Opinion: All work and no play leaves Jack burnt out

Homework can have deleterious effects: it acts as a catalyst for lateness and absenteeism. But how has this situation arisen?

The nature of homework has changed. It used to take the form of manageable, timebound tasks to be completed with the assistance of textbooks and marked or tested the next day - an unpretentious, uncomplicated checking exercise.

Now homework is consists of a series of concurrent assignments, the completion of which requires an affinity for study equivalent to that of Erasmus. This sea-change has been implemented with all the razzmatazz of new policy statements, new home-school agreements and imaginative re- christening (homework is now "supportive study").

Underlying this is an increasing subscription to the Roger the Dodger stereotype of children as feckless and workshy. The young, many would have us believe, will only waste their lives on soap-operas and computer games unless provided with improving tasks.

The rationale is in place, then, to keep piling on the homework. Even the most conscientious and able suffer under a relentlessly increasing workload, forcing them to work into the small hours and to curtailextra- curricular activities, as well as causing "burn-out".

Homework is being set at an earlier age. If the current trend continues, rising fives will be leaving the nursery class, Power Ranger rucksacks heavy with homework with no time left in the day to play because they have to keep up with their Postman Pat projects and identify "smart" targets for the self-assessment section of their Records of Achievement.

All work and no play makes Jack and Jill dull people. If we don't want this generation on Prozac before they've reached 18, we must fight this slavish attitude to homework. Someone should organise a National No Homework Day. I'm sure the sun would come up the next morning.

JEREMY DAVIES