Ban homework for pre-school and primary school children

The utility of excessive homework even at secondary level is far from clear and at primary level and below is deeply resented by growing numbers of children, their parents and their teachers.Ridiculous amounts of homework are routinely imposed on young children as a short term means of - for the teachers' and headteachers' benefits - passing tests and meeting targets that are themselves narrow, methodologically unsound, unnecessary and politically motivated.

Whilst some might argue that 'moderate' or 'reasonable' loads of homework are not detrimental, the present structuring of education to such short-term school goals and the failure of the teaching profession to resist the associated attack on decent educational values ensures that such moderation now exists only rarely. Instead, teachers and headteachers are consumed in 'races to the top' of league tables directly at the expense of the children in their care.

In the short term children are denied the leisures and pleasures (many of which are of far more learning value than homework) of the different childhoods they could otherwise have had. In the longer term, an inevitable and resentful disengagement from the love of learning scandalously underline the intellectual and moral poverty of our educational 'leaders'.