The majority (67%) of parents worry they won’t be able to effectively help their kids with homework this year, according to new research.
While 63% of parents surveyed believe that homework is necessary in today’s world, many are turning to experts for help, contributing to the rise of educational tutoring services.
The study, by Cluey Learning, found that nearly three in five parents turn to online resources to help understand their child’s schoolwork enough to be able to assist with it. Maths was found to be the subject that left parents baffled the most, with questions like “how to teach algebra” and “how to teach long division” identified as the most searched.
Dr Selina Samuels, Chief Learning Officer at Cluey, said finding the right content to help in the right way can be particularly difficult for parents as curricula and syllabi differ by state, and books and websites can be out of date or offer poor quality information.
“At Cluey, we hear again and again from parents that they want to support their children’s learning, but they really don’t know where to start,” Dr Samuels told The Educator.
“The pandemic and school closures have shown parents how much they don’t know about what their children are learning at school. There is a huge amount of material available online, but it is hard to identify what is high quality or even relevant.”
Dr Samuels said that although Australia has a national curriculum, there are differences between state syllabi that can be difficult to navigate.
“This is why we are careful to map all our programs to the curriculum, and to match students to tutors with the relevant subject and state syllabus knowledge, who understand what the students are covering in class,” she said.
“We also differentiate ours program and its content so that each student works on material that is relevant to their level of ability and can directly support what they are doing at school. We want to help parents by taking the guesswork out of supporting their children’s learning.”