Balancing Homework

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

“Across the countries and regions surveyed, students who came from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds tended to devote more hours to homework” (Singapore Ranks Third Globally In Time Spent On Homework, Amelia Teng)

At first glance the finding that students in Singapore rank third globally in time spent on homework – with 9.4 average hours every week – is another confirmation of Singapore’s stressful education system (ST, Dec. 27). “Are you sure Singapore is not first” was a common response on the Internet. However, Associate Professor Jason Tan of the National Institute of Education was right to mention that with little indication of the subjects and nature of homework completed, it is “hard to draw any conclusions from [the findings]”.

Moreover, more questions should be asked of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a triennial international survey which evaluates education systems.

For one, the correlation between the time spent on homework and higher scores in PISA appears incongruous with Finland and Russia, for instance, in the picture. Finnish students spend less time on homework (2.8 hours) than the OECD average of 4.9 hours, Russian students spend more time (9.7 hours), yet the Finnish 15-year-olds outperformed their Russian counterparts in PISA scores: a mean score of 519 versus 482 in 2012. In other words, the assertion that “students who did more homework scored higher in PISA” should not go unchallenged. Even if the correlation does exist, barring anomalies, the amount of time spent on homework could instead be the result of PISA scores.

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