homework in china

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China passes law to reduce ‘twin pressures’ of homework and tutoring on children

Law makes local authorities and parents responsible for ensuring children are spared stress of overwork

China has passed a law to reduce the “twin pressures” of homework and off-site tutoring on children.

The official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday the new law, which has not been published in full, makes local governments responsible for ensuring that the twin pressures are reduced and asks parents to arrange their children’s time to account for reasonable rest and exercise, thereby reducing pressure and avoiding internet overuse.

The law will come into force on January 1 next year. China’s education system requires students to take exams from an early age and culminates in the feared university entrance exam at age 18 known as the “gaokao”, where a single score can determine a child’s life trajectory.

Many parents spend a fortune to enrol their children in the best schools or private lessons, which takes a toll on both their finances and the health of the youngsters.

Reducing the pressure on parents is also seen as a way to encourage Chinese people to have more children as the country’s population ages.

Beijing has exercised a more assertive paternal hand this year, from tacking the addiction of youngsters to online games, deemed a form of “spiritual opium”, to clamping down on “blind” worship of internet celebrities .

China’s parliament said on Monday it would consider legislation to punish parents if their young children exhibit “very bad behaviour” or commit crimes.

In recent months, the education ministry has limited gaming hours for minors, allowing them to play online for one hour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday only.

It has also cut back on homework and banned after-school tutoring for major subjects during the weekend and holidays, concerned about the heavy academic burden on overwhelmed children.

At the same time, China is urging young Chinese men to be less “feminine” and more “manly”.

In its “proposal to prevent the feminisation of male adolescents” issued in December, the education ministry urged schools to promote on-campus sports such as football.

Last year, Si Zefu , a member of a top advisory board called the Chinese people’s political consultative conference national committee, won headlines in China by telling delegates that the “feminization” trend among teenagers, if not checked, would harm the development of China.

The backdrop to Beijing’s drive for what could be called more traditional family values is the country’s growing demographic crisis. The latest census data released in May showed that China’s population growth has plunged to its lowest for almost 60 years despite the scrapping of the decades-long one-child policy several years ago.

The number of people of working and child-rearing age is going into decline. There are fewer young adults than there were 10 years ago, for example, something shown by a 31% drop in marriages from 2013 to 2019.

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Reporting by Steven Bian and Engen Tham in Shanghai; Editing by William Mallard

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China's agriculture minister is being investigated for suspected violations of law and discipline, the country's anti-graft watchdog said on Saturday.

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BEIJING — China's Ministry of Education on Feb 15 vowed to continue implementing the "double reduction" policy to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for primary and middle school students.

The ministry called for more appropriate homework assignments, a higher level of classroom teaching, and higher quality of after-school services to fully implement the policy. After-school services are for students who cannot be picked up in time by their parents when school is over to do their homework or participate in physical exercises, art, literature, and other activities after school.

Students spent less time doing homework in the past school semester, and over 92 percent of students countrywide voluntarily participated in after-school services, said Lyu Yugang, an official with the ministry, at a press conference on Feb 15.

• China reiterates implementation of 'double reduction' policy
• Nearly half of students participate in after-school services
• China reiterates crackdown on advertising off-campus tutoring

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China Targets Costly Tutoring Classes. Parents Want to Save Them.

Many families and experts say Beijing’s education overhaul will help the rich and make the system even more competitive for those who can barely afford it.

By Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li

Zhang Hongchun worries that his 10-year-old daughter isn’t getting enough sleep. Between school, homework and after-school guitar, clarinet and calligraphy practice, most nights she doesn’t get to bed before 11. Some of her classmates keep going until midnight.

“Everyone wants to follow suit,” Mr. Zhang said. “No one wants to lose at the starting line.”

In China , the competitive pursuit of education — and the better life it promises — is relentless. So are the financial pressures it adds to families already dealing with climbing house prices, caring for aging parents and costly health care.

