My daughter spends an average of 3-4 hours per day on homework and studying.
Personally, I would consider that excessive if she's not reading beyond the curriculum out of interest, and unsustainable in university when her weekly readings will be in the hundreds of pages and she has multiple assignments and tests per week.
In my final year of the IB diploma, a day of 6 classes yielded about 2 hours of total work in addition to class. I finished most of my work, if not all, in class and my spare period. I finished whatever didn't get taken care of at school on Sunday evenings, and that gave me all weekday evenings and at least 3/4 of weekends free to socialize.
I would agree about 3-4 hours being excessive. Aquinas, your high school schedule sounds like mine.
I'm not sure because I haven't done a survey, but I suspect that an important difference between now and when I was in school is the absence of study hall. Pretty much every student in my school had a daily free period that was designated as time for homework/study. It was 50-odd minutes long, and gave us all a chance to get stuff done during the day. It started in junior high, when 8th period was always study hall, for every student. The study period varied in high school according to your schedule, but it was offered during every single class period. Around here at least, my kids have a class during every period. And let's face it -- the homework load was a lot lower back then (80s) than it is now.
I had time to be on 2-3 athletic teams per year (2.5 hrs/day of field hockey, skiing, or track), hang out with my friends, watch TV, and, starting when I was 15, I had a part-time job. This schedule was
typical for the kids in my school. I still finished in the top 10 of my class of 300 or so. I can't see how a high school student today would manage half of what I was able to do without really breaking a sweat more than a couple times per year.
