Dear [name of head teacher]
We are writing to express our concerns about the setting and completion of online homework for children in year [X] and above. We do so in the spirit of wanting to support and partner with the school to best serve the needs of our children, so let us please explain our concerns and make a related request.
The impacts of screentime on children’s physical and mental health have been well-documented, and as parents we have chosen to limit screentime and the use of touchscreen devices at home. But unfortunately we are finding that the school’s approach to setting homework that requires access to a screen is undermining our efforts at home, and introducing unhelpful complication and friction.
From all that we can see, both in terms of the growing body of independent research (which we should distinguish from the promotional body of research paid for by edtech providers) and our experiences as parents on the homework frontline, it is clear to us that device-based homework adds far less to the home learning experience than paper-based reading and writing.
For the vast majority of children (recognising that there may be a few special cases excepted), the value of handwriting, and reading from books and papers, has been proven by literally hundreds of years of teaching practices. In contrast, the weight of independent research is already showing that typing and screen-reading is an inferior and less enduring method for learning.
The process of writing by hand, unlike typing, stimulates distinct brain areas that improve memory and retention of knowledge; and whereas reading from a screen encourages skimming and scanning, reading from books and papers promotes a deeper understanding and comprehension. In a landmark report published last year, Parliament’s Education Select Committee stated that “prolonged screen use could contribute to a diminished capacity for sustained attention, heightened susceptibility to distractions, and challenges in regaining cognitive equilibrium after interruptions.”
But regardless of these expert perspectives, we see with our own eyes what happens at home. Our experiences include:
Delete as you feel appropriate or add your own concerns expressed in your own words:
- the negative impacts of or the amount of time spent having to log on in order to find the homework
- difficulties of sharing devices at home between multiple children or if parents need to use them for work and tensions in relationships with siblings and/or parents associated with device use
- the temptation for children to look for other ‘more interesting’ distractions on the device while doing homework
- difficulties in supporting/supervising homework or being unable to help solve technical issues with devices
- observations about your child being less interested in homework topics or appearing to understand less, or of your child being slower to get to sleep after using a touchscreen device, or of their quality of sleep declining
- arguments about having access to other devices (phones/gaming consoles) if online homework has normalised device use in the evenings
- noticing your child is rushing through homework to achieve a gamified reward
- noticing your child is less inclined to want to read books or is not progressing as well with eg. spellings and/or times tables
- concerns on the impact on eyesight
- concerns on the impact on attention and distractibility
We understand that setting and marking homework in this way can create efficiencies for teaching staff, and we are of course sympathetic to that cause. But devices and edtech should surely only be used, whether in school or at home, if there is reliable evidence that they improve learning and provide a net benefit for children.
May we ask please whether the school completed a risk/benefit assessment of device use and the homework apps and tools in use before introducing them? If so, could we please see that assessment, which may help us to better understand the school’s perspective. Or if the school has other reasons for believing that homework completed through online applications will lead to better learning outcomes for the children, could you please help us to understand why that is? If, for example, you have seen independent assessments or studies (as opposed to promotional materials produced by edtech providers) showing that the use of device-based homework tools will enhance learning outcomes, please could you share them with us?
Our own experiences at home indicate that online and app-based educational programs are not intuitive to a child’s learning needs, and often end up ‘testing not teaching’. Many applications that claim to be educational include gamified elements which encourage pupils to focus on the fleeting reward that appears when they complete a task or question – earning coins or trophies, or customising avatars – rather than on cementing learning from the school day or enhancing knowledge and confidence in the content. Children may enjoy that experience, but it seems to be no substitute for the hard yards of reading, comprehending, writing and learning.
On top of these many child wellbeing and educational concerns, we are also concerned about the data privacy issues surrounding edtech platforms and applications.
For all these reasons, we would like respectfully to ask that you reconsider the use of online homework platforms by the school: is this really the best way to serve the needs of the children? As parents who absolutely want to see the school, and our children, succeed, we would like the school to support us in limiting screen time, and to do all that it can to support cohesion between school life and family life.
At the outset we mentioned a request, which is this: until we are persuaded that online homework is net beneficial for our children’s learning, we would like please to opt our children out of online homework, and we would be grateful if you could please provide an option for our children to receive, and be permitted to complete, homework in a paper-based form.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you.
Yours sincerely,
[List of Parent Names (with child/ren and classgroup/s)]