The burden of this pursuit has caught the attention of officials who want couples to have more children. China ’s ruling Communist Party has tried to slow the education treadmill. It has banned homework, curbed livestreaming hours of online tutors and created more coveted slots at top universities.

Last week, it tried something bigger: barring private companies that offer after-school tutoring and targeting China’s $100 billion for-profit test-prep industry. The first limits are set to take place during the coming year, to be carried out by local governments.

The move, which will require companies that offer curriculum tutoring to register as nonprofits, is aimed at making life easier for parents who are overwhelmed by the financial pressures of educating their children. Yet parents and experts are skeptical it will work. The wealthy, they point out, will simply hire expensive private tutors, making education even more competitive and ultimately widening China’s yawning wealth gap.

For Mr. Zhang, who sells chemistry lab equipment in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, banning after-school tutoring does little to address his broader concerns. “As long as there is competition, parents will still have their anxiety,” he said.

Beijing’s crackdown on private education is a new facet of its campaign to toughen regulation on corporate China, an effort driven in part by the party’s desire to show its most powerful technology giants who is boss .

Regulators have slammed the industry for being “hijacked by capital.” China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has attacked it as a “malady,” and said parents faced a dilemma in balancing the health and happiness of their children with the demands of a competitive system, which is too focused on testing and scores.

The education overhaul is also part of the country’s effort to encourage an overwhelmingly reluctant population to have bigger families and address a looming demographic crisis . In May, China changed its two-child policy to allow married couples to have three children. It promised to increase maternity leave and ease workplace pressures.

Tackling soaring education costs is seen as the latest sweetener. But Mr. Zhang said having a second child was out of the question for him and his wife because of the time, energy and financial resources that China’s test-score-obsessed culture has placed on them.

Parental focus on education in China can sometimes make American helicopter parenting seem quaint. Exam preparation courses begin in kindergarten. Young children are enrolled in “early M.B.A.” courses. No expense is spared, whether the family is rich or poor.

“Everyone is pushed into this vicious cycle. You spend what you can on education,” said Siqi Tu, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. For Chinese students hoping to get a spot at a prestigious university, everything hinges on the gaokao, a single exam that many children are primed for before they even learn how to write.

“If this criteria for selecting students doesn’t change, it’s hard to change specific practices,” said Ms. Tu, whose research is focused on wealth and education in China. Parents often describe being pressured into finding tutors who will teach their children next year’s curriculum well before the semester begins, she said.

Much of the competition comes from a culture of parenting known colloquially in China as “chicken parenting,” which refers to the obsessive involvement of parents in their children’s lives and education. The term “jiwa” or “chicken baby” has trended on Chinese social media in recent days.

Officials have blamed private educators for preying on parents’ fears associated with the jiwa culture. While banning tutoring services is meant to eliminate some of the anxiety, parents said the new rule would simply create new pressures, especially for families that depended on the after-school programs for child care.

“After-school tutoring was expensive, but at least it was a solution. Now China has taken away an easy solution for parents without changing the problem,” said Lenora Chu, the author of “Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve.” In her book, Ms. Chu wrote about her experience putting her toddler son through China’s education system and recounted how her son’s friend was enrolled in “early M.B.A.” classes.

“If you don’t have the money or the means or the know-how, what are you left with?” she said. “Why would this compel you to have another child? No way.”

The new regulation has created some confusion for many small after-school businesses that are unsure if it will affect them. Others wondered how the rules would be enforced.

Jasmine Zhang, the school master at an English training school in southern China, said she hadn’t heard from local officials about the new rules. She said she hoped that rather than shutting institutions down, the government would provide more guidance on how to run programs like hers, which provide educators with jobs.

“We pay our teachers social insurance,” Ms. Zhang said. “If we are ordered to close suddenly, we still have to pay rent and salaries.”

While she waits to learn more about the new rules, some for-profit educators outside China see an opportunity.

