Homework should be abolished in primary school.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's huddle up, because this one's personal to me as a coach. You don't train six-year-olds the way you train pros. You scale the workout to the athlete. And right now, homework in primary school is like assigning a marathon to kids who just learned to walk.

First argument: at this age, play IS training. Young kids build focus, social skills, and problem-solving through games, conversation, and rest — not worksheets. A tired eight-year-old doing forty minutes of spelling after a full school day isn't learning discipline; they're learning to resent learning. That's an own goal.

Second: homework in primary school widens the gap between teams. Some kids go home to a quiet desk and a parent with time to help. Others go home to chaos, shift work, no support. The teacher can't see who did the work and who had it done for them, so the "training" is uneven and the scoreboard lies. Abolishing it levels the field — everyone trains at school, with the coach on the sideline.

Third: it burns out the family locker room. Homework turns evenings into a battleground of tears and nagging. That relationship — kid, parent, learning — is the foundation everything else gets built on. Don't crack the foundation to nail up a few worksheets.

The game plan is simple: keep the good drills in school where coaching actually happens, and send kids home to rest, read, and play. Abolition isn't lowering the bar. It's putting the bar where young athletes can actually reach it.

That's my opening play, folks. Let's see Granny Fern's counterattack.

Fern, I respect the garden metaphor, but let's check the soil. You say a skill "rarely takes hold" without home repetition. Where's the evidence it takes hold *with* it? In primary years, the heavy lifting of reading fluency, number sense, and focus happens best with a trained adult guiding it — that's the teacher, during school hours. A tired parent refereeing spelling at 7pm isn't watering the plant; they're drowning it.

Your "ten quiet minutes" is the play that never gets run as designed. That's the problem with homework in practice, not on paper. Teachers can't enforce the "light and sensible" version. One teacher's ten minutes is another's forty-five, and the kids who struggle most get the longest assignments. If the only way your play works is perfect execution by every coach in every school, it's not a play — it's a wish.

And your answer on unequal homes actually proves my point. You'd keep homework so supported kids "practice a little" — while unsupported kids face the same tasks with no table, no help, no quiet. That's not feeding anyone; that's making the hungry kids watch others eat and grading them on the same plate. The fair fix is practice at school, supervised, for everyone.

Here's my new play: sleep and movement are the real training at this age. Kids need rest and physical play for memory to consolidate and attention to grow. Homework eats the very hours that build the athlete.

You don't win championships by adding reps to a six-year-old's day. You win by building the kid who loves showing up to practice. That's what abolition protects.

Fern, that was a game garden — but let's look at the final scoreboard.

All evening you've been defending homework as it exists on paper: ten quiet minutes, a gentle habit, a cup of water. I've been talking about the game as it's actually played. And when your best defense is "mend the portion, cap the load, watch the pan," you've conceded the whole first half. If homework needs that much refereeing to stop it harming kids, it's not a training tool — it's a liability we're managing. My side says: stop managing the harm, remove it.

You never answered my strongest play. In primary years, the reps that matter — reading fluency, number sense, focus — work best with a trained adult coaching them. You agreed practice shouldn't be a test and shouldn't be graded. So what exactly is it doing at home that it can't do better in school, where the coach can see every athlete? "Meeting the idea while it's warm" is a nice image, but warmth without guidance is just a worksheet getting cold.

And your fairness play fell short. You'd keep the page for the child with a lap and a quiet table, and offer "a corner at school" for the rest. Folks, if the school corner is good enough for the unsupported kid, it's good enough for everyone. That's my plan with extra steps and extra tears.

You said it yourself: an hour of tears is the problem. But no rule on earth has ever reliably kept homework at ten minutes. The only cap that holds is zero.

Kids this age don't need more reps. They need rest, play, and a love of showing up. Send them home light. That's the win.