'Homework is a necessary evil.' Express your views either for or against this statement.

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 335 words) — arguing FOR the statement

Homework is an evil, and I say so as someone who does it. It eats the evening, it follows you on holidays, and a great deal of it is repetition of what was already understood in class. But it is necessary, and the case for it rests on something that has nothing to do with discipline or virtue.

It rests on how memory works. Research on what psychologists call spaced repetition is consistent and uncomfortable: information met once and never revisited is largely gone within a week, while the same information revisited a day later and again a few days after that is retained for months. A lesson taught brilliantly on Monday and never touched again is, in a measurable sense, a lesson wasted. Homework is the mechanism by which the second and third encounters happen.

There is a second argument, less often made. In class a student can nod along and believe he has understood, because the teacher’s explanation is in front of him and doing the work of his thinking. Alone at a desk, with nothing but the question, he discovers whether he has actually understood it. That discovery is unpleasant, which is precisely why it is valuable — it happens on a Tuesday evening rather than in an examination hall.

The honest objection is not to homework but to its quantity and its quality. Thirty sums that drill a method already mastered teach nothing and cost a childhood; five well-chosen problems teach a great deal and cost an hour. Much of what is set is set because it is easy to set and easy to mark, and that is a real criticism of schools, not an argument against the principle.

So: an evil, certainly. Anything that takes an evening from a fifteen-year-old had better justify itself. But necessary, because there is no other way of turning what was heard into what is known.

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

Note the exact wording: "a necessary EVIL". The statement has TWO halves, and a strong answer engages both — conceding that it is a burden while arguing that it is unavoidable. An answer that only praises homework has not really addressed the quotation.

The instruction is "either for or against", so take ONE side and hold it. State it in the opening paragraph.

EVIDENCE is what separates the top band here. "Homework helps revision" is an assertion; naming spaced repetition and what happens to unrevisited material is an argument. One concrete mechanism beats three general claims.

The counter-argument paragraph is compulsory in practice. Notice that the model concedes something REAL (the quantity and quality of what is set) rather than a straw man — examiners can tell the difference. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.