Crackdown on schools that 'cheat' the GCSE system

Schools will be effectively barred from forcing pupils to sit GCSEs “early and often” amid fears children’s education is being damaged by abuses of the exams system.

The Department for Education is introducing new rules designed to stop schools entering pupils for early GCSEs. Photo: ALAMY

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

12:46PM BST 29 Sep 2013

8 Comments

In a major change, the Department for Education announced today that schools will only be able to include grades achieved at the first attempt in future GCSE league tables.

The reforms will initially cover the core academic subjects such as maths, English and science before being extended to other disciplines.

It is intended to crack down on the practice of entering pupils for GCSEs a year or two early and taking multiple exams in the same subject to boost their grades.

Currently, many pupils are encouraged to take exams at 14 or 15 in an attempt to “bank” a C grade – considered a good pass – and then move on to other subjects in the final year.

It also gives teenagers more opportunity to retake the exam if they fail to do well at the first attempt, with some pupils sitting the same subject up to eight times.

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But data shows that children who take exams at 15 or under are less likely to do well.

Just over half of early entrants gained A* to C grades in English last year compared with more than two-thirds of exams taken by 16-year-olds, it emerged.

The DfE insist that the latest reforms will put pressure on schools to only enter pupils for GCSEs “when they are confident the student has the best opportunity to succeed”.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, criticised schools that seek to “cheat” to improve their league table position.

“The school is in effect gaming the system by not thinking what is in the best interests of the student but using the student as a means of gathering points so that school itself can look better," he said. "That is, in a word, cheating.

“When a small minority cheat, the system is corrupted for the others. That has to stop.”

Under new rules, schools will be required to include pupils’ first attempt at a GCSE in their official rankings – shunning any subsequent exams taken in the same subject.

The change takes immediate effect for all subjects covered by the English Baccalaureate – a league table measure that marks out pupils with good grades in English, maths, science, foreign languages and history or geography. It covers the 2013/14 academic year and will affect next summer’s results.

The reforms will cover other subjects such as art, music, drama, design and technology, computing and religious education a year later.

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Schools should not be entering children for exams before they are ready.

“It is not good for pupils to be put in early in a school’s hope they can ‘bank’ a C – it is far better that children study the subject fully and take it when they are ready.

“Some schools, having ‘banked’ a C grade in maths a year early, then enter pupils for other exams to game the league table system, instead of continuing with maths to 16. This is bad for the pupils and is another strong reason to make the change we are announcing.

"We have already announced we are scrapping modules and moving to end-of-course exams. Both will help stop schools 'gaming' the system in this way.

“Changing the system so that results in first exams count will ensure there is no benefit to schools who simply want to put children in for GCSEs before they are ready.”

However, head teachers' leaders criticised the change, claiming it was unfair on pupils.

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “We have repeatedly warned about the damaging effects of piecemeal changes to the qualifications system.

"It is grossly unfair to make changes like this when courses are already underway. This is adding pressure and stress to students in the most important year of their education.

"Whatever the rights and wrongs of early entry, students, teachers, parents and employers just do not know where they are in the context of constant tinkering with examinations.”

If the future looks like this what should our children learn?

Methods of research

Research in Schools

Methods of research

From choosing the right method through to presenting your findings, these free online guides will help you get started. Covering definitions, benefits and limitations of different methods, you will get a good introduction to running your own research.

Getting started 

• What should I research?
• Where should I research?
• Who can do research?
• How should I research?
• Planning your research

Further information

• Ethics and data security
• Top research websites for teachers
• Choosing your method
• Presenting your findings
• Becoming a research-engaged school

Using technology to distract students from distraction

To give a student an iPad is to place him in front of a bay window open to an endless sea of distraction.

Yaros’ course uses an iPad app loaded with a constant stream of course material to keep students engaged.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, eMail, cat GIFs – with a mobile device and a WiFi connection, students have plenty of things to pay attention to instead of the lecture in front of them.

