Fair for everyone!

“It’s a solution that works for everyone.”
Lynn Tarrant, Head Teacher
Shawfield Primary School, Ash, Surrey

“We’re not a typical Surrey school,” says Lynn Tarrant, Head Teacher of Shawfield Primary School in Ash. “Twenty percent of our children come from the Gypsy Roma Traveller community and thirty percent of our pupils are on the Special Needs Register.”

Before Workabooks came along, the whole issue of homework was problematic; it was set, but inconsistently, and while some children did everything that was set, others simply never did any.

“The system wasn’t fair; children who did the homework couldn’t see why there were no consequences for those who didn’t. But at the same time, we have pupils whose home environment is not conducive to sitting down and concentrating. We felt, is it really fair to expect them to do this work at home?”

So Lynn and her staff formulated a three-pronged approach. Firstly, they made homework as much fun and as exciting as possible by buying literacy and mathematics Workabooks for every child in the school. “Workabooks turned homework into something special for the children. There’s no more lost bits of paper and no more confusion over what has been set.”

Next, Lynn gave workshops for parents and persuaded them to sign a homework contract. Teachers, too, had to undertake to support the new homework regime, setting and marking consistently and regularly.

Finally, the school set up two lunchtime homework clubs every week. “This means everyone has the opportunity to take part in homework,” explains Lynn, “so it’s a much fairer system. If you can’t do it at home, you’ve got the time and space to do it at school.”

“We’re all rather proud of what we’ve done,” says Lynn, “everyone has access to homework, whether they get support at home or not, and we’ve got everyone buying into it. And, of course, the children love having their very own books.”