Dubai: Excessive homework assigned by Indian schools is leaving children exhausted and stressed, with no time for leisure and family bonding, parents have complained.
Such concerns, including the health impact of too much homework, have been raised before but have resurfaced recently with the start of the new term earlier this month.
Parents told Gulf News their children are bogged down with homework after returning from school in the afternoon. It is not rare for children to spend several hours, sometimes up to 11pm, doing homework. Parents are often obliged to help children cope with homework, entrapping the whole family in a bid to finish the study load.
The parents did not wish to be named because they did not want their children to be dragged into the issue with the schools, which were also not identified.
Last month, India’s biggest education board, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), reiterated its earlier order to affiliated schools to stop giving homework to grade one and grade two students. However, parents say there is no such respite for students in higher grades, who are already busy with revision for frequent exams, especially when it comes to preparing for grade 10 and 12 board exams.
Indian schools have a vast syllabus to cover each year and schools use homework, which carries marks, as a way of finishing the syllabus, parents and teachers have said before.
However, daily homework assignments are exhausting children and parents, with many students forced to take up tuition just to complete homework. The situation has led to many children spending virtually all their waking hours doing classwork and homework.
A mother of a grade eight student in Dubai said her daughter is up until 11.30pm doing homework after coming home from school at 2pm.
‘Torture’
“My daughter is completely exhausted by the end of the day due to the heavy workload from her school. She has no time or energy left for any other activity. What baffles me more is that the schools overload students with homework for non-core subjects, such as UAE social studies, Islamic, and Arabic. Where is the time left for core subjects such as maths and science?” she added.
“The homework is simply killing her. I can see that she is always irritated, unable to concentrate and tired. I want to ask schools what they intend to achieve by asking students to complete all these activities in one day? This is torture.”
Another mother, who has two daughters in grade 10 in an Indian school in Sharjah, said she has raised the issue with the school but her daughters are still struggling with too much homework.
“I used to be a teacher and I know how some teachers operate. They want to finish the syllabus and giving a lot of homework is one way — the wrong way — of getting the job done. When one subject teacher sees other teachers giving homework, she [or he] also gives homework. You can’t make the children pay the price for that,” she said.
- Mother of a grade 8 student in Dubai
“My daughters don’t eat right, they complain of headaches and hardly get to spend any time with their father — all because of homework. I should have shifted them to another school but now the transition will be an added burden on them. They say, ‘Mom, it’s ok, we’ll manage; we don’t want to lose our friends by shifting schools’. It breaks my heart.”
Her daughters come home from school at around 2.15pm, have lunch and leave for tuition. They are back by 7pm, take a short break, have dinner and hit the books again till 10pm.
“If the children are learning well in class — and they should be learning well in class — then what is the point of so much homework? If you have so much homework, which is graded, then what is the point of so many exams? Even in the holidays we get homework. I say ‘we’ because parents have to help their children cope with the load.”
A father in Dubai who recently moved his four children from an Indian school to a UK curriculum school said: “I used to see my children fall asleep doing homework. I would say, ‘There goes one wicket, there goes another one,’ and so on, until they all closed their eyes. They would spend almost all their time at home doing homework. Thankfully, I don’t have to see this happen as their new school only assigns normal, rational levels of homework.”
Schools’ view
Gulf News asked Indian schools in the UAE about their views on the issue of the homework load in Indian schools. Speaking about their own school, educators said they have controls in place to ensure homework is not excessive and contributes to the academic success of their students.
Jaya Ramesh, academic supervisor at the Global Indian International School in Dubai, said the school follows “a scientific method” for deciding the amount of homework to be given. The school ensures that the majority of the learning is happening in school. For example, for higher grades, not more than three subjects are given for homework, and even then, the assignments are such that a child does not need more than an hour and a half to finish the entire written homework.
She added: “While schools need to ensure that they do not overburden their students with homework, parents also need to understand that not all homework is bad. The right amount of homework can do wonders for a student’s learning curve.”
Teresa Varman, principal of GEMS Millennium School in Sharjah, said: “While we follow the CBSE guideline of no homework till grade two, we do encourage our younger students to set aside time to read for pleasure.”
The amount of time that students are expected to spend on homework depends upon the age, ability, home environment and extra-curricular activities of students, including family and cultural obligations. The school’s ‘Homework Chart’ limits the number of written homework assignments per day to three subjects in the middle and senior school.
“If a child is spending an inordinate amount of time doing homework, parents are advised to contact their child’s teacher and if necessary, study habits are probed and appropriate intervention may be sought from the counsellor,” Varman said.
Professor M. Abu Bakr, principal of Scholars Indian School in Ras Al Khaimah, said: “The reality is that the syllabus in Indian schools is vast, more than other curriculums. As a result, the quantity of homework is also more. But that doesn’t mean it is excessive, or that it has to be excessive. Most of the learning has to take place in class and homework is a means of reinforcing what was learnt in class. There is no homework in grades one and two. When children move to higher grades, they should be able to learn independently and homework is a means of achieving that. We ensure homework doesn’t take more than half an hour for lower grades and up to two hours — breaks included — for higher grades.”
Health impact of heavy homework — a doctor’s view
Dr Mazen Abou Chaaban, consultant paediatrician and paediatric nephrologist at Emirates Specialty Hospital in Dubai, said students should not study immediately after returning from school as they need to rest their brain. Also, children should ideally be in bed by 9pm so that they will have enough sleep before waking up early for school the following morning.
A child who is still awake until 11.30pm, for example, doing homework means he or she will fall asleep by midnight or so, but have to wake up by, say, 6am. This creates “a vicious cycle of exertion and absent-mindedness”. The student’s perception during school will be impaired and the body will be exhausted. This will impair the healthy growth and development of the child, Dr Chaaban added.
The hormonal activity of the brain for the benefit of different organs of the body will be impaired as there is not enough sleep.
Homework for a Grade Eight student at an Indian school in Dubai:
Sunday
1 - Maths test: Square root and cube root
2 - Science test: Human intervention, mind map of cause and effects of deforestation
3- Writing quotes on A4 size paper for various subjects for class board
Monday
1 - UAE Social Studies: 5 questions. One assignment about a great leader
2 - Sticking pics and writing quotes
3 - English: Write speech on minimum two topics given by teacher
4-Science Task: Research work on ‘Why Conserve’
5-Maths test: Algebraic expression
Tuesday
1 - Social Studies: Mind map on Shaikh Zayed’s achievements
2 - English: Two picture stories
3 - Hindi: Question and answers
4 - Islamic: 12 questions on ‘Acts are judged by intentions’
5 - Maths test: linear equations
School day of a Grade 10 student at an Indian school in Sharjah
5.30am: Wake up to get ready for school
6am: Bus arrives
7.30am: School starts
1.30pm: School ends
2.30pm: Back home
(an hour for lunch and rest)
3.30pm: Leave for tuition to help with homework and revision
6.30pm: Back home
(an hour for dinner and rest)
7.30pm: Homework again
9.30pm: Homework done
10pm: Bedtime