“Now students will come to people like us,” said Kevin Ferrone, an academic dean at Crimson Global Academy, an online school. “The industry is going to shift to online, and payments will be made through foreign payment systems” to evade the new rules, he said.

For now, the industry is facing an existential crisis. Companies like Koolearn Technology, which provides online classes and test-preparation courses, have said the rules will have a direct and devastating impact on their business models. Analysts have questioned whether they can survive.

Global investors who once flooded publicly listed Chinese education companies ran for the exits last week, knocking tens of billions off the industry in recent days.

Scott Yang, who lives in the eastern city of Wenzhou, wondered if his 8-year-old son’s after-school program would continue next semester. He has already paid the tuition, and he and his wife depend on the program for child care. Each day, someone picks up his son from school and takes him to a facility for courses in table tennis, recreational mathematics, calligraphy and building with Legos.

Banning after-school classes will allow only families that can afford private tutors to give their children an edge, Mr. Yang said. Instead of alleviating any burden, the ban will add to it.

“It makes it harder,” he said, “for kids of poor families to succeed.”

Alexandra Stevenson is a business correspondent based in Hong Kong, covering Chinese corporate giants, the changing landscape for multinational companies and China’s growing economic and financial influence in Asia. More about Alexandra Stevenson

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China reduces homework load in schools

BEIJING, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese primary and junior high school students will no longer get overloaded by homework from teachers or after-school training institutions.

Primary schools should ensure that students in the first and second grades do not have written homework. Those in higher grades should complete their homework within one hour, a circular issued by the Ministry of Education stated.

Junior high school students will spend a maximum of one and a half hours on written homework each day, the circular said. It called for an appropriate amount of homework, even for weekends and summer and winter holidays.

After-school training institutions are prohibited from giving any homework to primary and junior high school students, the circular said.

Besides the workload amount, schools are required to adjust the form and content of homework in accordance with the traits of different schooling stages and subjects, as well as the needs and abilities of students.

The circular called for assigning diversified homework, covering science, physical exercise, art, social work, and individualized and inter-disciplinary homework.

It also forbids giving homework to parents, directly or indirectly, or leaving homework corrections to parents. Enditem

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• China reduces homework load in schools

Chinese primary and junior high school students will no longer get overloaded by homework from teachers or after-school training institutions.

Primary schools should ensure that students in the first and second grades do not have written homework. Those in higher grades should complete their homework within one hour, a circular issued by the Ministry of Education stated.

Junior high school students will spend a maximum of one and a half hours on written homework each day, the circular said. It called for an appropriate amount of homework, even for weekends and summer and winter holidays.

After-school training institutions are prohibited from giving any homework to primary and junior high school students, the circular said.

Besides the workload amount, schools are required to adjust the form and content of homework in accordance with the traits of different schooling stages and subjects, as well as the needs and abilities of students.

The circular called for assigning diversified homework, covering science, physical exercise, art, social work, and individualized and inter-disciplinary homework.

It also forbids giving homework to parents, directly or indirectly, or leaving homework corrections to parents.

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The Two-Way

International, china weighs ban on homework; teachers, students argue against.

Bill Chappell

In the hopes of easing pressures on China's students, the country' education officials are considering a ban on written homework. Here, students walk to school in Beijing in June. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

In the hopes of easing pressures on China's students, the country' education officials are considering a ban on written homework. Here, students walk to school in Beijing in June.

Chinese officials hope to rein in teachers who assign too much homework, as the country's Ministry of Education considers new rules that ban schools from requiring students to complete written tasks at home. Citing undue stress on students, the ministry would also limit the number of exams students take.

The goal of relieving pressure on students was also cited in July, when China's Education agency issued a ban on written homework for first and second graders during the summer vacation. Readers may recall that last autumn, French President Francois Hollande declared his wish to ban homework , as well.

