Hello! My name is Augusta Mabley-Sim and I am 14 years old and I’m in second year and I go to school in Cork city. Every morning I wake up at 6am, get to school and end school at 15:45 and get home by 17:00, when I get home I have a good 2-3 hours of homework waiting for me. I’m not looking to get rid of homework, I’m looking to change it, making only study homework especially for junior and senior cert and project homework necessary. 

Homework for some is different then others and for teens or children that may be differently abled, for many on average in my year, homework takes 2-3 hours but for my peers with different needs they take up to 2 hours per piece of homework and we get on average 4 pieces of homework a day. Some people in my year stay up until 1am to finish homework and I know it’s the same for many others. 

My peers and siblings have the same. At school our teachers expect us to go outside and meet friends, develop ourselves but the reality is that by the time we finish our homework, it’s dark and we can’t go outside. When we meet friends and don’t do our homework we get punished, to put this simply, we get punished for having a social life. 

Teens nowadays are expected to maintain hobbies, sports and spend time with family but there are only so many hours in a single day and we can’t as our homework takes up a majority of our days.

Not being able to maintain these aspects our lives is catastrophic, and quite obviously causes bad mental health in youth, often in the form of anxiety. This is true in my case, I have had so many worries about homework that my sleep has been effected causing me to feel unnecessarily anxious.

I believe that teens and children shouldn’t have to do this and they should be able to make the most of our childhoods and teenage years, without the horrible stress and pressure of work from school. We should be allowed to spend time with our friends and families doing the things that we love without the worry of every woken hour being dominated by homework. 

I have been doing research about other regions and countries such as Finland or Quebec and all my research shows that those regions are doing well with incredible infrastructure and educational systems. In these areas homework is only limited to project work and exam preparation.

If you think that teens and children deserve to make the most of their youth then please sign this petition and help us out to achieve our goals to limit homework to studying, exam preparation and project work.