused on getting to grips with the world around us. Memories and understanding grow when new information can be linked to things we already know. Homework that helps with this recognition can build literacy and numeracy skills,” says Willis.

“When students reach adolescence, they become more independent and self-directed. There is shift away from rote memorisation and single, correct responses. Learning goals are more likely to focus on reading for content and comprehension, revising, report writing, solving problems, investigating and independent or group work.”

Willis says that while the amount of time spent on homework will always vary depending on the age of students, there are a few physiological guidelines to remember.

“After about 15 minutes of learning and practising something – such as the Pythagorean theorem in maths – the regions of the brain activated in spatial-numerical learning get fatigued and need to rebuild the neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, that get depleted,” says Willis. “The restoration only takes a few minutes if the break is timely, but if they are pushed to stay with that same process for too long, stress builds, neurotransmitters drop way down and it will take twice as long to restore full efficiency to that area of the brain.”

Willis recommends online games for learning basic knowledge as they usually have set timings.

“You can assign a specific amount of time to be spent on the skill-building program for homework and confirm students’ compliance by checking the teachers’ pages,” she says.

“When students know that the effort they put into homework will enhance their participation and enjoyment of classroom learning, they become more motivated. Pupils also put more effort into schoolwork or homework when they are engaged in something that is relevant to their studies.”

One of the studies Hattie examined warned against homework that undermined a student’s motivation, as it could lead to the student internalising incorrect routines.

“For too many students, homework reinforces that they cannot learn by themselves and that they cannot do the schoolwork,” says Hattie. “Ensuring that students are assessment-capable learners is the most important thing we can do to raise student achievement.”

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Evidence for Learning: Homework

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Study finds homework has limited value

New research has found that homework is of little value to primary school children, and students are regularly given too much.

Australian academics Richard Walker and Mike Horsley's new book Reforming Homework says homework for young primary school children is of little or no value when it comes to academic achievement.

The book reviews international research on the subject and concludes that the quality of the homework that is set is more important than the quantity.

Associate Professor Walker, of the University of Sydney, admits that homework can be a touchy subject.

"There's a lot of disagreement, I have to say. But the consensus findings would essentially be homework's not very beneficial for primary school kids, very limited benefits for junior high school kids, and reasonable benefits for senior high school kids," he said.  

He says another point that emerged from the research was the effect of the involvement of parents in homework.

"Where parents are over-controlling or interfering in their student's homework activities, then that's been shown pretty clearly to not be beneficial," he said.

"But where parents support their children's autonomy and essentially try to provide guidance and assistance rather than being interfering and controlling, that's beneficial for students."

Despite the research showing overall that homework was of limited value for younger children, that was for academic outcomes only. 

It did not discount the value of homework in children developing skills such as managing their time and setting and completing tasks. 

'Too much homework'

Professor Horsley, from Central Queensland University, says the book's most important finding is that the quality of the homework that is set is more important than the quantity. 

"There's probably too much homework and that most of this homework is of a drill or consolidation nature," he said.

"In other words, we think that there's probably too much worksheet-based homework.

"We think that there's probably too much homework which is practice basically."

Professor Horsley says the book is aimed at teachers and parents as well as students.

"What we're proposing in our book is that teachers develop a homework curriculum," he said.

"That is when the teachers are planning their unit of work they should probably plan homework at that time.

"Homework is often an add-on.

"So one of the things [is] to try and get the planning of homework to be more sophisticated and nuanced and much more structured and organised."

Associate Professor Walker says the book also suggests other new approaches to homework.

He says homework should be more of a social experience.  

"Homework tends to be seen as being an individual activity," he said.

"But if you see homework as being social and cultural in nature, then that means that you're going to set different types of homework for students.

"You're probably going to emphasise more collaborative learning.

"You're probably going to emphasise the fact that students need some assistance with their homework from parents and other people, rather than just the idea of students sitting at home, in isolation, doing their homework."

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School operations

The purpose of this policy is to ensure all schools work with their school communities to develop and communicate a considered homework policy.

• Victorian government schools are required to have a homework policy and communicate it to staff, parents/carers and students.
• The content of this policy is not prescribed, but should be evidence-informed and comprehensive, and must be developed in consultation with the school community.
• School council approval of a school’s homework policy is not required.
• A homework policy template is available on the School Policy Templates Portal External Link (staff login required); schools are encouraged to adapt this template to suit their needs.