Chinese officials presented a draft version of a long-term education reform plan for public comment last week. The plan calls for cutting homework, replacing it with visits to museums and libraries, and boosting "students' hands-on capabilities through handicrafts or farm work," the Xinhua state news agency reports .

The plan's goals include "raising the senior high school gross enrollment rate to 90 percent, and increasing the higher education gross enrollment rate to 40 percent," according to a press bulletin at the ministry's website .

One rule would prohibit any unified exams for students in the third grade and younger. Students in the fourth grade and above could not be required to take more than two exams per subject in each semester.

The plan would also require that "exam scores and contest awards shall not be used as criteria for school admission in the compulsory education phase."

Another proposal targets extracurricular academic classes, which many Chinese parents rely on to help their kids get ahead.

"Parents of one Shanghai second-grader said they have this year spent nearly 30,000 yuan (US$4,901) on extra classes such as English and mathematics," reports the SINA news site .

In the fight over homework, it seems the teachers may have an unlikely ally: their students.

"It's not that much work," one girl tells The Shanghaiist , in a video that some of her classmates probably hope goes unseen. "Sometimes it takes just half an hour to 40 minutes."

"It takes just 40 minutes to do the homework," another girl says. "If there's more from my mom, then it takes me just a little over an hour."

That's right — Chinese parents sometimes assign homework of their own. As another student explains, his parents require him to complete exercises that are separate from his school studies.

"My parents just bought me some workbooks," he says. "They just want me to learn better and get into a good junior high school."

The push to cut homework has also met with resistance among educators, who say it would undermine their efforts to have students retain what they learn. And teachers tell SINA that for issues like literacy, homework is crucial. Others say homework isn't the real problem.

"If homework or academic assignments are stopped, schools and parents will worry about the possible decline in enrollment rates, which remains the main assessment of education quality," elementary education director Wang Ming, of the National Education Development Research Center, tells China Daily .

"If we want to have a real impact on easing the burden, the assessment and enrollment systems, which still heavily count on examination results, should be adjusted," he says.

In June, Xinhua reported four recent instances of Chinese students killing themselves after they received poor scores on college entrance exams.

And The Shanghaiist reports that in 2011, three young girls "allegedly killed themselves over stress related to school work."

The site also notes that China's education officials have been urging cuts to homework burdens since 1988, with few positive results.

Mind Your Decisions

Math Videos, Math Puzzles, Game Theory. By Presh Talwalkar

Homework In China – How Tall Is The Table?

If you buy from a link in this post, I may earn a commission. This does not affect the price you pay. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more.

Posted September 24, 2018 By Presh Talwalkar. Read about me , or email me .

I adapted this problem from a similar one for elementary students, as tweeted by China Focus .

How tall is the table?

The problem is meant for children, but surely it will stump some adults. Can you figure it out? Watch the video for a solution.

"All will be well if you use your mind for your decisions, and mind only your decisions." Since 2007, I have devoted my life to sharing the joy of game theory and mathematics. MindYourDecisions now has over 1,000 free articles with no ads thanks to community support! Help out and get early access to posts with a pledge on Patreon .

(Pretty much all posts are transcribed quickly after I make the videos for them–please let me know if there are any typos/errors and I will correct them, thanks).

One way to solve the problem is algebra. We can make equations based on the height of objects. From the picture on the left we have:

cat + table – turtle = 170

From the equation on the right we have:

turtle + table – cat = 130

To solve for the table, we add these two equations, which then gives:

2(table) = 300

Then we can readily solve the height of the table is 150 cm.

I’m not sure if the students learned algebra yet, so I wanted to derive another method as well.

There is a neat way to solve the problem visually, by stacking the diagrams.

The height from the top of the cat at the bottom to the top of the cat at the top is 300. This is exactly twice the height of a table, as can be seen by removing irrelevant elements in the diagram, and shifting down by the height of the cat:

Thus the height of the table is half of 300, or 150.

