Between the Lines home
Basket Free lessons
Free lessons

Knowledge hub › For teachers › Homework

Homework in English that is worth setting

The EEF finds a moderate effect for homework at very low cost, on thin evidence, and finds the task matters more than the time spent. Short, specific homework suits English, and so does checking it in the first five minutes of the next lesson.

Quick guide for teachers · 4 minute read

Homework in English can drift towards two kinds: an essay that takes a weekend and comes back half finished, and a worksheet that keeps students busy. The evidence points somewhere more modest.

What the evidence says

The Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit sums up homework as “Moderate impact for very low cost based on very limited evidence”. It adds: “Studies in secondary schools show greater impact (+5 months) than in primary schools (+3 months).” The months are the Toolkit’s measure of additional progress, and it rates the security of the evidence “as low”, from 43 studies.

What makes the difference is in the detail:

  • “The quality of the task set appears to be more important than the quantity of work required from the pupil.”
  • “Homework that is linked to classroom work tends to be more effective.”
  • “In particular, studies that included feedback on homework had higher impacts on learning.”
  • “There is some evidence that the impact of homework diminishes as the amount of time pupils spend on it increases.”

The Toolkit also notes that students eligible for free school meals “typically receive additional benefits from homework”, while surveys in England suggest that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are “less likely to have a quiet working space”. A homework club, or a room open before school, is part of setting homework fairly.

Four kinds that suit English

Retrieval. Five short questions on earlier lessons and earlier texts, answered from memory. It takes ten minutes and checks itself in the next Do Now. The long read on retrieval practice explains why answering from memory beats rereading notes.

Reading ahead. The next part of the set text, to read, listen to or watch before the lesson that needs it, so lesson time goes on the extracts. Our deliberate practice booklets for A Christmas Carol, Macbeth and An Inspector Calls open each week with that page: the part of the text, roughly how long it takes, what to look for, and five check questions to answer from memory. After that page, each week has one short text with four questions, about 20 minutes’ work, for six weeks.

Quotation learning. Two or three short quotations, named exactly, learned by heart and written out from memory. Our A Christmas Carol scheme sets “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” ahead of a quotation quiz. Name the quotations exactly: a homework of revising Stave 5 tells students nothing about what to learn. See How many quotations should students learn? for how many and which.

One timed paragraph. A single What–How–Why paragraph on a question from the lesson, written in ten minutes with a clock running, then checked against the model paragraph and improved in green pen. It is short enough to finish, and it practises the exam skill in miniature.

What to leave out

  • Whole essays at home. They take too long, they come back unfinished, and they are the work most open to help from someone or something else. Write them in class.
  • New learning. A homework that needs teaching first is likely to widen the gap between students who have help at home and students who do not.
  • Copying up notes or making posters. They take time and ask for little thinking about the text.

The Department for Education’s guidance on generative AI suggests schools “may wish to review homework policies” now that students have AI tools. Retrieval, quotation learning and reading ahead are hard to outsource, because the test is what the student can do in the room the next day. AI and student writing covers the rest.

Checking it quickly

Feedback is where homework earns its place, and it does not need marking at home.

  • Retrieval: the answers go on the board in the next Do Now and students mark their own. Note who left the questions blank.
  • Reading ahead: use the five check questions as the Do Now, answered from memory before anyone opens the book.
  • Quotation learning: a two-minute quiz, written from memory. Collect the quizzes and look at spelling as well as accuracy.
  • The timed paragraph: read five or six, write one whole-class feedback note, and give the next lesson’s first ten minutes to the improvement.

Sources

Press / to search from any page, and Esc to close.