Suffered by some children and feared by many parents, homework is a matter of debate in the field of education. Some defend them, others hate them and others consider them not necessary to learn. The fact is that there is no agreement about its usefulness as an educational method.
To add more firewood to the fire, According to a report by the Organization for Development and Economic Cooperation (OECD), homework fuels school inequality, because they contribute to widening the gap between students of high and medium socioeconomic status and students who belong to disadvantaged families.
Why do duties feed inequality?
The report warns that not all children are equally planted in front of homework. Students who have help at home, either from their parents or from private teachers, have an advantage over those who do not have that support, either because their parents do not have the necessary educational level or because they cannot pay a teacher particular to help them.
Students who live in a home in crisis have much more difficulty dealing with homework.. They may not have a relaxed and orderly space to do so, or they have family responsibilities such as caring for small siblings or, perhaps their parents are not prepared to guide or motivate them in this process due to work obligations or lack of resources.
My daughters' school is bilingual, and naturally, they bring homework in English, sometimes with a fairly high level of difficulty even for parents who more or less manage with the language. And I always think: if a father does not have a certain level of English, which is perfectly possible, how does he help his son with his homework?
Each teacher with his booklet
Despite these warnings about inequality, which is not the first time they are mentioned, in our country there is no general consensus around the duties.
In some countries like France they are regulated by law, but the Ministry of Education in Spain has not taken action on the matter. Not even the LOMCE has entered into determining how and to what extent students have to be given homework.
Finland, which is a country of reference in education, has compensation programs for students who have difficulty doing homework at home. Special support is provided to these children.
They have also taken care of the matter in countries such as Germany, Switzerland or France. They have implemented the formula of open schools outside school hours for those students who, for whatever reason, cannot do their homework at home. They are offered an appropriate place, with the necessary resources and the presence of monitors that serve as support.
In Spain, the children do 6 hours of homework a week, when the average recommended by the OECD is 4.8 hours. It is the fifth country, of 38, that more homework puts the students. Hours of work that are not reflected in the academic results of the country. According to the Pisa report, we are in a general position far below, on 29 out of 44 countries, according to 2014 data.
What do you think about it? Do you think that homework helps to feed school inequality? What solution do you see?