Victorian government schools are required to have a homework policy.

The content of this policy is not prescribed by the Department, but should be evidence-informed and comprehensive, outlining:

• a rationale for the elements of the school’s policy
• the responsibilities and expectations of teachers, students and parents/carers in setting, completing, monitoring and responding to homework

The school’s homework policy must be developed in consultation with the school council, as representatives of the school community, and school staff and students. School council approval of a school’s homework policy is not required.

Victorian government schools must periodically communicate their homework policy to staff, parents, carers and students through available communication channels (such as the school newsletter, or by placing the policy on the school’s website).

The setting of homework can be seen as one way of:

• complementing and reinforcing classroom learning
• fostering good lifelong learning and study habits
• developing self-regulation processes such as goal-setting, self-efficacy, self-reflection and time management
• supporting partnerships with parents/carers by connecting families with the learning of their children

The effectiveness of homework can be enhanced when:

• it is set at an appropriate level for each student, supporting those who are experiencing difficulty and extending those of high-ability
• it is related to essential learning at school
• choice in tasks is provided
• it is assessed by teachers, either formally or informally, with feedback provided
• it supports students to have a balance of school-related and non-school related activity in their lives (i.e. where the amount of homework set provides sufficient additional time for students to engage with family, sport and recreation, cultural pursuits and employment, where appropriate)

Definitions

Homework Tasks assigned to students by school teachers that are meant to be carried out during non-school hours.

Reviewed 11 January 2024

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Policy last updated

15 June 2020

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Why do international students choose to study in Australia?

Research Fellow, Victoria University

Director, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

Research Officer, Victoria University

Disclosure statement

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Victoria University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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University education for international students is touted as one of “Australia’s most successful exports”.

International education was worth A$36.4 billion to the Australian economy in 2022–23. Many of Australia’s universities also rely on international student fees to fund their research .

But despite this success, COVID border closures showed Australia cannot take international student revenue for granted. Australia also faces ongoing competition for international students from other English-speaking countries as well as rising competition from countries such as China. As the recent Universities Accord final report noted , the international student market is “volatile”.

Our study looks at why international students want to come to Australia. It then suggests ways we can make the international education sector more sustainable.

Read more: We are hurtling towards a million international students in Australia – migration changes will only slow this growth, not stop it

Our paper looked at 46 peer-reviewed studies between 1998 and 2023 that examined why international students choose to come to Australia to study.

From this, we identified 22 “pull” factors that drive international students’ choice of Australia as their tertiary education destination.

The pull factors are those that relate to Australia and which we have some control over.

What we found

The five most frequently reported reasons Australia appealed to students were:

career opportunities and life experiences

quality education and qualification

cost of study and living

migration prospects and policy

reputation of tertiary education institutions and academic staff.

Further analysis showed environmental factors (those related to living in Australia) had more influence on students’ decision-making than academic factors (those related to study).

This means factors such as career and life experiences, a safe environment and a student’s proximity to their home country were more important than a quality education or qualification, or the reputation of an institution.

But the analysis also shows academic factors are still of course important and cannot be ignored.

Our main competitors

Australia needs to be careful to maintain its position as a desirable place for international students to come and spend precious time and money.

The United States and United Kingdom are Australia’s biggest competitors for international students. Both easily outrank Australia in prestigious international university rankings. So it is difficult for Australia to compete with the US and UK on academic terms.

But Australia is facing rising competition in both academic and environmental terms from traditional source countries such as China and Malaysia.

Asian destinations mean students do not have to travel as far from home. More importantly, many Asian universities, particularly in China, are rising in world university rankings.

How does Australia stay competitive?

Australia needs to think carefully about how it will remain competitive and attractive for students. There are four key ways it can do this.

First, it can ensure adequate support for international students to be employable in Australia when they graduate. Australian universities should guarantee international students work experience in their field of study.

Second, there also needs to be a clear migration pathway for international students who graduate and get a relevant job. As the recent migration review noted:

Australia is not focused enough on capturing high-potential international students.

Third, we need to broaden our academic reputation. At the moment, international students are concentrated in some metropolitan universities.

Australia needs to promote the academic and environmental benefits of studying in regional areas. There may be different courses on offer and opportunities to see different parts of Australia. In addition, when studying in regional Australia, international students can earn points towards their skilled visa applications.

