ABSTRACT
No matter what country you are in, it seems that homework is greeted with little enthusiasm by students and is not always welcomed by teachers or parents. Yet all seem to agree that it is a necessary adjunct to learning in school. The much bigger question is what students do when they are in their own time, how long they spend on homework and how productive it is and how it relates to work done in the classroom. Figure 19.6 shows data from the recent OECD PISA study (OECD, 2001) comparing hours of homework from different countries. This major international study is perhaps as surprising as the data here and is interesting to set alongside the Learning School inquiry.
