To feel that the reasons some children don't do well at school, isn't because they don't try hard enough?

I agree with this. You know your child’s ability and potential and as long as your expectations are realistic then it is fair to say that these are jobs may not be the level your child should be aiming for.
A lack of expectations can very much be a problem.

Do we really want people who can't pass basic maths and English?

One of the kids in my class at junior school got special treatment as her mom was one of the teachers. Her mom was lovely, the kid wasn’t. As an 8 year old I decided it was pointless trying as Yvonne & her little group were favourites, whilst the rest of us were scum. They were also clever kids, the rest of us weren’t, another reason why the kids didn’t try as the teachers preferred to teach those they did want to learn. As a mature student in my 30’s I finally wanted to learn, I learned that with the right teacher & encouragement, anyone can do well.

I agree. I started comp after leaving primary as a straight A* pupil. Aged 16, I left the comp without a single qualification. That was because it was a crap comp, and I was bullied mercilessly for five years, incompetent/useless teachers did nothing to stop it, just played the "victim blaming" card of telling me to toughen up! Really helpful! Not just name calling, but physical abuse (fag burns, kicks, punches, etc), and theft/damage to property such as school books, coat, school bag, etc. Teachers couldn't give a shit. I started hiding at breaks and lunch times to avoid the bullies and then started truanting to avoid the lessons where I was forced to sit next to or work in groups with the bullies!

Once I left the hell hole, I got a mundane job and did my qualifications to A level via evening classes and self study, and then got my chartered accountancy qualification over the next five years, again by self study, distant learning and evening classes. I managed to turn it around.

It wasn't a lack of hard work at the crap comp - it was literally doing what I had to do to survive the five worst years of my life. I worked very hard for the subsequent 8-9 years to make something of myself and get the education I needed, alongside a full time job! That's hard work.

As others have said, if you're in a nurturing, stable, environment, then working hard or not makes a difference to your education. But if you're in a hostile environment, home or school, you're really not in a position to get a good education, whether you work hard or not as there are other factors preventing you from achieving.

If they have a place in college and are happy to re-sit, what’s the problem?

Resit pass rates are appalling, for various reasons. For the lazy child, the best chance they have of passing their maths or English GCSE is in Y11. The problem is them throwing that chance out of the window because some idiot told them they 'could always resit'.

If they have a place in college and are happy to re-sit, what’s the problem? Same with unconditional offers. Why would you need to work your ass off for a subject if you aren't overly bothered with a grade? Schools are so focussed on grades because it looks good on them. They then put pressure on kids to hit their targets. I had an unconditional in 5th year, so in 6th year I could do the stuff that was more fun, enjoy my last year at school, learn some non academic stuff that has been really useful to me in my life. This was back when schools weren’t pushing to have high pass rates.

My daughter is in 4th year, just done prelims and she comfortably got all As. Since then, all they have done at school is revision and she thinks she needs to study hard over the easter holidays, even attending some “holiday school” sessions. They are focusing on her percentages, can she get an 85 or a 90? It doesn’t matter, these exams are so she can move on to the next step, Highers to get into University. Her MH is in the toilet because of the pressure. One of her friends struggles academically but has enough to get by so she can do the creative subjects she needs for her next step. She is being pushed to do better. Not for her, but for the school’s bragging rights.

Not writing a full essay doesn’t translate into being work shy. I have a class of university students who are known for being a difficult year to teach. Last semester I found it hard to get through to them, attendance was low. I chatted with them about the problems they were having and it turns out they couldn’t see the point of going to a lot of their classes. None of them seemed relevant to their career (and they are right, they aren’t) lecturers regurgitated the same power point presentations they’d had for years and these kids could pass by reading the notes and self teaching. When I took over the class last year, I discovered they were still teaching a course I wrote 15 years ago, no updates, no new methods etc. It’s laughable. This semester, I switched it around. I taught them how to do the job, I spoke about how much they needed to learn to be able to be the best graduates, give them an edge when interviewing. I chucked out the old stuff that wasn’t important and when I was asking for something which seemed useless to them, I told them why I was teaching it and how it would help. For every single class I had near perfect attendance, right up to the very last. We need to stop focusing on just getting a high grade and have students work smarter not harder.

Yes which I did. I just told them the consequences of what would have happened if they didn't work hard at school.

What is best for them is receiving encouragement and support in whatever they want to do, not what you think they should do.

Very true, and in a way, who could blame them? Even at GCSE level a lot of kids still don’t know what they want to do and careers and pensions and retirement and house ownership are centuries away. The now things , friendships, relationships, socialising, hobbies are obviously a lot more important and IN focus. Most kids can’t even see themselves past 20, much less in a boardroom at 35. If I’m entirely honest, there are millions of adults just like that too , or the ones that still don’t know what they want to be when they “grow up”, despite being 40.