Finally, we need to promote pathways between vocational education (such as TAFEs) and universities. At the moment Australia does not do much to promote the possibility of studying at TAFE first and then moving to a university course. We looked at studies that showed some students are deterred by highly competitive university entry schemes. This is especially the case with some Chinese and Vietnamese students who then apply to study in other countries.

By promoting these pathways, Australia can also attract those willing to be trained in areas where there are skills shortages .

Read more: 'Very few companies are open for international students': South Asian graduates say they need specific support to find jobs

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, going to school, primary school homework tips.

Teachers design primary school homework to be relevant, rewarding and even fun for your child. A little preparation and planning can make it even more beneficial.

Input from parents and carers is crucial to learning outcomes, and homework is also a great opportunity for this to occur.

However, families are busy and having the right structures in place helps keep it from becoming an additional source of stress. Below you'll find tips, information and resources to achieve this.

At a glance

• Homework is usually revision of concepts already covered in class.
• Get into a routine of doing homework at a set time.
• Ask your child to tell you about their homework.
• Don't jump in and give them the answers. Homework is also about teaching kids to be independent learners.
• If your child is struggling with homework, talk to their teacher.

Video: Helping with homework

Duration: 4:20mins

Transcript from Helping with homework video

Aims and benefits

Homework is effective when it reinforces content already covered in class, which is why it often takes the form of revision.

But it's not meant to be dull and repetitive, learning by rote. Quite the opposite, it's intended to help children retain new information by revisiting similar material in a different environment.

Homework brings children's school experience into the home, allowing families to understand their progress and engage more closely with the curriculum.

What if there's a problem?

If your child is struggling, try to work out if it's a time management issue or something to do with the content:

• You can address time management by following some of the advice below.
• If it's related to content, discuss it with their teacher. They'll be able to offer advice, or perhaps recommend an appointment with your GP to check for hearing, eyesight or other potential issues.

Right time, right place

To get them started it helps to create the right environment.

We can't expect perfectly quiet homes all the time but we can minimise distractions by switching off televisions and music and asking children to put devices aside.

For older children the best place to work could be their bedroom or some other quiet corner of the house but younger ones may be better off with parents or carers nearby.

Wherever they are, ensure they have access to all the right equipment such as:

• scrap paper
• laptop/tablet
• internet access and a printer (but only if required by the task).

Deciding when and how to structure homework time is important too. Does your child work best straight after coming home or after they've had a chance to wind down?

Younger children can only sustain relatively short bursts of concentration, usually about 15 minutes. Those in Kindergarten aren't necessarily expected to fully complete all their formal homework. They may only need to read books.

Even older children often need breaks. It's okay to allow these but try not to let it interfere with the workflow - suggest a few neck stretches or finger wriggles, for example. If there's no homework assigned, encourage them to read.

Learning good habits

However homework is structured, it's important to be consistent. Students with a regular routine are more confident and achieve better results.

It's inevitable some disruptions will occur and when they do it helps to keep track of things by staying organised.

You can help children learn organisational skills via the various homework planning apps available or by downloading our term planner (DOCX 47.04KB) .

It also helps if they start work on tasks as soon as they?re assigned, giving them more leeway for unforeseen delays and avoiding the prospect of night-before meltdowns.

How much help is too much?

Once children are settled and ready to begin, it's time to grapple with the content itself.

While it's true parent and carer support helps, this has to be balanced against the fact that homework is partly there to let children develop independent working habits.

There's a danger of parents or carers effectively completing tasks themselves, negating any educational benefit for the child.

This has the added disadvantage of obscuring learning gaps that may need to be addressed in class by the teacher.

In the end what it means is that parents and carers have to be prepared to see their children fail sometimes.

Today teachers view mistakes as an important part of the learning process, and they try to help children to see it that way too.

Support, encouragement and a positive attitude

Achievement should always be recognised and praised but it's just as important to focus on effort.

The best thing parents and carers can do is provide encouragement, a positive attitude towards challenging tasks and the right environment.

Talk to your child about what is being asked to do and try to help them come up with a solution themselves.

A few tips for reading, writing, spelling

For information sheets, posters and checklists to help with literacy, refer to our English help pages . You can also find a comprehensive glossary of terms used in our English A to Z .

