Abbeywood Community School

Homework

Independent Home Learning (IHL) at ACS

At Abbeywood Community School (ACS) we believe IHL is a key part of school life. It allows students to develop their skills and knowledge independently and makes the difference between good and great progress.

IHL has a range of purposes that include:

  • Deliberate practice and consolidation of work done in class
  • Providing further stretch and challenge
  • Providing opportunities for independent work
  • Preparation for exams and tests
  • Preparation for future class work
  • Developing library skills and use of other learning resources outside of school
  • Allowing assessment of students’ progress and mastery of work
  • Developing students’ good learning habits: organisation, meeting deadlines, resilience, independence, creativity, responsibility
  • Providing opportunities for parents/carers to get involved with their child’s learning and creating channels for home-school dialogue 

IHL tasks are set at a frequency proportional to curriculum time

  • In Years 7 and 8 IHL tasks should take about 20-30min to complete and are set weekly for core subjects and fortnightly for all other subjects
  • In Year 9 IHL tasks should take about 45-60min to complete and are set weekly for core subjects and weekly or fortnightly for all other subjects
  • Years 10 and 11 examination subjects tasks should take about 60-90 min to complete and are set weekly for core subjects and weekly or fortnightly for all other subjects, plus additional revision and exam paper practice where necessary
  • Post 16 tasks are set on the “hour for an hour” principle 

Setting and submission of work

All IHL is recorded on Arbor and students are expected to check their timetable and ensure that work is submitted on or before the deadline.

Some subjects use Google Classroom or other applications such as Seneca and Sparx to set out the tasks for homework.  Other subjects hand out paper copies of homework in the lesson, or ask students to note down their homework.  However the task is actually set out, the teacher will always record the setting of homework on Arbor so that students and parents can keep track of what is set over the course of each week. 

Olympus Secondary Schools Homework Principles

olympus secondary schools homework principles.pdf