Homework load — the total weekly hours spent on assigned work outside of class — is easy to lose track of when it's spread across five or six separate classes. This calculator adds it up in one place and compares it against a well-known guideline, so you can see whether your week is typical, light, or heavy before it becomes a problem.

How the calculator works

Enter the weekly homework hours for each of your classes and the calculator sums them into a total weekly load and a nightly average (assuming 5 school nights). It then compares that total against the 10-minute-per-grade guideline — commonly attributed to the National Education Association and cited by the National PTA — which suggests 10 minutes of nightly homework for every grade level. A 7th grader's guideline is about 70 minutes a night; a 12th grader's is about 2 hours a night.

This guideline is a rule of thumb, not a mandated standard. Honors and AP coursework, dual-enrollment classes, and some school districts routinely assign more than the guideline suggests — being above it isn't automatically a problem, but it's useful context.

Inputs and what they mean

Grade level sets the guideline benchmark only — it doesn't change your actual homework total. Per-class hours are your best estimate of weekly time spent on that class's assigned work, including reading, problem sets, and routine studying. School hours, extracurricular hours, and sleep hours per night feed the Time Budget Check tab, which shows how a fixed 168-hour week is being spent and what's left over.

One-off exam cramming is intentionally not modeled here — that kind of burst studying is better estimated with a day-countdown planner rather than a steady weekly load calculator.

Limits and edge cases

This tool measures load, it does not reduce it. If your weekly total is consistently well above the guideline and it's affecting sleep or wellbeing, that's a conversation for teachers or school counselors, not something this calculator can resolve on its own.

The guideline assumes a standard 5-day school week; if your schedule differs (block scheduling, year-round school, homeschool co-ops), treat the nightly-average comparison as approximate. The Time Budget Check tab can show negative free time if sleep, school, homework, and extracurriculars are entered generously — that's a signal the inputs may be double-counting overlapping time, or that the week genuinely is over-scheduled.