The following can help your child become a more effective reader:

• Predicting - use information from the text, images or your own experience to try and predict what might happen next.
• Questioning - ask and answer questions about the text to help children understand it.
• Monitoring - if something doesn't make sense, stop, reread and think or discuss.
• Visualising - it can help to paint a picture in our head of things being described or explained.
• Making connections - compare what you're reading to something in your own life, another text or something happening in the world.
• Summarising - notice the most important things in the text and use your own words to describe it.

Help your child think about who they are writing for and why. For example, there's a difference between writing a letter during a holiday and a tourism brochure or story or film set in the same location.

Read your child's writing or have them read it to you. Praise them for trying new words. Encourage writing at home by:

• asking your child to keep a diary of special events
• having them label photos or pictures with captions
• writing notes, letters and stories regularly.

When your child asks how to spell a word, encourage them to have a go first, then discuss their effort. If you are using an online dictionary, make sure it is Australian. The same goes for a spell check on the computer - check language is set as Australian English.

Look, say, cover, write, check

The following can help with difficult words:

• look carefully at the word
• say it aloud
• write from memory
• uncover and check spelling

A few tips for maths

Maths today is about understanding number patterns, not learning by rote. See our maths A to Z for a comprehensive glossary of terms your child might encounter.

Consider the following when helping your child:

• Stay positive and try to avoid lowering expectations by saying, "I was bad at maths too."
• Don't jump in with the answer.
• Ask: "What is the question asking you?" or "How should we go about working this out?"
• Practise times tables. Children who know them are more confident with maths.
• There is always more than one way to get the right answer.
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Enjoying breaks when there's homework to be done

School holidays are an important time for your teen to have a break, recharge their batteries, and reconnect with the rest of their lives. You might like to try these ideas to help them enjoy their time off, while dealing with any schoolwork they might have to do over the break.

After a hectic school term, your teenager probably needs a fair bit of chill time to recharge their batteries, so let them enjoy lounging around for a while if that’s what they want. Of course it’s also good to be active and connect with people, so encourage them to get out and about too—go for a bike ride, hang out with friends or catch up with family.

Plan any holiday work

At the start of the holidays, check if your teenager has to do any school work over the holidays. If so, work out a timetable together to complete these tasks, taking account of any planned activities or trips away. Allow for some slippage—it is the holidays, after all!

Encourage reading

Holidays are a great time to read for pleasure. If your teen chooses to start a book they need for next term, that’s great, but don’t stress about it. Leisure reading is great for learning too.

Strengthen ties

Holidays are a great time for your teenager to reconnect with friends and family and share some unrushed moments together. You could plan a family trip to somewhere related to what your teen has been learning, like a museum or science centre. Or just spend time enjoying each other’s company.

School’s out, but learning can still be in

Holiday activities can lead to learning conversations with your child. Watching a movie can lead to a conversation about how animation works. Travelling can lead to a discussion about destinations, new experiences, or how to plan an itinerary. Just keep it light—and enjoy yourselves!

Reflect and reset

When the moment is right, you might like to help your teen reflect on how they went last term, and what they could do better next term in areas such as time management, study strategies or balance of activities. If you do this towards the end of the holidays, it can help them to ease back in to the frame of mind for school.

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Does Homework Serve a Purpose?

Finding the right balance between schoolwork and home life..

Posted November 5, 2018 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Homework — a dreaded word that means more work and less play. The mere thought of doing additional work after a seven-hour day (that begins extremely early) can be gruesome. Not to mention, many teens have other commitments after the school day ends.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 57 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 17 years old participate in at least one after-school extracurricular activity. And that’s a good thing because youth extracurricular involvement comes with benefits such as boosting academic performance, reducing risky behaviors (i.e., drug use and drinking), promoting physical health, and providing a safe structured environment. However, tag these extracurricular activities onto the end of a school day and you’ll find that many teens don’t get home until it's dark outside.

What about the teen who works a 15- to 20-hour job on top of an extracurricular activity? The US Department of Labor reports that one in five high school students have a part-time job, and those jobs too can come with added benefits. Teens who work often learn the value of a hard-earned dollar. They learn how to manage their money, learn to problem solve, and most importantly, they learn how to work with people. Plus, a job in high school is a great way to add valuable experience to a resume.

