Ontario school boards should review homework policies: minister

Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne says all school boards should review their homework policy to ensure kids aren't being overloaded.

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Reducing the homework load for kindergarten students, holding back on homework assignments over the holidays and killing penalties for late homework assignments seems "reasonable," Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said Tuesday.

She urged all school boards to study their homework policy.

Toronto's public school board is looking at setting stricter rules for homework in the wake of a study suggesting Ontario students spend more time on homework than their peers in other provinces. The University of Toronto study said the situation is stressing out kids, eating into family time and even sparking marital spats.

"I've always said that boards need to review their homework policies . . . Homework policies have to be reviewed regularly. I don't think you can put a homework policy in place and then never look at it again," said Wynne, adding she's encouraged the Toronto public board is reviewing students' homework load.

"Some of the suggestions sound pretty reasonable to me."

Ontario kids spend an average of 40 minutes a night on homework compared to 32 minutes in the rest of the country, according to the study conducted by the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Ontario students also seem to get assigned more projects while their parents have more negative attitudes toward homework and tend to help out more than those in other parts of the country, the study found.

There is also little evidence that assigning youngsters 10 minutes of homework in kindergarten actually improves their grades or their learning, the authors found.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said he's not going to rule on whether homework in junior kindergarten is appropriate or whether kids should spend their holidays doing school work.

"That's a call for teachers and principals to make," he said.

But Toronto trustee Josh Matlow said other boards across the country should be watching the Toronto public board as they look at "revolutionizing" homework requirements, he said. Kids shouldn't spend their long weekends worrying about a homework assignment that is due on Monday, he said.

Homework for kindergarten students should be "erased" altogether, he added.

"A lot of school boards across the country are going to watch what we're going to do," said Matlow, who raised the issue a year ago. "There are a lot of political debates and we often get into the sensational issues but this is one of the more substantive things we're going to do this year."