No more homework for kids at DODEA elementary school

Children at the Department of Defence Education Activity’s Bahrain School no longer have to do homework — unless it’s reading, school staff and parents have told Stars and Stripes. Parents of kids at the DODEA elementary school were told at the start of the new school year that students will no longer be assigned traditional homework but should read at home for at least 20-30 minutes a day.

The change brings the school in line with a 2018 Bahrain Education Ministry decision that homework was to be “replaced by daily hands-on exercises implemented by students under teachers’ supervision inside the classroom before the end of each lesson.” “This innovative approach is compatible with the ministry’s efforts to develop academic curricula to suit the requirements of the 21st century,” the ministry said in a statement released in December.

But a senior official at DODEA insisted the decision to do away with homework was taken independently of any Bahraini mandates. “Our staff met in June to discuss our school’s current homework practices across all classrooms,” elementary school principal Penelope Miller-Smith said. They “read and discussed several journal articles regarding the purpose of homework and worked collaboratively to develop a … schoolwide practice that would be consistent across grades and classrooms,” Miller-Smith said.

A member of the school staff, however, said the Bahrain education ministry’s homework policy was discussed at the meeting in June. A number of Bahraini nationals are enrolled at the school. The DODEA school opted for a slightly modified version of the Bahraini policy to include a home reading obligation and interactive reading journal, officials said.

The new policy also specifies that students in fourth and fifth grade can be sent home with “any unfinished classwork as determined by the teacher.” Most parents were delighted with the new rule, although some have asked for resources for their kids to work on at home – homework, in other words.