'How can teachers expect an eight-year-old to spend his entire weekend building a to-scale model of the Star Ferry? Or create a diorama of a polar bear in his habitat with moving parts? It just comes down to parents competing with parents. I heard of one father who got a graphic designer to help his son with a project. What is the child getting out of this? Nothing. In the end I feel furious and frustrated with James and resentful towards the school,' she says.

Cheryl Raper, director of Sylvan Learning Centre, agrees the issue of homework can negatively affect the atmosphere at home.

'It depends on the relationship a parent has with their child. The parent can become a dragon, making sure the homework is done, when what they should be doing is spending quality time playing games and so on,' she says.

So, why is there a communication breakdown between so many parents and children over homework? Parenting expert Katherine Sellery says the problem is two-fold: 'People worry about their children's security and want to protect them; they need to be sure their child will have a profession and money when they're older - it's a survival need.'

But without realising it, parents often bring their own perspective to the issue. 'If people haven't fulfilled their own dreams and needs, they may want their children to do it for them,' says Sellery.

She says that as soon as you start forcing your child to do something against their will - like homework - by using threats or consequences, you naturally encounter resistance, rebellion and retaliation, and these hurt relationships. Instead of laying down the law, she advises to try handing back responsibility, and allow children to build their self-esteem, letting them recognise and enjoy their achievements.

Most parents might be surprised to learn that, according to one US research study, most children don't feel overloaded with homework.

Carol Huntsinger, professor of Education and Psychology at the College of Lake County in Illinois, conducted a survey in 2000 asking 585 children from grades four to 12 whether they thought they received too much homework; a surprising 67 per cent said no.

So, if the majority of children are happy with the amount of homework set, what's really causing the problems at home?

'It's not that kids don't necessarily want to do homework, it's usually another reason,' says Sellery. 'It's all about whether they're meeting their needs: are they tired, are they hungry, do they just need to have more fun? We don't look at children's needs enough.'

Child psychologist Louise Porter, meanwhile, says children synthesise the information they learned at school that day out in the sandbox, running on the beach, playing - you need downtime to process your day.

Sellery says one of her clients solved her homework problem by simply listening to her son's needs. 'He's only little, he goes to school and he has extra tutors, he doesn't want to do his homework.

'He wanted to ride his bike, so his mother asked him, 'If I give you an opportunity to ride your bike today, would you then be willing to do your homework dictation? So he sat down and zipped through his homework because he knew she would take him to the park to ride his bike for half an hour.'

One local school that places equal emphasis on homework, extra-curricular activities and time with family and friends is St Paul's Co-Ed Primary School in Kennedy Road. 'We prefer not to burden students with too much homework,' says headmistress Lee Tuen-yee. 'In fact, homework need not be completed 'at home'.

'Our school has tutorial classes for students to do homework at school. We encourage them to finish their work as effectively as they can, freeing up more time for extra-curricular activities, or for family and friends. This is an incentive for being effective,' she says.

Grace Kong, whose six-year-old son is a student at St Paul's, says homework is not an issue in her house because the school takes such an active role.

'People say local schools keep pushing kids to have lots of exams, spelling, dictation; at St Paul's it's balanced, the kids have activities, like dancing or musical instruments. Some days they can do their homework in class, and my son doesn't have much left over.'

Raper says the reasoning behind homework is to see if children have understood what happened in the classroom, and agrees it should be guided by school, as in the boarding school scenario, where they do it at the end of the school day in a common room with someone wandering around to help them.

'Often children are under stress to perform, so they ask for support from parents or a tutor. How does a teacher know how much a child has done individually?' she says.

'Personally, I don't look at the quantity of homework, but how much time they're spending on it.

A six-year-old should be spending around 15 minutes, it should be a little review of what's going on, then 20 minutes, half an hour, progressively increasing as the child gets older.

'Parents should say, 'we've spent 15 minutes on this, that's it'. Then the teacher should be made aware of how long the child is spending.'

So don't get too stressed as enlightened schools are working to ease the homework burden and make it a positive experience both for parents and children.

The Hong Kong International School, for instance, provides parents with suggestions on how long students should spend on homework, and asks parents to discuss assignments with the child's teacher when they need more than the suggested maximum time to complete them.

At St Paul's, teachers construct a 'homework timetable' at the beginning of the school term: 'We believe in quality rather than quantity. Creativity and co-operation can also be learned through the process of doing homework,' says Lee.

The Hong Kong government endorses this approach. It offers guidelines suggesting written work for lower primary students should not exceed 30 minutes a day, and upper primary one hour, so as to allow students to spend their spare time reading and developing positive relationships with family members, peers and friends.

'In devising a homework policy, schools should take into account the student's physical and emotional development and other important demands on their after school time,' says a government spokesperson.

A good way to forge a positive attitude to homework from an early age is to get into the habit of reading with your children.

Raper thinks this is absolutely fundamental. 'Children should be reading every night; research shows they have to be reading on a regular basis to pick it up,' says Raper.

'But it doesn't have to be them reading, the mother could read a paragraph, then the child, or a sentence each. There are a number of things that can be done, as long as the child is having fun.

'Too much homework can lead to burnout,' she says.

'If children are conditioned to 'this is what life is like' they don't question it, they burn out and don't become lifelong learners. We want children to have inquisitive minds, to enjoy finding out information from the world around them.'