Education minister Mircea Dumitru said he would pass an order on Monday to bring under regulations how many hours should a pupil spend at home to do his/her homework.
“At present, we let things up to the teachers, but what happens is that summer vacations are turning into some kind of competition, how many hundreds of problems we should solve. Let’s put hypocrisy aside. We, grown-ups wait for the summer to relax, to rest, while a 7yo, 8 yo or 11 yo schoolboy or schoolgirl has to work continuously so that in September when he/she returns to school, she or he should not upset the schoolmistress or the form master and should come with his or her homework done or else he/she will get a demerit,” the minister stated.
He pointed out that pupils in the preparatory class should have no homework. Dumitru said that for the primary school, the time allotted to homework should not exceed one hour, while for the middle school it will gradually increase up to two hours.
“For high school, of course the time for homework should be higher for you need more time to train for the next level,” Mircea Dumitru added.
He explained that teachers must understand there is a limit of endurance of the pupils.
However, local educational analysts say that the minister’s order is not realistic, as it would also involve other changes in the system, including related to the curriculum and the high volume of teaching line.
“It’s not realistic to quantify the number of hours that children are spending at home to do homework, considering that the volume of teaching line that has to be covered is still very high (…) The order is not for teachers to give less homework but for children to allot a certain time on working at home. It’s a logics rupture for on the cause-effect relation what children do at home is the effect of the cause and when you give an order I refer to causes and not to effects,” Marian Stas, professor and educational expert told Digi24.
He added that there are about two millions children in the primary and middle schools and 150,000-175,000 teachers. “How can you put in a order for everyone in the country 60 minutes per day or 120 minutes for homework?”
Yet, the educational expert says that what is good about this order is that it’s the first sign of an official in the public space admitting that children do have to much homework.