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

[Daydreamingforever]

Ffs had an idiot tell me this is why some kids don't do well, and that they cou,d of they tried hard enough

I replied I'm sure it's jot as simple as that, amdtnat for a start the child needs to believe in themselves ....
And that there's allsorts of reasons kids don't do well at school, but struggled to explain much more than there's all sorts of socio-economic reasons for it, but didn't elaborate further

“Ffs had an idiot tell me this is why some kids don't do well, and that they cou,d of they tried hard enough”

If they had said ALL kids then you would be right to be annoyed. But the fact is some kids could do better if they tried harder. I wss am a lazy cow, and could’ve done much better if I had put in more effort.

Everyone can do better if they put a greater effort into learning, but there are outside influences that can prevent them from being able to put that effort into.
Doing better doesn’t equate to doing well though. Improving a test score by 10% is doing better, but if the first test result was 1% and the second 11% is the student doing well?

There is a big element of this imo. Many schools are hostile environments that are stressful and demeaning for children.

I was always told on report cards 'could try harder' back in the 80s. No I couldn't, I tried hard I just couldn't learn the way they were teaching, I was not a bums on seats kind of kid. I am much better with working practically.

I used to get into trouble for not showing my working in maths - I knew the answer just couldn't tell you how I came up with it, so i was bad at maths, I got less marks for not showing working out but had the question right.

I would get asked a question in English and answer it in one line. Elaborate, elaborate what, that's the answer, you asked I answered, and why is that the answer, because it is the answer.

I was always good at art, design, etc, stuff like that but that wasn't important back then it was maths & english & science.

Depends on your definition of 'doing well'? In my mind 'doing well' is not necessarily about everyone getting the top grades, but it is them fulfilling their potential, acheiving the best they possibly can, setting goals for themself and doing everything they can to acheive them.

My oldest at 9 definitely isn't reaching her potential, and definitely isn't trying her hardest, which is frustrating for both us and her teachers. But in a way it's also frustrating for her 'X can talk and walk around the classroom during lessons but if I do it I get in trouble' 'my grades went up 10% but my teacher still isn't happy'. No they aren't, as you are capable of 30% higher. She hasn't found that intrinsic motivation yet and it's a struggle to get her to see that it's fully in her control to do better, but we can give all the help possible, but if she doesn't want it for herself then nothing is going to change. She is naturally smart but not very engaged. Her sister is similar ability i think, but constantly has her head in a book, writing, asks for extra maths because she genuinely enjoys it, and despite being 2 years younger, she is working at same level as her older sister in some areas. As someone who went to a failing school and taught myself the whole gcse and A level curriculum as the teacher was too busy with crowd control, and got all top grades, its frustrating, but my DH keeps reminding me that I cannot expect her to be me, she is her and that's ok.

I always drilled down to my kids that if they didn't work hard at school they'd end up as a person doing menial work. As in, working the tills at Tescos or flipping burgers at McDonald's.

You do realise that for some children that is in fact, doing well , and they worked hard to get there?

Nevermind all the uni graduates working in menial jobs .

I didn't do well at school. I got 3 GCSEs. My mum was very violent and abusive and my dad was an abusive drunk. My home life was absolutely chaotic and I was very badly bullied.

Unsurprisingly neither parent was interested in schoolwork and I didn't do any.

Wow! That’s a really shitty attitude to people who go to work every day. I hope you don’t let them know how much you look down on them.

There’s nothing wrong with either of those jobs.

Everyone has a level of cognitive ability.

It's not as simple as work hard.

I certainly didn’t put enough effort into subjects I wasn’t interested in, which was quite a few, despite having very pro/education parents. OTOH I did well in the very few I liked.
I was just lazy!
People in general often used to say, ‘Well, as long as you tried your best…’ - but too often I knew I hadn’t tried my best at all.

Some children don’t work hard enough and could achieve more if they tried. However some children do everything they can but their best will still not get them too GCSE results.

I agree with this.

Also the parents who encourage the kids to blame others rather than taking some responsibility themselves. Its always somebody else's fault.

Didn't do well at school, blame the teachers not the fact you didn't do the work.

Got into trouble for behaviour, someone else's fault for leading them astray.

I've seen parents stand in the playground and spout this rubbish when you absolutely know their child is an absolute nightmare.

Then they wonder why their child didn't get on in life 🙄

My brother was extremely clever ( our father was an Ed psych so did aptitude tests on us for fun) but never , ever applied himself to anything. At junior school there was a baby bulge in his year( 1970s. He's 59 this year) so they moved the older ones up a year regardless of ability. He was an August birthday so didn't get to go. Instead of working hard and showing them that he should go too, he stopped and sulked and proved to them that he was too emotionally immature to go up a year and they were right to leave him where he was.
At secondary school the teacher would set homework and suggest that half a page per answer would be the least that was required. My brother would count the lines on a page ( 22 as it happens). He would write his answer until he got to line 11 and then stop, even if he had more to say. Bare minimum answer, bare minimum score. He has worked on the production line in a factory all his life.

Ditto!

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.