The Future of Homework

The Future of Homework -Gautam Praveen There is probably no sentence students know better than, “Don’t forget your homework.” For decades, homework has been a normal part of education. You learn something in class, go home, practise it, and come back the next day ready to learn something new. But the world students are growing up in is changing much faster than the traditional homework system. In 2025, students across OECD countries reported spending an average of around 1.4 hours a day on homework, according to the OECD’s latest PISA results. That is a lot of time, especially when school already takes up most of the day. Homework can definitely be useful, but giving students more work does not automatically mean they will learn more. Research from the OECD suggests that homework is linked to better academic outcomes up to a certain point, but simply increasing the amount of time students spend studying is not enough to improve results. So if students are already spending so much time working outside the classroom, what should that time actually be used for? Maybe the answer is to change what we mean by homework. For years, homework has often meant completing worksheets, answering textbook questions or memorising information. But students today have access to an enormous amount of information outside school. If someone does not understand photosynthesis, they can watch an animation explaining it. If they are stuck on a maths problem, they can find several different explanations. A language learner can practise using interactive tools. Even AI can explain difficult concepts, create practice questions and give feedback. That does not mean students should simply ask technology to do their homework for them. Instead, it gives teachers a chance to make homework more useful. Rather than asking students to repeat information they can easily find online, teachers could ask them to do something with that information. A history student could interview a grandparent about an event they remember. A science student could record a short explanation of an experiment. A geography student could investigate how transport affects their own city. The work would still take effort, but it would require students to think instead of simply complete a task. One of the biggest opportunities for future homework is making it more connected to everyday life. A maths assignment could ask students to plan a trip and calculate the cost of transport, food and accommodation. Instead of simply memorising percentages from a textbook, students would actually have to use them. An English assignment could involve creating a short podcast about a topic they care about instead of writing another generic paragraph. A technology assignment could ask students to use AI to research a problem and then explain where the AI helped and where it got things wrong. Assignments like these could make schoolwork feel less like something done only for a grade and more like preparation for life outside school. Students could also be given more choice in how they complete their work. If two students understand the same topic, do they really need to prove it in exactly the same way? One student might write an article, another might make a presentation, while another might create a video. The goal would remain the same, but students would have more freedom in how they reach it. That could also help develop skills that matter beyond school. The future workplace will require people who can communicate clearly, solve problems, work with technology, adapt to new situations and think independently. Homework can help develop those skills long before students enter the workforce. Technology also creates a new challenge for schools. If AI can complete a traditional assignment in seconds, giving students the exact same type of assignment may no longer make much sense. The solution is not to pretend AI does not exist. Students need to learn how to use it responsibly. A student should be able to question an AI-generated answer, check whether information is reliable and recognise when the technology has made a mistake. Most importantly, they should understand that AI can be a tool for learning without becoming a replacement for their own thinking. But there is one thing the future of homework should never forget: students have lives outside school. They have families, friends, sports, hobbies, responsibilities and, sometimes, they simply need time to rest. The OECD has previously found that very long study hours do not automatically lead to better performance. In PISA 2015, students who reported spending at least 60 hours a week on schoolwork scored lower on average than those studying 40 hours or less. However, this relationship is complicated by other factors, including the fact that students who were struggling academically may have received additional instruction. The point is not that studying is bad. It is that time spent studying is not the same as quality learning. The future of homework should therefore focus less on how many pages a student completes and more on what they actually gain from completing them. Homework should strengthen understanding, encourage curiosity and give students opportunities to apply what they know. It should not simply fill the hours between school and sleep. The traditional homework model has survived for generations because it serves a purpose. But education should not keep doing something simply because it has always been done that way. Its purpose is to prepare young people for the world they are entering. If that world is becoming more digital, creative and connected, homework needs to change with it. The question should no longer be, “How much homework can we give students?” It should be, “What is actually worth asking students to do?” The future of homework may not be about getting rid of homework altogether. It may be about making homework something students can genuinely learn from.