Summarized from Straits Times
25 December 2014
By Amelia Teng
Students in Singapore are among the world’s most hard- working at home, clocking the third-longest time spent on homework, a report released this month has found.
The country’s 15-year-olds said that they devoted 9.4 hours to homework a week, in the study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
They came in behind students in Shanghai, who spend 13.8 hours a week on homework, and those in Russia, who take 9.7 hours.
The global average was about five hours’ worth of homework each week.
The study found that students who did more homework scored higher in Pisa. For instance, Shanghai and Singapore, where students spent much of their time on homework, came in first and second respectively in the Pisa mathematics test in 2012.
Associate Professor Jason Tan, an education policy expert at the National Institute of Education, said: “The 9.4 hours do not seem that overwhelming, when students are taking six to nine subjects in Secondary 3.
“But (the report) also doesn’t give any indication of the subjects the time is spent on, or the nature of homework, so it’s hard to draw any conclusions from this.”
ateng@sph.com.sg