Can you imagine a situation where the great majority of the pupils in your school, along with their families, look forward with keen anticipation to working on a homework project together during the school holidays?
This is the case with the Family Homework project that is being run by five primary schools in Tower Hamlets. There is already an extensive and expanding literature on the importance and benefits of developing school and family connections, and their impact on increasing children's learning and attainment in school. This article reports findings from an evaluation of the Family Homework initiative conducted in 2014 by researchers from the Institute of Education.
The Family Homework project
The Family Homework project was set up between five primary schools (Ben Jonson Primary, Cayley Primary, Halley Primary, Redlands Primary and Smithy Street Primary) in 2010 with the aim of increasing families' involvement in their children's learning and to enhance family cohesion, thereby raising pupil achievement through shared family learning.
The schools are all located within a short walking distance of each other in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which has some of the highest levels of deprivation and inequality in the country. More than 90 per cent of pupils attending have English as an additional language, and the schools have much higher than average proportions of children with SEN and on free school meals.
Family Homework is distributed five times during each school year, and the central premise is that children and their families will work collaboratively on a range of activities during the half-term holidays (October, February and May), and two of the longer holidays (Christmas and Easter).
Topics are decided at the beginning of the school year by the "leads" from each school, who are generally members of the schools' senior management teams. Each school has its own system for developing the ideas in slightly different ways, but this usually involves conversations with teachers and parent support or home-school liaison officers. Past examples of topics include Dinosaurs, Food, the Olympics, Pirates, Space, Super Heroes and Volcanoes.
Family Homework is presented and circulated as a folded A3 sheet and designed for children of all abilities across the whole age range between reception and year 6. Each sheet will typically include approximately a dozen activities or ideas and children and their families can choose how many activities they wish to engage with.
At least one activity will involve a suggested visit (perhaps to a museum or outdoor site), which is designed to encourage experiential learning, but the majority of the activities involve art and crafts skills; in other words, they are designed to encourage families to make and do things together. The activity sheet is designed to be highly visual although the production does not usually look particularly professional.
Although Family Homework is seen as an offer in two of the schools, in the other three it is regarded as being a compulsory part of the regular homework policy, and therefore is expected to be completed within the holiday timeframe.
Methodology and the main finding
The main methods employed to gather data for the evaluation were questionnaires (to pupils in years 2, 4 and 6, the families who had children in these year groups, and their teachers) and focus groups (with the home-school liaison officers, parents or carers, children in year 4 and leading members of the senior management team). The return rates were very high, including a 57 per cent rate of return from the family survey.
The main finding of the evaluation is that Family Homework is flourishing and is a highly successful initiative. The programme has high rates of family participation and has already over-achieved in its main objective, which is to get families more involved in, and with, their children's learning. The great majority of the children and their parents look forward to Family Homework and feel they benefit from it.
Why is Family Homework a success?
There are a number of reasons why Family Homework works. One key factor is that the schools have appointed a project manager, who oversees and coordinates the project across the five sites. Staff at all of the schools work hard to ensure it is a success, and they do this because they believe in the programme's purpose and integrity.
Each of the schools uses a variety of strategies to maximise parental engagement: these include preliminary coffee mornings and workshops where activities are explained to parents and suggestions made about possible materials to use and objects to make. Some schools have temporary pop-up shops, which provide free, or cheap, craft materials such as glue, glitter, straws, paper plates etc.
After the children hand in their Family Homework there are a number of whole-school events, which serve to increase motivation and engagement – for example, sharing or achievement-assemblies, where certificates may be given out. The assemblies also serve to motivate the teachers, focusing their interest on ensuring that as many of their pupils as possible complete the task. There are also displays of the families' work at each school, which are also seen as key motivators for children and their parents.
Each Family Homework is also internally evaluated. Teachers record each child's participation, and in some schools teachers complete scrapbooks containing photographic evidence of their class's contribution. Teachers also give their views on how successful a particular Family Homework was and list the factors they feel contributed to or hindered its success.
One of the deputy headteachers highlighted the vital role that teachers play in making each Family Homework succeed, both prior to its distribution and after pupils return it: "I think success also goes down to individual teachers ... about how much you are promoting it within your class, and how much you promote it after, when a piece of work comes back, regardless of quality – how you really make the child and the parent feel what they've brought back is really amazing."
Who works on Family Homework?
Family Homework is very much a family affair and more than one member of the family is generally involved. Almost four-fifths of pupils say that another member of the family usually helps them. The time that families set aside to work on it is relatively short: 90 per cent of parents estimate that the family typically devotes five or fewer hours to each topic, with a majority devoting between two and five hours over the holiday period.
Highlights and barriers
The best part of Family Homework for the parents and children is that it is interactive; it brings the family unit together so they can share ideas, make group decisions and create new things. The most popular activities tend to be craft-related. Comments we received included: "It is a chance for the family to be together; the siblings bond as well as the parents and sometimes mum is more excited to do the Family Homework than the children."
The two most commonly cited barriers to participation in Family Homework by parents are lack of time and difficulties in finding or affording materials/resources. Comments we received included: "Sometimes it's difficult to fit in with other things. My children are usually busy during half terms and I'd like them to have a break."
For the pupils, the least enjoyable part of Family Homework is also that it takes up too much of their holiday time.
Family Homework is more popular with girls than boys and more girls also participate in the activities. It is also better received by the younger children in the school. Generally speaking, the more pupils like their school work the more they also like Family Homework.
However, it also does a good job of appealing to pupils who do not like school work, and nearly half who report not liking school work say they enjoy Family Homework.
The benefits of Family Homework
The great majority of children feel that Family Homework helps them learn new knowledge and skills, and this is again particularly so with girls. Some mention acquiring and developing research and computer skills.
More than half of responding parents in the survey say that they feel more involved in their children's learning as a direct result of Family Homework. The vast majority of parents and children look forward to Family Homework and school-home relations and continue to be enriched.
Concluding remarks
The overarching aim of Family Homework is to get families more involved in, and with, their children's learning. The objective also includes helping parents and children to redefine and expand their understanding of what constitutes learning. This is ambitious and is unlikely to achieve total success or happen overnight.
One deputy headteacher speculated that some of the potential long-term impacts or benefits of Family Homework might not be seen until the current children become parents themselves, and begin to use the resources of their outside environment, engage in their own children's learning by using first-hand experience, and develop a greater involvement with their own children's school work.
As researchers, we believe that the research has captured a model that the great majority of its constituents see as being highly enjoyable and successful, and one that can be adapted and/or replicated for use in other schools across the country.
- JD Carpentieri is research and development policy liaison officer and Jon Swain research officer at the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy at the Institute of Education, London.
Further information
If you are interested in further developing family-school partnerships and finding out more about the Family Homework initiative, contact the Family Homework Stepney Partnership project manager, Carol McAdams at cmcadams1.211@lgflmail.org. A copy of the full evaluation report can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/1xjNVs8