China Focus tweet https://twitter.com/China__Focus/status/1039338689187332096

Published by

Presh talwalkar.

I run the MindYourDecisions channel on YouTube , which has over 1 million subscribers and 200 million views. I am also the author of The Joy of Game Theory: An Introduction to Strategic Thinking , and several other books which are available on Amazon .

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By way of history, I started the Mind Your Decisions blog back in 2007 to share a bit of math, personal finance, personal thoughts, and game theory. It's been quite a journey! I thank everyone that has shared my work, and I am very grateful for coverage in the press , including the Shorty Awards, The Telegraph, Freakonomics, and many other popular outlets.

I studied Economics and Mathematics at Stanford University.

People often ask how I make the videos. Like many YouTubers I use popular software to prepare my videos. You can search for animation software tutorials on YouTube to learn how to make videos. Be prepared--animation is time consuming and software can be expensive!

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One thought on “Homework In China – How Tall Is The Table?”

I did it visually as well but slightly different.

I noticed that in the the first picture 170 is higher than the table by the cat-turtle height and in the second the it is lower by the same amount. So the table height must be in the middle between 170 and 130, aka 150.

Comments are closed.

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How parents help children with homework in China: Narratives across the life span

• Published: 02 October 2013
• Volume 14 , pages 581–592, ( 2013 )

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• Sungwon Kim 1 &
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This study examines how ten young adults in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China, perceived how their parents helped them with homework during their childhood and adolescence. Between 2011 and 2012, we interviewed five men and five women from Dalian who had first been recruited in 1999 from a college prep high school, a vocational high school, and a junior high school as part of a longitudinal study of Chinese singleton children. In this sample, most parents had not finished high school but expected their children to finish college. Parents’ lack of ability to directly assist their children in their schoolwork at home (and thus promote their children’s skills ) was compensated for by involvement strategies that often tapped into their children’s motivation . Our study illustrated how several strategies that have not been reported in the Western scholarship on parental involvement (i.e., reasoning about the importance of education, watching children study, and offering food, criticizing, and blaming) can map onto the skill and motivation development model Western researchers have developed, while highlighting the previously understudied salience of these particular strategies, especially for parents who do not have enough education to teach the skills their children need for upward mobility.

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Acknowledgments

We are most deeply indebted to the people in our study for sharing their lives with us. We also thank Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Nancy Hill, Kari-Elle Brown, Stephen Koenig, Yun Zhu, Lisa Hsiao, March Zhengyuan Fan, Emily Bai, Lizzy Austadt, Edward Kim, Dian Yu, and Kunali Gurditta, for their advice and assistance. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0845748. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The research for this article was also supported by a Beinecke Brothers Memorial Fellowship, an Andrew W. Mellon Grant, a National Science Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the Weatherhead Center at Harvard University, a postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Demography Fund Research Grant, a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, a grant from the Harvard University China Fund, grants from the Harvard University Asia Center, a grant from the Harvard University William F. Milton Fund, and a grant from Amherst College.

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Sungwon Kim

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Vanessa L. Fong

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Kim, S., Fong, V.L. How parents help children with homework in China: Narratives across the life span. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 14 , 581–592 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-013-9284-7

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Received : 28 December 2012

Revised : 08 August 2013

Accepted : 16 September 2013

Published : 02 October 2013

Issue Date : December 2013

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-013-9284-7

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China's restrictive approach to children's screen time and homework showing promising benefits

A series of measures taken by China to curb sedentary behaviour among children in the country have been successful, a new study by British scientists has shown.

The measures include restrictions on online gaming companies targeting a young demographic, limitations on the amount of homework teachers can assign, and curtailment of lesson schedules of private tuition businesses.

As a result, there has been a notable decline in both the overall duration of sedentary time and the length of various sedentary activities.

'Rationing Internet' to cut screen time? Call to limit use to 3GB a week causes uproar in France

According to the latest research, these interventions are linked to a 13.8 per cent decrease in daily sedentary behaviour. It represents over 45 minutes each day when the children weren’t physically inactive, particularly among students in urban areas.

