My response to reading this column on March 20 was to think that at last a teacher is going to explain what really goes on when homework is planned and set in a classroom. My family is frankly fed up with the hassle and trouble caused by inconsistencies in homework; whenever we try to challenge the secondary school our children attend we are met by vagueness, prevarication and unfulfilled promises - hardly reassuring. Please give us some simple, clear facts.
Teacher Adam Conway replies:
Secondary schools are institutions where the freedom to be an inspirational, individual teacher constantly chafes against the entitlement for students to have a consistent, coherent experience.
It is homework, above all, that brings parents into daily contact with how schools function, so perhaps it is no wonder that so many regular, repeated problems and concerns stem from those hurried, brief and indecipherable notes in many students' homework diaries.
Last week, in a Hong Kong primary school, eight-year-old children learning about the workplace (and a school is a workplace) started from the basic definition that in any workplace 'people share responsibilities towards a common purpose'.
But homework casts a harsh, unforgiving light on every school's claims to have a clear, shared vision of educational values. At the heart of many of the problems families experience with homework are some fundamental facts about the way schools are structured and the nature of teachers' working lives.
A typical Hong Kong secondary school has between 80 and 150 teaching staff, organised into subject-based faculties or departments (ideally, 'teams') of between two and 20 teachers.