Daily missions. Brighter futures.
Stop asking how many hours. Start asking what you're actually trying to improve.
It's one of the most common questions parents ask, and it usually arrives with a bit of guilt attached — a suspicion that someone else's child is doing more.
There isn't a magic number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. But there are principles, and they point somewhere much more manageable than most parents fear.
Five of them, and a better question to ask at the end.
1 School already counts
Your child spends around six hours a day being taught by people who do this professionally. That is the main event.
Anything at home is supplementary — a top-up on something specific, or a way of keeping a habit alive. It is not where the education happens, and treating it as though it is puts a weight on your evenings that it was never meant to carry.
2 Consistency beats intensity
Ten focused minutes, four or five times a week, will do more than ninety minutes every other Sunday. That's not a motivational slogan — it's how retention works, and it's why revision crammed the night before evaporates by Wednesday.
It's also the version that survives a busy fortnight, which matters more than the theory.
If you're currently doing nothing and want to start, start absurdly small. Five minutes.
Big new routines fail in week two and then everyone feels bad about it. Small ones survive long enough to become normal, and you can always grow them.
3 Watch concentration, not the clock
Time is the wrong measure and it's the one everyone uses, because it's easy to count.
If they're engaged and it's going well, carry on past your notional ten minutes. If they're exhausted, guessing, and you're fighting over every question, the next twenty minutes will teach nothing except that this is horrible.
“We agreed thirty minutes, so we're doing thirty minutes.”
“You've stopped thinking about it — let's stop.”
Finishing a session while it's still going reasonably well is the single best thing you can do for tomorrow's session. Grinding to the end of a timer teaches a child that practice is something to be endured until the clock releases them.
4 Aim at the weak thing, not the whole subject
A lot of home practice is a child doing thirty questions, of which they could already do twenty-eight. That's not practice, it's admin, and it eats the time you had.
Find the one thing that isn't secure and spend the ten minutes there. The maths and English articles are essentially long lists of where to look.
Ask them. Children usually know, and are rarely asked.
“Which bit of maths do you least like doing?”The answer is almost always the thing they don't feel secure in. Dislike and difficulty sit very close together at this age.
5 Leave room for the rest of childhood
Sport, friends, reading for pleasure, music, games, family, boredom, sleep. These aren't the things you fit around learning. Several of them are load-bearing for it.
Sleep in particular is not spare time left over once homework and screens are done. A tired eleven-year-old learns badly, remembers less and regulates their emotions worse — which turns tomorrow's ten minutes into a fight that costs you forty.
“What are we actually trying to improve?”
“How many hours should my child do?” has no answer, which is why it generates so much anxiety and so little action.
“What are we trying to improve?” has a very specific one. Times tables. Reading stamina. Not giving up in the first ten seconds. Writing something another person can follow.
Then use the smallest amount of focused practice that actually moves it — and stop when it's moved, rather than continuing out of habit.
One named thing at a time is worth more than a general policy of doing more.
The Secondary School Ready checklist
One page, on the fridge. Every “try this” from across the series, so you've got them when you need them. Free, no strings.
One email with the checklist attached. Occasional tips afterwards, and you can unsubscribe in one click. We never pass your address to anyone.
What a reasonable week actually looks like
If you want a concrete version rather than principles, this is a perfectly good week for most Year 6 children.
That's it. If you're doing that, you're doing plenty — and if a week goes badly, the following week starts again from zero rather than from guilt.
Where MindBlaze fits
MindBlaze is built around roughly ten-minute daily missions for exactly the reasons in this article. Regular and small is what survives contact with a real family calendar.
The missions cover maths, English, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, and the Parent App shows which skills are solid and which aren't — so the ten minutes can be aimed at something rather than sprayed across everything.
Small, focused and consistent is unglamorous. It's also what works.
Small. Focused. Consistent.