A team led by the University of Bristol in the UK published their findings in the International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity.

"The results are exciting as this type of regulatory intervention across multiple settings has never been tried before," Dr Bai Li, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

"Traditionally, children and their parents or carers have been guided with education and encouraged to make behavioural changes themselves, which hasn’t really worked," she added.

Researchers analysed data from more than 7,000 primary and secondary school students aged 9 to 18 from across 14 cities in the Guangxi region of southern China.

Data was gathered in 2020 and 2021, before and after the regulations were introduced.

Less screen time for children is linked to better cognition, study says

Less screen time

The average daily screen-viewing time dropped by 10 per cent, equating to around 10 minutes less on devices.

"With these regulatory measures, the onus has shifted to online gaming companies, schools and, private tutoring companies to comply. This very different approach appears to be more effective because it is aimed at improving the environment in which children and adolescents live, supporting a healthier lifestyle," Li said, adding that further research was needed to know if these results were replicable on an international scale.

In recent years, China has made several propositions to curb screen time ranging from instituting a strict three-hour-per-week limit for children playing video games to putting pressure on tech companies to have a "minor mode" for those under 18.

French experts recommend cutting screen time for children under 3 and social media for teens

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasises the importance of physical activity for children and adolescents aged 5-17 and recommends at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity daily .

It also pushes to limit sedentary behaviour like prolonged sitting.

"This is a fascinating study because most interventions to reduce sedentary behaviours have relied on educational approaches rather than the regulatory measures used here," said Professor Boyd Swinburn, co-director at the WHO, who wasn’t involved in the study.

"While achieving similar regulations in countries outside China may be a challenge, the impact of the regulations does show how sensitive sedentary behaviours are to the prevailing environmental conditions and rules," he added.

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Homework burden eases for Chinese students

The amount of time primary and middle school students in China spent on homework fell from 3.03 hours a day in 2016 to 2.87 hours in 2017, but it is still far higher than in other countries, according to a research report.

Experts and parents have called for reasonable amounts of homework and an evaluation system for students based on more than just examinations, while teachers advise parents not to focus on competition.

The report by afanti100.com, a Chinese online education service provider, is based on a survey of 446,836 students in 31 provincial areas, with 56.7 percent from primary schools, 38.6 percent from middle schools, and 8.7 percent from high schools.

The research indicated that it took primary and middle school students less time to finish their homework in 2017 than in 2016. The average time per day decreased to 2.87 hours－2.64 hours for primary school students and 2.94 hours for high school students.

Although the average time fell, it was still more than other countries－twice the global average, in fact.

At the end of 2017, the Ministry of Education introduced a standard for managing schools under the compulsory education period. It demanded that families and schools should cooperate to guarantee 10 hours of sleep for primary students and nine hours of sleep for middle school students.

However, the online education platform's report showed that more than 80 percent of students go to bed later than 10 pm every day.

In 2013, the Ministry of Education also issued a regulation on primary school pupils' homework, saying that there should be no written homework for Grade 1 and 2 students, and less than an hour of written homework for other grades. But the ministry is yet to introduce any rules on homework for middle school students.

Liu Xuchen, 13, is studying at Hefei Shouchun Middle School, Anhui province, and will take the high school entrance examination this summer. Liu said most of her classmates spend nearly four hours on homework every day.

"I feel tired every evening and my homework is for seven subjects, all of which will be tested in the exam," Liu said.

Those seven subjects are Chinese, math, English, physics, chemistry, political education and history. But not all the subjects carry the same weight in the examination. Chinese, math and English have the highest scores of 150 points while the others range from 60 to 90.

Another problem Liu faces is the difficulty of her homework. She said a hard math question could take her nearly 30 minutes.

