In what is no doubt good news for foreign teachers in China and parents alike, the Ministry of Education has announced that primary and junior high school students should no longer be overloaded with homework. According to a circular released by the ministry, both school teachers and those in after school training institutions should refrain for giving younger children too much extra work.

Under China’s notoriously strict and grueling education system, children as young as five are sometimes given several hours of homework a night, much to the distress of parents who must supervise its completion and teachers who must mark the work.

Under the new initiative, however, primary schools have been advised to scrap written homework entirely for the first and second grades and ensure older children have no more than an hour of extra work each night after school. Junior high school students should have no more than an hour and a half of homework each day and an “appropriate” amount on weekends and during the holidays, the ministry said.

The circular also called for schools to tailor the homework according to the different age groups and abilities of individual students, and stressed that topics should be diversified across all subjects, not just Chinese, English and maths.

Meanwhile, after school training institutions, themselves extracurricular, should not give homework to primary or junior high school students at all. Parents should also not be left to make corrections to their children’s work, the directive said.

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Keywords: foreign teachers in China less homework in China