A REPORT last year in the Economist magazine quoted studies that suggest the average American second level student spends no more that five or six hours each week on homework - a small fraction of the time spent watching television.

The implication is that, in the US, homework is perceived as of little value and that students can get by without it. Is this true?

The United States is a vast country where you will find the very best of educational practices and the very worst. "There are enormous differences in America," says Professor Ted Sizer, director of the Anaenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University in Rhode Island. "Students in some schools do huge amounts of homework, while in other schools they do absolutely nothing.

"Schools in areas where students are coming from affluent homes with ambitious parents and where high percentages of students are going on to competitive higher education [i.e. to the most selective US colleges] I would give lots of homework. I was principal of a very academic boarding school where students were expected to study at least five hours each day after class. But very few schools would exceed that amount."

Sizer, regarded as a leading progressive voice in American education, says that though the overwhelming majority of US students attend public schools, there are huge discrepancies in the system which "are explained almost entirely by social class". Children in well off suburbs attend schools that are well funded and well run, since funding is based partly on local property taxes; but "there are a significant number of children in low income areas who attend underresourced schools where there are no libraries and insufficient text books, where the streets are dangerous and where the notion of a quiet place to study is an impossibility."

Nonetheless, he says, some schools in disadvantaged areas do stay open after hours to provide materials, space, quiet time and tutoring.

Sizer is, he says, "a stalwart defender of children working on their own" and firmly in favour of homework. But "it must be fresh and intriguing. If it's nothing more than drill, children will get bored."

Most students aged between 14 and 18 attend high school between the hours of 8 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. and are expected to complete home work assignments after this. However, two thirds of high school students have "significant jobs for pay" after school, often to the detriment of their studies, Sizer says.

German second level students, who attend school between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., would never be expected to study for more than two hours after school, according to Helmut Hoffmann, principal of St Kilian's German School, Dublin. Students at the Dublin school, which is funded by the Department of Education, the German government and parents, study for the Junior and Leaving Certificates.

Hoffman says the Irish system puts too much pressure on young people and that students are expected to do too much homework. "The emphasis that is placed on Leaving Cert means that students have to produce all their knowledge at one moment. In Germany, the state exam contributes only one third of the final marks awarded in the Arbiture, the equivalent of Leaving Certificate. The other two thirds are gained through continuous assessment over two years.

"This is much fairer and means that failure on one particular day doesn't determine your whole future."

It also means German students have more time to pursue other activities outside school time, and there are more sporting and leisure facilities available to them in the community, he says.