According to the report, 85 percent of students experience negative emotions when doing their homework, including getting upset and losing their temper. And 76 percent of parents argue with their children when helping them with their homework.

"I think teachers should create a balance between the number of hard and easy questions," Liu said.

Unlike Liu's school in Anhui, schools in other areas assign less homework.

Yuan Hairong is a teacher with almost 20 years of experience at the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University."Most of our students who will take the high school entrance exam this year spend two and a half hours at most on homework every day," he said.

Unlike Anhui, Beijing's exam only tests five subjects－political education and history are not included.

"But many parents send their children to tutorial classes for those five subjects, which also occupies a lot of time," Yuan added. "Many parents don't want to see their children left behind, so they arrange extra classes and homework."

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said it's the single evaluation system for students that leads to the homework burden. "The schools only assess students' development using scores and ranks.

"The government and society must try to enrich the assessment system, which would help students find advantages in different ways rather than focusing only on passing examinations."

Zhang Haoqiang, principal of the Hangzhou Shengli Experimental School in Zhejiang province, said: "We should focus on reducing redundant homework. After all, homework is a key method to consolidate knowledge.

"We cannot ease students' homework burden by simply reducing the quantity, but by improving the homework quality so that they can achieve more through doing less homework."

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China launches campaign to halt school bullying, excessive homework and boost student's mental health

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Less homework means children move more and go to bed earlier, study suggests

R educing the amount of homework children are given could make them more physically active and get more sleep, a new study suggests.

A trial of pupils in China found that cutting homework while also reducing screentime encouraged them to play outdoors and go to bed earlier.

As part of the scheme online gaming companies were forced to limit children to three hours a week, while at the same time teachers were instructed to reduce the amount of homework they set, and tutoring businesses were restricted in the amount of lessons they could run.

Bai Li, a lecturer in behavioural science at Bristol University ’s School for Policy Studies, who led the study, said: “The results are exciting as this type of regulatory intervention across multiple settings has never been tried before.”

Teenagers in China spend more time on homework than anywhere else in the world, at 14 hours a week, according to a report from the OECD. British children do about five hours.

The team from Bristol University analysed data from more than 7,000 primary and secondary school students in 2020 and 2021 from the Guangxi province in southern China.

Primary school pupils could not be set more than 60 minutes of homework a day, and secondary school pupils aged up to 15 not more than 90 minutes. Tutoring companies were banned from offering sessions in school holidays or at weekends, could not set exams for preschool, primary or middle school children, and could not publish rankings.

The team found that the children in the study aged nine to 18 spent on average 45 minutes less each day being sedentary.

Students were also shown to be 20 per cent more likely to meet the overall screen time recommendation of less than two hours daily after the regulations were introduced.

Bai Li said that both in China and the UK, parents often find it difficult to set and impose their own rules on things like screen time.

She said: “We know that leaving it to parents doesn’t work”, adding that it is easier for parents when they can tell their children that any more screen time would be against the law.

She added: “With these regulatory measures [in China], the onus has shifted to online gaming companies, schools and private tutoring companies to comply. This very different approach appears to be more effective, because it is aimed at improving the environment in which children and adolescents live.”

The results were published in the International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity.

The researchers told The Times they are exploring whether similar rules could be feasible in the UK, but stressed that the Chinese template would have to be modified.

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• Countries Who Spend the Most Time Doing Homework

Homework is an important aspect of the education system and is often dreaded by the majority of students all over the world. Although many teachers and educational scholars believe homework improves education performance, many critics and students disagree and believe there is no correlation between homework and improving test scores.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental organization. With headquarters in Paris, the organization was formed for the purpose of stimulating global trade and economic progress among member states. In 2009, the OECD conducted a detailed study to establish the number of hours allocated for doing homework by students around the world and conducted the research in 38 member countries. The test subjects for the study were 15 year old high school students in countries that used PISA exams in their education systems. The results showed that in Shanghai, China the students had the highest number of hours of homework with 13.8 hours per week. Russia followed, where students had an average of 9.7 hours of homework per week. Finland had the least amount of homework hours with 2.8 hours per week, followed closely by South Korea with 2.9 hours. Among all the countries tested, the average homework time was 4.9 hours per week.

