Rationale
The school community believe education is an interactive process involving students, teachers and parents/carers.
We recognise that parents/carers are the first educators of their children. Children acquire knowledge, life skills and daily routines through the family. On entering school the child begins formal and informal education, the child is an active participant in their own learning. We believe homework reinforces formal education by allowing children to develop processes and revise, practise, test content and skills taught in the classroom. It also encourages children to assume greater responsibility for the own learning and allows them to practise the skill of time management. Finally a homework program should encourage opportunities for communication in the home and allow informal education within the family to continue.
Objectives
Through a homework program students should be able to:
- Increasingly assume responsibility for their own learning.
- Seriously engage in learning tasks
- Manage time more efficiently
- Develop their own interests and abilities
Parents and teachers should be able to:
- Monitor student progress
- Motivate the child to learn
- Assist the child to reach his/her full potential
Guidelines
- There should be a written homework program for each class.
- The teacher’s approach to homework should be explained to parents at the initial parent/teacher meeting at the beginning of the year.
- Parents should be asked for feedback on the teacher’s approach and their wishes be the basis of negotiation between the parents and the teacher.
- Homework programmes should encourage
- a. Self esteem
- b. Communication between the child, parent and teachers
- c. Individualised learning program
- d. A greater mastering of content, processes and skills
- The child’s level of development should determine the length and type of homework set.
- Homework should be free from stress for the child
- Homework should not impede upon the child’s outer school commitments
- Homework should enhance rather than detract from family life
Homework is given at the discretion of the teacher and with the regard to age of the children. It may be set on a nightly basis or given as an assignment set over a specific period.