- By Nicola Doward, Deputy Headteacher at Barlow RC High
After conducting a homework amnesty, highlighting the sporadic setting, completion, sanctions and rewards, including the 31% of parents who felt that homework was inappropriate, SMHW was implemented to address the major gap in pupils’ home-learning.
Teachers’ Experience
After the training from SMHW, feedback was extremely positive with one teacher commenting that it was
“one of the best CPD sessions and most useful strategies”
that they’d attended. SMHW has meant that even the most technophobic staff have come on board, with 100% of teachers using it weekly.
Features such as ‘reuse homework’ allow teachers to share and reuse tasks across the faculty, reducing workload and promoting collaboration between colleagues. ‘Homework Champions’ in each faculty coordinate setting, sharing and ensuring consistency. Homework is at last a high priority item on our agenda at our weekly Faculty Leader Operational Meeting and Faculty Briefings!
The ability to attach resources has been invaluable and we can now support our pupils’ home-learning like never before. Best of all, it’s not an onerous, time-consuming task - Differentiation at the click of a button is no mean feat and has certainly made a difference to teachers and pupils alike.
Parents’ Stamp of Approval
During the first year, students and parents could view the school’s live homework calendar, and this snapshot transformed the perception that we weren’t setting homework. Since SMHW, it’s clear that we do!
In September 2013, we launched the student and parent accounts. Every parents’ evening there is a SMHW stall where pupil leaders give a demonstration, introducing parents to the site, and keeping homework high on the agenda. Previously, a frequent complaint from parents was that homework hadn’t been set for ‘x’ weeks - With SMHW, teachers simply direct parents to the site, where the quality and quantity of all homework is recorded. Parent feedback has revealed that the site is for more than just ‘checking up’, but with deadlines and resources, they can encourage time management, help with completion, and become more involved in their children’s education.
Show My Homework Impact
SMHW weekly data is shared and 100% club-published. The figures (from 23/11/11) have risen from 25% compliance in setting in Week 2 and 62% as an average for Term 1. The overall compliance for this year has been steadily maintained at 100%. Transparency, data-sharing, ease-of-use and the fact that it supports our pupils’ learning, has meant that homework is now rooted in our learning culture. Even though homework-setting has increased 4 fold, incidents of pupil sanctions for incomplete homework has dropped massively. Raised expectations and promoting homework (not overloading it) has improved engagement, and our latest review confirmed that pupils get homework regularly (100%), that they do it (95%) and that it helps them to learn (90%) - A huge shift from our first amnesty when pupils admitted they rarely received or completed any homework.
We’ve tried other homework solutions, but this one transformed and increased our pupil’s engagement and home-learning, helped our teachers set homework consistently and secured parental involvement. This is our homework solution!
