Excessive homework means Easter holidays no time for relaxing for Hong Kong children, say parents
Online campaigners decry heavy workload
For many primary school children, there is no time to relax during the four-day Easter holidays, with piles of homework waiting to be done, says a parent concern group.
Hui Yung-chui, co-founder of Homework Slaves Liberation Movement, which has garnered over 30,000 members on Facebook, said on an RTHK programme on Monday morning that some work – for Primary 6 pupils – included worksheets, supplementary homework, a weekly diary, sentence-making exercises, design, graphs and online research.
“Transcribing is an everyday must,” said Hui. “But I’ve seen schools requiring children to write reading reports for maths.”
Another co-founder, Leung Mei-yung, added that normally primary school children also needed to do up to seven pieces of homework every day, leaving them no time to explore other subjects or their own interests.
The campaigners said this disproved education minister Eddie Ng Hak-kim’s earlier comments that the Education Bureau had required all schools to make sure pupils finish homework at school under teachers’ guidance, so pupils only need to review and preview their classes and do online research back home.
“Many of our members were very emotional after hearing [Ng’s comments],” said Hui. “Many of them posted their children’s homework on the group. We all feel that no school can achieve this ‘zero homework’ policy.”
A parent, who called herself Mrs Lee, phoned the programme and said her child at Primary 6 needed to do 12 pieces of homework a day. She said the child needed to get up at 6am but did not go to bed until after 10pm every day. She said she had to hire a private tutor to help the child handle the homework.
“I often hear [the child] grinding teeth during sleep,” she said. “When I asked the doctor the doctor said [the child] had too much pressure. As a parent I feel really sad.”
Hui said the group had submitted a letter to the bureau about this issue and that the group hoped to meet bureau officials to discuss more.