But Ronald Yaros, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, is hoping he has found a way to keep students so engaged during a class period that they won’t have time for distraction – by using the very same mobile devices that could lead them astray.

Yaros calls his model a “MEEC,” or a manageable educational environment of collaboration.

Its similarity to the term MOOC is intentional; he’s trying to get the attention of educators who want to use media and technology to improve learning in their courses, but aren’t quite sold on some of the more publicized methods out there.

“MEECs are a large multifaceted approach to a collaborative environment,” Yaros said. “You must have a set of elements that engage students for an entire class, so there is no deviation whatsoever.”

Yaros’ MEEC is an app packed with content specific to his journalism course “Information 3.0.” Throughout a 70-minute lecture, his 60 students are presented with a constant stream of relevant course material on the iPads that have been provided to them.

The lecture may begin with a poll. Next, they could be told to consult their peer’s blog posts written from the previous class. Halfway through the course, they must take a quiz. After that, they all watch a video. A review and class discussion of some relevant tweets follow.

Suddenly, class is done for the day. The pace may seem breathless, but the point, Yaros said, is to keep students engaged and free of distraction for the entirety of the lecture.

“The interactivity is a little overwhelming the first week for students,” Yaros said. “And some of them have to adjust. Some of them don’t like it. Some look up at the end of the period and can’t believe it’s a 70-minute class.”

The course is part of Maryland’s I-Series, a collection of courses more experimental in nature that attempt to challenge students in unconventional ways. In “Information 3.0,” the challenge can be just to keep up, but Yaros said his experiment is working.

There’s nothing on their iPads that blocks students from jumping to another app to find distraction. They’re simply too busy to, Yaros said.

Whether the initiative is based on BYOD (bring your own device) or 1:1 Learning (in which every student is paired with a device by an institution), the use of mobile devices in a classroom setting has been a contentious issue in recent years.

Distraction has been a worry for educators, of course, but there’s more to it than that.

“They’re not all used to it,” said Susan Einhorn, executive director of theAnytime Anywhere Learning Foundation. “They’ve been perfecting their art, and on a certain path and trajectory for so long. This is a very different change in what they’re using. But it also provides a whole new host of opportunities.”

Effectively using devices in the classroom, Einhorn said, is not simply providing existing class material on a digital device. Just moving a PowerPoint presentation from a projector screen onto an iPad will not do the trick.

It requires a bigger change than that, in both content and attitudes. “Real transformation happens when you really shift to more active learning,” Einhorn said.

Yaros said he has been working on finding the right ways to shift his lectures in that direction for three years. As he implements his MEEC this semester, he is continuing to research both what material students best respond to and at what point to introduce that element during a class period.

It’s why he saves his quizzes or a video for the middle of the lecture, rather than starting the class “with a bang, then sliding in to PowerPoint” or letting students zone out until the end.

“It’s thinking every 10 minutes about what you are doing,” Yaros said. “What could you be doing to maximize how people psychologically engage with information? In my opinion, if you don’t do that, these devices, they are a distraction.”

