These may well be the same parents who can remember how to do quadratic equations unlike me whose secondary school child regularly weeps into her calculator at half nine of a Tuesday evening whilst bewailing the fact her parent is a mathematical imbecile. They may have read it in the Daily Mail, or they may be of the “I had to do it and it never did me any harm” school of thought, in which case what’s wrong with flogging and outside lavatories? Some parents think homework must be a ‘good thing’, without being quite sure why. An Ofsted inspector once told me that they’d stopped being critical of schools about parental attitudes to homework, because invariably half of parents thought the school set too little and the other half set too much, so schools couldn’t win (no change there, then). The point is, the two things don’t often sit well together and I have always been ambivalent about the value of homework for children under 11. Work: well, fill this one in yourself, why don’t you? Home: warmth, security, a place to relax. Homework – a compound word that resonates down the chalk dust swirling corridors of all our school days.

So don't waste children's time, and your own, by setting dull homework. Evenings and weekends are precious to us all.

Esl homework ideas