What fuels the debate is the fact that research findings on homework’s merits are all over the map. Some studies conclude take-home assignments have educational value, and can hone time management and other skills important for postsecondary aspirations and reaching career goals. Other research indicates homework, especially in the early grades, can even negatively affect learning by placing added pressure on young people juggling school, after-class activities and spending time with family and friends.

Schools don’t typically set homework guidelines for teachers, but the long-held guideline is to multiply each grade by 10 minutes to come up with a daily target.

“There’s not a much better formula than that,” says Hal Hannaford, headmaster at Selwyn House, a boys’ school in Montreal for Grades 3 to 11. “So by Grade 6, a student is getting about an hour of homework a night, but remember really good students work hard, and do a lot of extra stuff at home on their own.”

(..)

[a student] feels some of his homework helps him academically, but he echoes the thoughts of many students when he says: “I don’t really see why students should be getting homework because we already do work at school.”

It’s not an unreasonable comment, given a handful of schools are adopting no-homework policies, and countries such as Finland – its students rank among world leaders in reading and math marks, for instance – don’t emphasize after-class work.

(..)

After Ms. Alexander encouraged Sara to follow up on her cap-and-trade homework idea, Sara teamed with classmate Lia Silver this summer to develop a plan that is being tested in Grade 8 classes this school year. Essentially, teachers share with each other how much homework they’re assigning to their students – so if one teacher asks students to spend an hour on after-school work one night, another teacher may reduce the amount of homework given to his or her class.

Measuring success of the project will depend on whether students find they’re better able to handle their homework and feel less stressed about it, says Sara, adding it’s hoped the cap-and-trade approach will expand to other grades. “I think it has a lot of potential and I hope other students see it as a good thing,” says Lia, also 13.

Many schools emphasize easing students’ overloaded schedules, which can have a negative impact on not just academics, but also personal growth and well-being.

(..)

Ms. Ignjatovic, who grew up and attended school in the former Yugoslavia, where homework was essentially non-existent, says she was shocked after moving in 1996 from Russia to Canada, where her two sons were born, about how quickly they were thrown into the homework fray.

“I was really surprised a child in the first grade could have any homework, in fact,” says Ms. Ignjatovic, whose now-teenage sons went to the same public elementary school, and are attending separate private high schools in Montreal.

“But when I became a teacher myself, I saw another side of it,” she adds. “As a teacher, I want my students to be good in their subjects and feel I have a responsibility to do the best I can.

(..)

Pro

An OECD report assessing Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores of 15-year-olds from 65 countries found students in higher-income families spent an average of 1.6 hours more weekly on homework than their peers in lower-income families in 2012, and doing more homework commonly resulted in better test scores. The report, released in 2014, also notes students across the board spent an average of about five hours a week on homework (down about an hour from 2003), about the Canadian average, with lows reported in South Korea and Finland, at two and three hours, respectively, and a high of 12 hours in Singapore.

Con

A study published in the Journal of Experimental Education in 2014 found 56 per cent of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in California (93 per cent of the students, who were from families with a median household income of more than $90,000 (U.S.), went on to postsecondary education) cited homework as a primary reason they were stressed. Stanford University researchers found too much homework (more than about two hours a night, as defined by previous research) can be counterproductive.

among poorer countries the amount of public spending per pupil is associated with higher test scores. But in richer states that spend more than about $50,000 per pupil in total between 6 and 15 this link falls away (see chart 2). The pupils of Poland and Denmark have, in effect, the same average results in the science tests even though Denmark spends about 50% more per pupil.

Another potential waste of money, if only from the perspective of PISA results, may be sending children to private school. Across the OECD pupils in public schools score lower in science than students in private schools do. But this is not the case once you account for the economic and social background of pupils.

And while poverty is strongly associated with low scores, it is not destiny. In the OECD poor pupils are nearly three times more likely than their rich peers to have less than the basic level of proficiency in science. Those pupils with foreign-born parents tend to do even worse. Nevertheless, 29% of poor pupils score among the top quarter of children across the OECD. In Singapore, Japan and Estonia nearly half of the poorest pupils do.

Money isn’t everything

That hints at another finding: achievement and greater equality are not mutually exclusive. In Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong and Macau pupils have high average scores, with only a weak link between results and children’s backgrounds.

One reason for Estonia’s gain is demographic loss. Over the past 20 years the population of young people has declined faster than the number of teachers. There is now one teacher for every 12 pupils, down from closer to 20 two decades ago. Although in general reducing class sizes is not the most cost-effective response, Estonian pupils have benefited from the demographic shift, which has made it easier to give pupils, especially laggards, extra help.

But Estonia has also taken a deliberately inclusive approach, argues Mart Laidmets, a senior official at its ministry of education. It tries to avoid at all costs having pupils repeat years of school. Holding pupils back can help. But too often it is used as an excuse not to teach difficult kids. It may also reflect bias or discrimination. In countries such as Russia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, poor boys are especially prone to being kept back a year, despite decent academic achievements.

Estonia, like Finland and Canada, also tries to keep selection by ability to a minimum. It delays “tracking” children into academic or vocational routes until they are 15 or 16 years old. Mr Laidmets argues that it helps pupils find jobs later in life, since better maths and literacy make it easier for them to adapt to changes in the labour market and to earn new skills.

By contrast, where pupils are diverted from an academic track at an early age, whether towards a vocational school or a less rigorous class in the same school, the gap between rich and poor children tends to be wider. In the Netherlands pupils at vocational schools have results equivalent to about three years less of schooling than their peers at general schools. “The more academically selective you are the more socially selective you become”, says Andreas Schleicher, the head of education at the OECD.

All of which suggests what countries should not do. But are there any sure-fire tips from the best performers? Or is their success just down to pushy parents and tuition after school?

Culture matters but so, too, does policy, says Lucy Crehan, author of “Cleverlands”, a new book on PISA-besting countries. She points out that most of these states delay formal schooling until children are six or seven. Instead they use early-years education to prepare children for school through play-based learning and by focusing on social skills. Then they keep pupils in academic courses until the age of 16. Even Singapore, which does divert some pupils to a vocational track at the age of 13, ensures that pupils in those schools keep up high standards in reading and maths.

Top performers also focus their time and effort on what goes on in the classroom, rather than the structure of the school system. For while test scores and pupils’ economic background are linked across the OECD, so too are specific things that the best schools and teachers do.

The city of Buenos Aires had the largest jump in overall scores from three years ago. On average its pupils scored 475 in science (up 51 points), 475 in reading (46 points) and 456 points (38 points) in maths. (..) offered teachers something of a deal: higher salaries in exchange for taking their job more seriously. The grip of unions in deciding on promotions was loosened. And he made teacher training more rigorous and practical.