The power of habit

Why this habit will tip the scales in your favor this school year Posted: 25 Sep 2013 01:12 PM PDT “Habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are made.” — Seth Godin. According to research done at Duke University, more than 40 percent of the actions people take each day are unconscious habits. In his book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business,” Charles Duhigg tells the story of Lisa Allen, a thirty-four year old woman who, in relatively short order, transformed herself from a drunk, overweight, out of work smoker hounded by collection agencies, into a thin, vibrant, gainfully employed, debt-free, marathon running master’s degree student. And she did all that by focusing on just one thing: a habit. Contrary to popular belief, according to Duhigg, making significant life changes doesn’t actually require a lot of conscious effort—just the reprograming of a few habits.  And as it turns out, some habits matter a lot more than others.  They’re called “keystone habits,” and over time, changing just one can trigger a cascade that will ripple through every facet of a person’s life. For example: Exercise, even as little as once a week, is a keystone habit.  There’s something about it that makes changing other lifestyle patterns easier.  “Typically, people who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work,” writes Duhigg.  “They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family.  They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed.” Research is also uncovering other keystone habits.  Children from families that eat dinner together regularly get better grades, have more confidence and greater emotional control.  People who make the bed every morning are better at sticking to a budget, are more productive and feel better about themselves.  In the case of Lisa Allen, she focused on quitting one bad habit–smoking. So what is the single most important keystone habit driving success in school?  My research, though perhaps not as rigorous as the data Duhigg sights, indicates that students who use a daily planner or assignment notebook are significantly more successful than those who don’t. Sure, kids with planners get better grades, but that’s just a side effect of being more organized.  Why?  Items in the planner don’t have to be stored in short-term memory anymore.  This frees up energy for all kinds of cascading changes.  So be warned: Teen use of planners has been shown to increase not only grades, but confidence, creativity, and even happiness. There are endless time management and planning “systems” one can invest in, and entire self help libraries have been written on this topic.  My advice? Avoid them all. Simply get a planner and use it to jot down tasks and assignments after each class. This does not need to be fancy.  In fact, it shouldn’t be.  A spiral notebook works just fine. The important thing is not the system but the creation of a habit. The power is in the routine.  Commit to working with your student to use a planner religiously for the first thirty days of school.  Work hard on creating this single habit.  Just one.  Early on, this will take focus and effort, but after the habit is set, you’ll be amazed at how easily things begin to fall into place. The influential English poet, John Dryden once said, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”  Now that we better understand the power of keystone habits, we can more easily remake both.  And our students can reap the rewards. Image Credit Related posts: Unlock hidden potential with keystone habits. “Habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are... The Force of Habit “All our life, so far as it has form, is... The minimalist guide to teen time management Last week I mentioned an email I’d gotten from a...

Make research make a difference in the classroom

Practitioner-led enquiry is increasingly being seen as crucial to becoming a successful school. SecEd is supporting the new NFER Research Mark that aims to help schools promote teacherresearch. Graham Handscomb explains.

 

School-based enquiry and research are now being seen to make an important contribution to self-evaluation, improvement and the professional learning of staff.

For teachers who have engaged in researching their own school and classrooms it has not only brought new insights, new levels of understanding and new challenges, but has enhanced the quality of teaching and learning at the same time.

In these schools, research covers a wide range of activities, rooted in the day-to-day life of the classroom and the on-going business of the school and its relationships with its community (as is shown in the case study below).

Just as teachers encourage their pupils to engage in enquiry systematically and with a developing understanding of what constitutes “evidence”, so teachers themselves observe these principles for their own learning. It is about turning intuitive and spontaneous judgements into more systematic investigations, starting with the everyday questions that teachers ask themselves:

• Why do children behave the way they do?
• Why do some children seem unable to learn?
• Why is my teaching sometimes effective and at other times not?
• What would make for a happier, more productive classroom?

Some time ago I worked with Caroline Sharp from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) on a government-sponsored exercise to see what difference research can make. The question we wanted to ask was: didresearch activity make a sustained impact in schools over time? 

So we revisited some years later a number of schools that had been engaged in action research. Was there any lasting improvement effect? Did each school continue its active involvement in research? We found that researchhad made a difference and that the schools continued to invest in it. 

From this evaluation, we teased out the factors that seemed to help schools in sustaining this enquiry journey and maximising the impact of action research. These are:

• Establish a school culture that is supportive of collaboration, enquiry and calculated risk-taking.
• Build action research into staff development activities, seeking opportunities for groups of staff to work collaboratively.
• Link action research explicitly with developments in learning and teaching.
• Find a way of aligning individual, departmental and whole-school interests when selecting a topic for research enquiry.
• Seek out opportunities to foster pupil/teacher dialogue through action research.
• Ensure teacher-researchers have access to mentoring and expert advice.
• Consider how best to share the process, capture the learning and use the outcomes of the research within the school and the wider community.
• Plan for the longer-term development of research engagement within schools and in the wider community.
• Be ambitious and confident about using action research to secure gains in pupil achievement.

