Policy and approach won’t be the same in all cases. We trust individual school head teachers to decide what their policy on homework will be, and what happens if pupils don’t do what’s set.

But when schools do set homework, children do need to do it. Just to be clear: schools are not obliged to set homework, and some don’t. There have even been subsequent questions about its legal status. There has been some high-profile interest of late on social media suggesting that homework is bad for children, at least in the first half of schooling. After all, almost every one of us will have done homework ourselves as a child and most of us will be drafted in to help with it at some point as a parent, carer or grandparent. Homework is a staple of school life, and of home life. This was, I should clarify, a piece of homework for one of my children, not something called for in my day job. One of the tougher things I’ve taken on recently was solving a ‘part-whole model’, involving nine ducks and a jagged shoreline. He says that ultimately up to heads and school leaders to decide whether to set homework and what the consequences should be if children do not complete their homework set. Education Secretary Damian Hinds has today written an op-ed for the Sunday Times setting out his position on homework, which has been followed up with a news story.

Do a homework