Homework's not supposed to be about improving performance though; it's about letting the parents see what work the kids are doing, it's about seeing which kids understand the material and which kids are struggling. Kids should get homework tasks.

What they Shouldn't get is pressure to do the homework; homework should not account for any part of your grades at lower level schooling, homework should not be mandatory tasks (though if a child literally never does any of it there should be an investigation into why) the tasks would be better served with a explanation sheet for parents/guardians in cases where the teaching methods have moved on and parents are often confused by the new way (like this method of adding that is akin to getting change at the shop which American parents seem completely unable to make head nor tails of) .

Self guided learning should always be encouraged but it shouldn't be a chore that puts people off from a lifetime of discovery.

I'm 30.

I remember having homework, but it was always easy enough that I just did it on the bus on the way to school. I don't really remember ever doing homework AT HOME until college.

"The academic performance." Who cares. The academic performance of a child is a very poor indicator of how much they learn. This is just part of the problem with an educational system relying on unreal measurements of success and failure. If you're good at testing you will do well. If not, no. Neither are any indication of the intelligence and learning of the child. The American hostility to 'book learning' and the popular conception that college is useless in the 'real world' have a great deal to do with the terrible state of education here along with the tendency to divert our tax monies away from the people and into the elites' coffers.

As a kid this was always such an onerous task!