The NFER has recently launched its Research Mark, designed to recognise and celebrate the work of schools, colleges and early years settings which have made a real commitment to doing and using research to improve their practice. Organisations applying will have to provide evidence in three main areas. 

1, An enquiring, learning community

• Vision, values and goals – for example, how is research related to the organisation’s aims?
• Research climate and ethos – how does the organisation encourage professional learning?
• Leadership and support – how is research led and supported?
• Research communities and collaboration – to what extent has your organisation collaborated with others involved in research?
• The research journey – can you give an example of a research project in your setting?

2, Improving pedagogy

• Enhanced teaching and learning – how has research impacted on pedagogy?
• Research and professional learning – how does research contribute to professional learning?
• Reflection and self-evaluation – how does research contribute to self-evaluation?

3, Impact on children

• Benefits to learners – what is the impact on children and other learners?
• Impact, improvement and sustainability – how will you ensure researchengagement is sustained in the future?

An enquiry journey

Trained assessors will study the applications, visit all applicants to gather further information and provide useful feedback. Organisations which meet the criteria will be awarded the Research Mark for a period of three years before they need re-apply. The NFER will feature the successful applicants on its website and publicise their research.  

About a decade ago, John MacBeath and I proposed that schools can become research-engaged by placing research and enquiry “at the heart of the school, its outlook, systems and activity”. Since then, a good deal of evidence has emerged that such research engagement helps school leaders to develop their schools and make them exciting places to work, with widespread recognition of the huge difference it can make to staff, and collaboratively across school alliances. 

Research in action – a case study

At this 11 to 18 school a decision was taken that being a research-engaged school would be at the core of its identity. This meant that everyone – headteacher, staff and pupils – would be active enquirers. 

As well as using its own resources for research, the school has secured additional funding to support a range of activities. The headteacher now feels that the number of staff with research experience has reached a “tipping point”, with approximately 45 of the 60 teaching staff (including himself) having completed a piece of action research. 

All research projects are designed with impact in mind. Staff work on an issue of their own choosing and implement new approaches to bring about improvements. Teachers find action research interesting and motivating. 

The head of technology said: “It’s not just the research and how it affects your teaching; it’s also the fact that you are stretching your mind into an area other than your normal everyday teaching.”

When completed, each piece of research is reported in a short written account in the school’s Learning Lessons research publication. These are made available to staff, parents and governors. 

A fee of £100 is given to any member of staff willing to write up a colleague’sresearch (where the writer interviews the teacher-researcher and then produces a draft report of up to 1,000 words, focusing on the applications of the research to practice).

Each research project is designed to have an impact on the lives and life chances of young people. For example, one head of department focused on helping students to improve their essays. The new approach included writing frames, coupled with coaching using online instant messaging. This enabled students to achieve better results in their history exams and to transfer their skills to other subjects. 

Similarly, a science teacher wanted to improve exam revision and asked students in year 11 to identify effective revision strategies. He then introduced a range of techniques to make revision more targeted, active and collaborative. 

This included encouraging peer-tutoring, asking students to give immediate feedback on any difficulties they were experiencing with the material, and encouraging students to use a wide range of approaches to record their revision. The group using the new revision techniques out-performed their peers in their A levels.

The school is actively involving students as co-researchers, such as in a development where teachers ask students to help evaluate new teaching approaches by recording their reactions in learning logs. 

Teachers’ research engagement has a positive effect on students in general. The headteacher said: “Students benefit from enthusiastic teachers who engage in active dialogue with them.”

He added: “Research engagement has become an expectation: it has attracted staff to apply for posts at this school.”

• Professor Graham Handscomb is an NFER research associate.

Resources

• The NFER Research Mark: www.nfer.ac.uk/ms1
• For advice on how to support Young Researchers, visitwww.nfer.ac.uk/schools/developing-young-researchers/
• For guidance on making action research part of professional development, see www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/publications/ITR02/ITR02.pdf

Replacing CPD with JPD

Maggie Farrar discusses joint practice development, a peer-to-peer approach to CPD which is prioritised and modelled by school leaders too.

