School’s out, but should they do homework in the holidays?

Research shows that by September children will be two months behind in academic skills. Rachel Carlyle asks the experts how to keep kids motivated

Remember your own school summer holidays? Chances are it was an idyllic time of den building and trips to buy ice pops. Spelling and algebra probably didn’t figure much. It’s rather different for children today, as schools and parents fret about the loss of academic skills over the six or eight-week break. One survey showed that a quarter of parents of older primary school children were planning to hire summer tutors, rising to half of private school parents, while a separate survey of head teachers revealed that 70 per cent were worried about the effect of the six-week holiday on learning. Many more schools now set summer homework.

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Before you start frantically ordering Letts study guides, not everyone agrees that holiday homework works. “There’s not as clear evidence of a ‘summer learning loss’ here as in the US where the holidays are longer,” says Lee Elliot Major, chief executive of the education think-tank the Sutton Trust, which trialled English and maths summer schools in the UK with mixed results. “It benefited some children but not all; I think the jury is out.”

Read the full article here(£).

Lee Elliot Major was also interviewed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to discuss the length of school holidays. View here (Clips at 0.42 and 1.27).