With so many after school opportunities available for teens, it can be extremely difficult for them to balance homework with their other commitments. Oftentimes, active kids simply don’t have enough time in a day to get all that’s asked of them finished. When it comes homework, in all my years of working in the public school system, I have never seen a student jump for joy when homework was assigned. Of course, there are some who were anxious to complete the assignment, but that was more to get it off their busy plate. Which brings us to the essential question — does homework serve a purpose?

There are those who stand firm and back the claim that homework does serve a purpose . They often cite that homework helps prepare students for standardized tests, that it helps supplement and reinforce what’s being taught in class, and that it helps teach fundamental skills such as time management , organization, task completion, as well as responsibility (extracurricular activities and work experience can also teach those fundamental skills).

Another argument for homework is that having students complete work independently shows that they can demonstrate mastery of the material without the assistance of a teacher. Additionally, there have been numerous studies supporting homework, like a recent study that shows using online systems to assign math homework has been linked to a statistically significant boost in test scores. So, there you have it: Homework has a lot of perks and one of those involves higher test scores, particularly in math. But don’t form your opinion just yet.

Although many people rally for and support homework, there is another school of thought that homework should be decreased, or better yet, abolished. Those who join this group often cite studies linking academic stress to health risks. For example, one study in the Journal of Educational Psychology showed that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline.

The Journal of Experimental Education published research indicating that when high school students were assigned too much homework, they were more susceptible to serious mental and physical health problems, high-stress levels, and sleep deprivation. Stanford University also did a study that showed more than a couple of hours of homework a night was counterproductive. Think about it — teens spend an entire day at school, followed by extracurricular activities and possibly work, and then they get to end their day with two to three hours of homework. Now that’s a long day! No wonder so many of our teens are sleep-deprived and addicted to caffeine? On average most teens only get about 7.4 hours of sleep per night but according to the American Academy of Pediatrics , they need 8 to 10 hours.

Regardless of where you stand on the homework debate, a few things are certain: If homework is given, it should be a tool that’s used to enhance learning. Also, teachers should take into account the financial requirements of assignments, electronic accessibility, and they should be familiar with student needs as well as their other commitments. For example, not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework, so incomplete work may not be a true reflection of their ability—it may be the result of other issues they face outside of school.

Many of today's teens are taking college-level courses as early as the ninth and tenth grades. With the push of programs such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Early College Programs, and Dual Enrollment, today’s teens are carrying academic loads that surpass past generations. The result of this push for rigor can lead to high levels of stress, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, depression , anxiety , and early burnout . Too many teens are already running on empty. With more than half of teens reporting school and homework as a primary source of their stress, it’s evident that academic pressure is becoming a burden.

On the flip side, not all students spend a lot of time doing homework. What takes one student an hour to complete may take another three hours. Too often educators don’t take this into account when assigning homework. According to the University of Phoenix College of Education teacher survey, high school students can get assigned up to 17.5 hours of homework each week. To top it off, a Today article reported that teachers often underestimate the amount of homework they assign by as much as 50%. Now that’s a huge miscalculation, and our nation's youth have to suffer the consequences of those errors.

There are definitely pros and cons to doing homework. I think the bigger question that educators need to address is, “what’s the purpose of the assignment?” Is it merely a way to show parents and administration what's going on in the class? Is it a means to help keep students' grades afloat by giving a grade for completion or is the assignment being graded for accuracy? Does the assignment enhance and supplement the learning experience? Furthermore, is it meaningful or busywork?

The homework debate will likely continue until we take a good, hard look at our current policies and practices. What side of the line do you stand on when it comes to homework? Perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle?

Please weigh in with your thoughts. I am always eager to hear students’ voices in this discussion. If you are a student, please share what’s on your plate and how much time you spend doing homework each night.

Challenge Success White Paper: http://www.challengesuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ChallengeSuc…

Cooper, H., et al. (meta analysis): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700582?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Marzano, R., et al.: http://www.marzanocenter.com/2013/01/17/have-you-done-your-homework-on-…

NEA (National Education Association): http://www.nea.org/tools/16938.htm

Pope, Brown, and Miles (2015), Overloaded and Underprepared. (Brief synopsis here: https://www.learningandthebrain.com/blog/overloaded-and-underprepared-s… )

Raychelle Cassada Lohman n , M.S., LPC, is the author of The Anger Workbook for Teens .

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