Sharing good practice doesn’t work.

This is what Professor David H Hargreaves told delegates at a recent National College event. What he meant by this was that actually it works for the sharers; it just does not help or work for recipients.

And yet sharing best practice is recognised as one of the most effective ways to develop teaching and learning practice. So what does this mean for CPD?

It means finding a more effective way of improving practice, one that moves away from one-off training courses and INSET days run in isolation towards one that is linked with whole-school improvement, is continuous not occasional, and where everyone is an active participant, fusing learning and development with practice. This model is increasingly being called joint practice development (JPD).

It is also an approach that needs to be prioritised and actively modelled by senior leaders. This may seem obvious, but it is worth highlighting. Research carried out last year by Professor Viviane Robinson made it very clear that it is leaders promoting and, significantly, participating in the professional development of their teachers that makes the biggest difference to pupil outcomes.

I believe that JPD is a great way to do this. It moves us away from the more traditional knowledge transfer approach of CPD, and ensures that leaders and teachers are working together in pursuit of raising standards, trying and testing approaches that lead to improvement through the day-to-day work, with constant reference and feedback from those who have the relevant experience and expertise. 

It is a far cry from the sort of CPD sessions that Prof Hargreaves described as “occasional activity that is sharply distinguished in time and space from routine classroom work”, where you listen to or read about some great ideas but then struggle to implement these in your own school or classroom.

And it can work. A group of Teaching School Alliances, together with the University of Sussex, recently undertook a number of JPD projects. These projects involved cross-school groups looking at structured peer observations between teachers, training students to give feedback on teaching and learning, and specific activities based around themes such as transition and numeracy.

Their experience of JPD is highlighted in Powerful Professional Learning: A school leader’s guide to joint practice development and, interestingly, all five of the alliances conclude that they will now work to replace CPD with JPD.

However, both the Teaching School Alliances and Prof Hargreaves in his latest thinkpiece, A Self-Improving School System: Towards maturity, recognise that while JPD is not something radically new, it can be difficult to establish and embed in our schools.

The role of leaders is therefore important. Both within your own school and in your partnerships, you need to be clear what development areas you need to work on and who has the skills, experience and also capacity to lead specific JPD projects, whether they are in your own school or elsewhere in the partnership. The culture has to be outward-facing – we cannot limit ourselves in the pursuit of even better practice – so leaders and teachers work across classrooms and indeed across schools in a constant pursuit of what works for children. 

In this way, you are finding ways of sharing your best teachers so that their expertise is contributing to the professional development of all those who can benefit from it, while their own expertise is being developed at the same time.

Other conditions need to be in place so that JPD can truly flourish. This includes ensuring the culture is open as well as outward. There has to be a climate of trust and support within and between the schools involved, where everyone feels they have something to offer and gain, rather than feeling that they learning from the “expert”. Alongside this, there has to be a collective moral purpose among participants, with a common understanding and professional commitment to really make a difference to all pupils, not just those in your own classroom or school.

Evaluation and challenge is also critical. Professional development has to serve a purpose, and that purpose is to raise pupil achievement and contribute to school improvement.

It is essential to create a culture of profession-led accountability, where everyone, at every level, develops a sense of what needs to be done and how it can be done, welcoming opportunities to gain feedback in the pursuit of continuously developing better practice.

Although the Teaching School Alliances concluded that JPD can be very powerful in improving practice, many identified a lack of time to engage in it as a real barrier to its success. Leaders therefore need to ensure that this sort of development is in the life-blood of the school, ensuring it remains a collective priority.

On a practical level, this may require rethinking how you use INSET days in order to integrate the work across a full school year – some schools have gone so far as to replace theirs with more twilight and short training sessions.

JPD has a lot to offer. In the words of those who have embarked on JPD projects, it has the potential to be a powerful tool for developing professional practice. With the right culture, commitment and challenge in place, it has the opportunity to take professional ownership of both personal and wider school improvement to a whole new level.   SecEd

• Maggie Farrar is interim chief executive of the National College for School Leadership. 