Nevermind at 14, 12, 10, 8 or 6.

I didn’t do well at school because I missed a lot of primary due to recurrent bouts of tonsillitis and sinus trouble and subsequent surgeries (adenoidectomy and tonsillectomy) and wasn’t helped to catch up. My parents and teachers alike let me down. I also think I had/have ADHDwhich dimly wasn’t recognised in the 60s/70s.

Isn't it that old saying 'education is wasted on the young'? As we grow older we see what we could and should have done at school, but at the time we all thought we were doing the best we could. If someone told me now, as an adult, that I could go and spend ten years learning, being paid and cared for with no responsibility other than to learn - I'd be a genius. Back then? Not so much.

I ended up with decent grades, but I barely made any effort. I could have tried harder but I knew what I needed to get to do what I wanted to do. Why knock my pan in for an A when it wasn’t going to benefit me at all?

When I went to a private secondary school (full AP) I tried really hard. The teaching was good but everyone was from a prep school background and got As for every subject. With the best will in the world I was always bottom of the class for everything except French. Weirdly I was better than all the others who'd been learning it for years?!
When I moved to a comp I stopped caring so just put in absolutely zero effort. Thanks to the private school I still got ok grades though as I'd learnt most of it in the first three years.
I always used to hate lessons though. I think I've probably got ADHD.

"Some kids could do better at school if they tried harder" seems like the least controversial statement about education ever.

YABU OP.

Some kids don’t try very hard in school. They’d do better if they worked harder.
They don’t have the interest and aren’t mature enough to see how it might impact their life.

Their are all sorts of other reasons kids don’t do well in school. It’s complicated of course.

But for some of them - yes, it’s fairly simple. They’d do better if they put in a bit more effort at school and home. They prefer gaming, sport, tv, chatting with friends and anything except studying basically.

Lots of older people wish they could go back and do the school or college years again because they know they’d study harder and do better in the exams this time round.
So I suppose you could say lack of maturity is the problem at school/college age really😁

Many people don’t realise that the school system is a competition. Very broadly speaking, by the end, 1/3 of the student population will be successful, 1/3 will be mediocre and 1/3 will be failures.

Some of the failures will have tried very hard but the system doesn’t meet their needs. Some of the successes will be lazy but find school easy.

There's another thread at the moment about career option for "average" or "less academic" kids.
I was going to recommend both those employers (TESCO and McDonald's) as places with very good internal career development paths.

Let’s hope they never fuck up or “fail” because they won’t get much sympathy from you.

The pay is crap and wouldn't exactly give my DC the best quality of life would it. I want the best for them.

R.e. uni graduates - it's the main reason why I pushed my children to attend the most prestigious university they could and to strive for 1sts instead of just getting a 2.1.

The children who do really well in school, all work hard. That is the secret to their success. The reasons why they are able, and motivated, to work hard are more complicated though.

That arse was 100% wrong. Some kids win the lottery. Genetically. Socially. Family-wise.

Other kids have various SEN that makes accessing a broken education system even harder. They come from families that don't know how to game the education system. And also families who don't necessarily value academic education (no judgement - there is more money in the trades than academia).

I'd say very little is to do with working hard or not.

I have 3dc. I'd say they were reasonably similar intelligence wise.

One is a perfectionist and always works hard even if she's no good at the subject.
One works when she wants to and relies on blagging her way out (which she's very good at) when she doesn't want to.
One does the minimum to keep out of trouble, and sometimes not even that.

The first one's results were head and shoulders over the other two.
I suspect with equal work #2 would have done slightly better and #3 slightly worse, but fairly similar.

And no amounts of bribes, pleading, deterrents etc would get the other two doing half the amount of work the first one did.

For example. Give them a piece of homework.
One would do it in rough, check it, make improvements then write it up in best (maybe redoing it if she felt it wasn't good enough.
One would start it enthusiastically, do the first third, then get bored and rely on looking innocent for her teacher to tell her it didn't matter.
One would work out how long it would take him, then aim to start that length of time before the deadline. With faffing and distractions it would be considerably later than that.
So they'd scrawl a few comments down (while watching something if they could get away with it) and hope that would do.

I was lazy at school, strangely I was actually quite intelligent but I just coasted. I could have done much better had I put my mind to it.

I told my dc that good grades gives you choices. I know I didn’t work as hard as I could have and regret it. I tell my dc that I don’t want them to look back and have regrets. My older teen has mentioned that he’s glad now that I was strict with screen time and pushed him to work hard at school.
If I hadn’t, I don’t think he’d be where he is today. I think there is truth in that statement. Sometimes the reasons are complex and sometimes they’re not.