Dolly's blog: Homework

Is homework really worth it and what, actually, does it demonstrate?

My kids are 8, 7 and 4. The youngest doesn't really get homework (even I can cope with his weekly storybook) but for the older ones the after-school routine (which is entirely in the hands of our au pair whilst my husband and I are at work) now revolves around spellings, tables, maths and literacy work.  Everyone hates it and I confess that bribery is sometimes deployed.

Last week we endured our first spellathon, a name suggestive of fun but in reality a form of torture.  The kids each had 50 really tricky words to learn (that's a lot for someone who has just turned 7), there were special prizes for children who got over 95% and a competition to raise the most sponsorship which really felt like a “whose got the richest relatives” assessment.  I'm not anti-competition and I regularly donate to charity but this was not my idea of fun and it reduced my pretty robust kids to tears on several occasions.

But craft projects are my real bug bear. My daughter's class each had to make a Viking boat to race down a stream. Adopting my usual low key approach to such things I cut up a drinks bottle then left my daughter to her own devices. It has to be said the end result didn't look much like a Viking boat - but she'd done it herself and I concluded that was the main thing.

Then race day arrived and as each child presented their boat my stomach lurched. The competition (and I use the word advisedly) was quite literally of cinematic quality. Am I the only mother unable to craft a boat from fibreglass?!  They were like film set replicas just waiting for Brad Pitt in a horned helmet to step on board.

My daughter was mercifully un-phased; it helped that so many rival craft looked amazing but sunk. But I've been bugged by working parent guilt and annoyance ever since because let's be honest, this homework (like many others) assessed the craft skills and time investment of the parents.

So I’m proposing a homework for parents amnesty.  Who’s with me?!

Dolly is an employment lawyer and partner in a London firm.  Currently working four days a week, theoretically between the hours of 9 and 5 in the manner of Dolly Parton (but with less impressive hair and reduced scope for rhinestone).  Full time wife, mother of three lovely children aged three to seven and devoted dog owner.