Further information

For more on the JPD projects and to download copies of the publications referenced in this article, visit www.nationalcollege.org.uk/joint-practice-developmen
t

Demonstrating Progress at KS3

 link to blog post

6 YouTube lessons for building better instructional videos

With the rise of the blended learning model of education, video is becoming an increasingly important medium for instruction. The essential components of blended learning - such as flipped classrooms, MOOCs and “Bring Your Own Device” programs - are facilitated by video instruction to ensure the personalization and flexibility of a digitized education system.

Over the last few years, a wave of YouTube channels has emerged to deliver high quality educational content in an accessible, engaging format. Although instructional and lecture videos can be found all over YouTube, these channels distinguish themselves by employing strategies to appeal to audiences. While they do not follow a typical school curriculum, and should certainly not replace one, their success on YouTube serves as a useful guide for instructors seeking to make the most out of video learning.

Here are six takeaways from these channels:

1. Condensed Time Length

Sometimes, the most compelling videos are short and to the point. Just a few minutes are devoted to allowing viewers to easily grasp the fundamentals of a particular subject before they decide to pursue it in greater depth. For example, C.C.P. Grey’s video on the debt ceiling gives an overview of the budgetary decision making process between congress and the president in under four minutes. A big advantage of putting short yet informative presentations in a video format is that if speaker is ever going too fast, it is easy to go back and hear parts of the presentation a second time.

2. Graphics   

Eye-catching graphics play an important role in making videos both accessible and entertaining. As educational YouTube channels show, this can be achieved in different ways. Crash Course includes an animated “thought bubble” featurefor each video in addition to images complementing the lecture. PBS Ideas Channel displays a constant stream of pictures and GIFs from popular culturealongside the host’s presentation.

3. Pique Curiosity

If the introduction of a video piques curiosity, the viewer will be more likely to follow through with the entire presentation. This is why many educational YouTube channels craft their titles and opening segments to draw the audience in. Vsauce titles each of its videos to sound as mentally stimulating as possible, posing a question that presents a simple aspect of life as a gateway to a deeper exploration of a multitude of subjects. Examples include “Will We Ever run Out of New Music?” and “Why Do We get Bored?”. Another strategy, as seen in this video by Veritasium, involves an opening scene in which some action is taking place. This provides a nice illustration of the topic before it is discussed in greater depth.  

4. Host Personality

The success of educational YouTube channels owes a lot to the charisma of their hosts. Regardless of how interesting the subject is on its own, the ability of instructors to make both the subject and themselves more interesting makes a big difference in how students approach the material. Furthermore, establishing a student-teacher relationship as less of a purely academic one and more of a supportive community of learners is dependent on the instructor’s conduct. Crash Course’s John and Hank Green are seasoned hosts on YouTube who have built a community of fans they like to call “nerd fighters”. Vsauce’s host Michael attracts his following by showing enthusiasm and indulging on quirky, nerdy humor.   

5. Animated Notes

Another strategy for appealing educational videos is to explain the topic through creative note-taking rather than a face staring into the camera. Vihart accompanies its math notes with frequent doodling and often shows how geometry can be used to create beautiful doodles. Minute Physics also uses illustrated notes to explain concepts in a way that’s easy to understand.   

6. Real World Setting

Videos that go outside of a classroom or studio setting enable the audience to see a particular topic in action. This is a helpful strategy for engaging students because it encourages curiosity about everyday situations and shows how classroom material is applicable to the larger world. The YouTube channel Smarter Every Day does this for each of their videos by explaining natural phenomena with a high speed camera.  

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Using Cooperative learning to prevent behaviour Problems

How to use cooperative group work activities in your lessons. Improve student engagement and achievement, decrease behaviour problems and teach vital social skills. This guide shows you how to group your students and manage cooperative learning sessions for maximum success.

