Policies and practices around school work, operating within and beyond the family, are fundamentally rooted in and perpetuate a particular generational order. Working from a temporal perspective this article focuses on ‘school work’ in order to demonstrate how time operates across spheres as a key means of constructing generation, making not only children, but school children. Outlining UK policies on school children’s time-use, and employing findings from a study of families with teenagers, the article examines how the temporal entanglement of school work and family life contributes to the ongoing (re)construction of generation during this key period of ‘growing up’.