Education

Religious schools are a pretty controversial subject, with fears surrounding most of them that they are forcing their own religious dogma on their students. In some cases this has been shown to be the case, like with Islamic schools in the UK most recently, and in the past a lot of Catholic schools were also very religious. Even though this is the case, the successes of religious schools are without doubt.

Catholic schools are some of the most successful schools in the USA, outperforming the majority of public schools and a fair number of private ones too. This goes a long way to show how religious schools can be successful.

So how have they accomplished this? Well some argue that it is because of the high level of structure and discipline that you find in religious schools. You find that the level of discipline in these schools tend to be higher than others. Others suggest that the reason behind their success is because of how motivated they are to succeed, as a religious school doubles as an opportunity for them to get more devotees.

Secondary school children, who will have anywhere from 5 to 7 lessons during the day, may well end up with anything up to an additional 2 hours worth of homework to do at the end of the day, a situation which has consistently been a cause for concern for parents.

Recently a trend has been occurring where the amount of homework students are expected to complete has increased, a trend witnessed in both Primary and Secondary schools. For all students this can be a problem, but it is particularly so for primary school students, who shouldn’t be expected to have to put in hours worth of work on top of the requirements for them to develop and maintain their reading and writing skills.

When you look at the hours of work students have to put into a day at school, the standard throughout the western world is 6-7 hours. An additional 2 hours worth of homework can push their workload to the same level as a full time job, which seems unfair for children.