Link to resource

Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit

Homework is a gift

Homework is a Gift By Rita Platt and John Wolfe Assigning students carefully prepared homework is a gift we give them. In American schools there are a wide range of policies and practices surrounding homework. But, as a profession, we haven’t devoted enough energy to thinking about it. It is time to ignite the flame under homework, to define our own beliefs about the “what’s”, “why’s”, and “how’s” of it, and to come to thoughtful conclusions that best serve our students, schools and communities. By “homework” I am taking about content-area work. Spelling, writing, math, science, and social studies work. I am very much in favor of homework.  As both a parent and a teacher, I know homework is important.  I’m going to try to convince you of that too! The scholarly opinion on the pros and cons of homework as a means to enhance learning is mixed.  One side claims that the bulk of studies show that doing homework leads to greater academic achievement while the other says not only is that not the case, but homework steals precious family time and overburdens our students. There are, however, three big ideas that most scholars agree on. Home reading is essential. It is different than other types of homework. Asking students to read at home has been shown to bolster achievement beyond any shadow of a doubt—no matter what you decide about homework in general, asking students to read a minimum of 20 minutes at home each day is essential to success. More is not better where homework is concerned. The guidelines are about 10 minutes per grade.  So, 10 minutes for 1st grade, 20 for 2nd grade, and so on.  This time is, of course, in addition to 20 minutes of home reading. Homework must be carefully planned and offered. The purpose of homework is to practice of what has already been taught and learned. It is not for students to learn new material. How the Flipped classroom concept fits in remains to be seen. Helpful as this is, to my mind, these big ideas and academic arguments miss something. The research has largely focused on how homework impacts academic achievement. I am going to suggest that this may not be the most important factor to consider. Maybe it doesn’t matter if homework leads to greater academic achievement. Maybe the question should be: Does homework help our students to be more successful in life in general? I believe the answer to that question is yes.  But, not for the reasons you might think! I recently read Paul Tough’s book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. The book summarizes the research on what makes a person successful in school and in later life. The findings were surprising to say the least. It turns out that it is not IQ or grades that predict success. It is something called “grit.” Psychologist, Angela Duckworth, repurposed this word to mean having the stamina and passion to achieve goals. Grit is comprised of a mix of desirable character traits including being hard-working, curious, optimistic, perseverant, and perhaps most importantly, being able to delay gratification.  To really get the feel for the theory, watchDuckworth’s TED Talk.  Then, If you’re wondering how “gritty” you are, take Duckworth’s Grit Test. Let me say it again in even more plain terms, intelligence isn’t as important to success as we thought but working hard and having “grit” is. The best news? Grit can be nurtured. At the elementary school where I teach, the central message that we send to students is “you are responsible for your learning.” Carefully planned homework supports that message by reminding students that the job of school is learning. It reinforces the idea that teachers believe students are power-players in their own educations and capable of hard work. Homework takes the message a step further by showing students that job of learning is so important that it can’t all be done at school—that they must take academic learning into their own hands and homes. It also builds grit. Doing homework helps students become gritty by developing the skills and self-control to delay gratification, work hard, and persevere. With homework, it’s not as much about the “books” or the book-learning, it’s about the “hitting the books,” the act of buckling down and working hard. The practice in building self-control and “stick-to-it-ness.”  So whether or not homework directly increases academic achievement is not the question that matters most. The question should be, does homework build grit? If like me, you believe it does, then you know that ultimately, homework is a gift we can give to our children. For more information, resources, and ideas, please visit the following links. Chris Wondra, founder of We Teach We Learn writes about the power of “learning to wait.” A set of quick tips for helping students build grit. Brief explanation of why grit is so important to success and how you can help your children/students develop grit. Image Credit Related posts: “Slant” it: An Alternative to the Flipped Classroom for Practical Teachers By: Rita Platt The “Flipped Classroom” is all the rage... 5 Things I Finally Understand About Teaching and Learning By Rita Platt What is your philosophy of education? This... The Science of Persuasion We’re used to thinking that the art of persuasion is...