Dear Professor Stewart Sutherland: You could do better, especially on homework, a parent tells the Chief Inspector of Schools

I'm trying to be a good parent. Concerned, active, taking an interest in my children's education. It's in vogue, as you know. Only yesterday the Prince of Wales spoke about the importance of homework.

Funny he should say that. For also yesterday I got hold of the reports on my children's comprehensive schools that you publish in your role as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools. There was barely a word in them about homework (and sport is similarly neglected).

Permit me to make some suggestions about these reports. First of all, let me say that they are terribly helpful, free, and easy to order by phone, a rare and real case of open government. I have learnt a lot about the schools in question, not only their exam results, but also ethos, discipline, teacher expectations and general quality of work.

But I do have gripes. I don't always agree with your priorities. Your staff go on a lot about acts of worship or lack of them, but say virtually nothing about class sizes, which must surely have a considerable effect on standards.

My biggest concern, though, is the almost total omission from these lengthy and detailed reports of that one word - homework. As a parent, I have found that some days my children are set homework, on others they are not. Sometimes it lasts well over an hour, sometimes 10 minutes. What would you have to say if this were true of timetabled lessons?

But you're not alone in the educational establishment in having little or nothing to say about homework. When was there last a ministerial speech or educational conference about it? Neither the Government nor the Opposition has a homework policy among the plethora of education documents - although Labour mooted it 10 years ago, then dropped the idea.

Could you get your staff at the Office for Standards in Education to work out how many hours in their school life children should spend doing homework, evaluate from that how important it is, and compare the amount set in state schools with the amount set in private schools? You could also insist that each school informs parents weekly of the precise homework their child should be doing that week. Homework diaries, which are now standard in schools, sound impressive but often contain nebulous statements such as 'complete classwork'. Pretty difficult for a parent to check.

Lastly, professor, could you define your terms a little more? Lessons are described in your reports as either excellent, very good, good, satisfactory or poor. Exam results likewise. What criteria are you using? The national average? As you yourself said last week that the lessons of almost a third of children weren't up to scratch, then the national average maybe isn't the best reference point.

I need a little more help from you, professor, a little more ammunition with which to harangue headteachers, to telephone governors, to sound informed at the school gates - all those things concerned parents do.

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