School Update for you all – I know you’re agog!

We heard nothing from the school re. our letter about Boy’s homeowrk. Upon questioning Boy to make sure he handed it in he replied

“Oh, yes, I put it in my homework folder – he never ever looks in there so he’ll probably never see it”
“What do you mean, he never looks in your homework folder?” we cried.

“Oh, he never marks our homework.” was the cheery, resigned response.

Cue gobsmacked parents.

So the next day we sent him back into school to retrieve said folder, so we could see for ourselves.

One folder, with every single piece of homework since September. number of piece marked?

None.

Not one.

Hence not one response to the “Boy worked really hard on this” “Boy doesn’t seem to be grasping this” “Boy worked entirely independently and was very proud of this” “Boy struggled with this and could use some more help/time on it” comments we had added throughout the year.

So this morning we had Bear’s assembly (Oh, such *PROUD* parents – they sang an entire song in French, and who could everyone hear soaring above the rest of the class? Yes. My girl. Singing loud and proud, eyes shining, bobbing and swaying to her internal beat as always), and afterwards we popped in to have 5 minutes with the head – equipped with Joe’s homework folder.

He was surprised, but non-committal and very politic in his response.

He’ll have words with Mr M, who will respond to us directly – but the Head’s opinion seemed to be “well, quite often I’ll set not ‘homework’ as such but reinforcement exercises from work we’ve done in class. These don’t really get marked, as it’s just practice, but they do need to be checked sometimes to ensure that where a child is lacking extra work can be done”

WTF?

If the HEAD doesn’t mark work he’s set, how the hell is the rest of the teaching staff to be expected to do so?

So it’s NOT homework, merely extra practice that is a requirement to be done, and that a child will miss a playtime to complete if it is not done. What would you call homework, then, if it’s not work set to be completed at home?

Oh, and we weren’t the only parents to complain about the homework during the SATS – apparently this was “not homework, but simply extra practice questions if they wanted to do them”.

*sniff sniff* anyone smell that distinct air of Bull$h*t?