Interpretation of the data

Although students from Finland spent the least amount of hours on their homework per week, they performed relatively well on tests which discredits the notion of correlation between the number of hours spent on homework with exam performance. Shanghai teenagers who spent the highest number of hours doing their homework also produced excellent performances in the school tests, while students from some regions such as Macao, Japan, and Singapore increased the score by 17 points per additional hour of homework. The data showed a close relation between the economic backgrounds of students and the number of hours they invested in their homework. Students from affluent backgrounds spent fewer hours doing homework when compared to their less privileged counterparts, most likely due to access to private tutors and homeschooling. In some countries such as Singapore, students from wealthy families invested more time doing their homework than less privileged students and received better results in exams.

Decline in number of hours

Subsequent studies conducted by the OECD in 2012 showed a decrease in the average number hours per week spent by students. Slovakia displayed a drop of four hours per week while Russia declined three hours per week. A few countries including the United States showed no change. The dramatic decline of hours spent doing homework has been attributed to teenager’s increased use of the internet and social media platforms.

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China Launches Campaign to Bring Order to Unruly Classrooms

China’s top education authority has vowed to take stronger action to protect the well-being of minors on school campuses, following a raft of high-profile incidents that have raised public concern.

In a notice published Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Education announced the start of a special campaign targeting a range of problems in schools, from bullying to disorderly management practices.

The crackdown — which is set to continue until the end of the year — will reportedly focus on 12 issues affecting China’s preschool, primary, and secondary education system. These include bullying, teachers discriminating against students or using corporal punishment in the classroom, and schools giving excessive homework or failing to allow students to take recess .

To tackle these issues, the Ministry of Education plans to introduce a new rating system that judges teachers, schools, and local authorities based on how well they have dealt with these 12 issues. The ministry will also provide teachers with additional training and establish new public oversight mechanisms.

The notice stresses that all forms of bullying in schools is strictly forbidden, and that teachers who overlook or condone bullying behavior should be held accountable. This is likely a response to growing public concern about the issue, with a shocking case generating headlines in March – three teenagers from Handan in northern China’s Hebei province were found to have killed a 13-year-old boy living in the same city.

The case sparked outrage in China and intensified discussion over the country’s rising juvenile crime rate. The Chinese government lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 for serious crimes in 2021 in an effort to tackle the issue.

Earlier this month, Chinese authorities launched a nationwide inspection drive aimed at detecting, preventing, and taking action against bullying in primary and secondary schools.

The campaign will also crack down on schools using underhand methods to circumvent China’s ban on selecting students based on academic ability.

Top Chinese schools used to routinely select students based on ability, but the practice was widely believed to be putting unreasonable pressure on students due to ever increasing competition for school places. To tackle the problem, Chinese authorities issued a guideline in 2014 requiring primary school students to be enrolled at their nearest middle school.

However, an investigation by China’s state broadcaster CCTV revealed that some junior middle schools in Beijing are still quietly forcing students to sit entrance exams. The report, which aired Wednesday, showed that schools are using these tests to “reserve” the brightest students while they are still in the fifth grade.

Other issues covered in the notice include teachers using corporal punishment, schools giving excessive homework, and students being charged unreasonable extra fees.

“The 12 areas cover all aspects of school management. It sets strict boundaries and establishes institutional references for clarifying the rules and bringing transparency in management,” Jin Zhifeng, vice dean of the China Institute for Education Policy Studies at Beijing Normal University, told China Education Daily.

“These policies and standards are not new. They are reiterated as bottom-line standards to remind local authorities, schools, and teachers to implement them, aiming for tangible improvements in practice,” Jin added.

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