The association between time devoted to homework and children's academic achievement has long been an issue of great debate. A small number of mainly correlational studies have been conducted into this issue in a primary school setting, but have produced somewhat mixed results. In this paper we contribute to this literature by investigating the relationship between time spent upon homework and children's outcomes across 24 countries. By using a student fixed‐effects approach, capturing differences in homework time amongst the same student across different school subjects, we argue that our results are likely to be subject to less confounding than much of the existing literature. We find little evidence that the amount of homework time primary school children are assigned is related to their academic achievement. This holds true across a large number of countries, survives various robustness tests and does not vary by gender or socio‐economic status. We interpret this finding as suggesting that the homework assigned to primary school pupils may not be adequate to produce a positive association, and needs be improved if this time‐consuming activity is ever going to bring benefits for children's academic achievement.

中文翻译：

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家庭作业与小学生学业成绩之间的关联。来自PIRLS和TIMSS的国际证据

长期以来，致力于家庭作业的时间与儿童的学业成绩之间的联系一直是一个充满争议的问题。在小学阶段对该问题进行了少量的主要相关性研究，但结果却有些不同。在本文中，我们通过研究24个国家/地区的家庭作业时间与儿童结局之间的关系，为这一文献做出了贡献。通过使用学生固定效应方法，捕获同一学生在不同学校科目中家庭作业时间的差异，我们认为与许多现有文献相比，我们的结果受到的混淆可能更少。我们几乎没有证据表明，分配给小学生的家庭作业时间与其学业成绩有关。这在许多国家都适用，可以通过各种健壮性测试，并且不会因性别或社会经济地位而有所不同。我们认为这一发现表明，分配给小学生的家庭作业可能不足以产生积极的联想，如果这项耗时的活动将为儿童的学习成绩带来收益，则需要改进。