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

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.

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😁

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

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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

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.

@BoredZelda

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.

That's a refreshing read and we need more of that kind of attitude from our educators.

My son did a Financial Maths degree and was really unimpressed at the "teaching" which he says was all outdated and tedious. He showed me some Economics lecture notes which were discussing events 20 years ago, nothing at all more recent, as the notes had never been updated and were just regurgitated year after year for each new cohort. He found the whole degree course utterly tedious. When fellow students asked questions in lectures, the lecturers often couldn't answer as they were just "delivering" the lectures which had been prepared by others many years ago. He got his First degree after the three years, but decided not to carry on for his Msc nor Phd which had been his plan, and was glad to leave once he got his Bsc as he was utterly drained and fed up by the tedium of it all. Now he's doing his professional Actuarial exams and is rejuvenated with studying etc with what he regards as far higher quality teaching and resources from the professional training firm doing online live lectures, relevant examples and questions, one to one online support, etc.

I had a stint at our local FE college teaching accounting for the AAT professional exams for a few years. The college were short of a teacher so reached out for me to do a term as I was on one of their committees co-opted by my employer at the time as the senior partner of the firm I worked at was a governor or similar of the college. I ended up doing it for a few years, despite not having any teaching experience/qualifications. I couldn't believe the crap material they handed me to use to teach them - a whole box of scrappy worksheets, ancient text books, etc., some of which I recognised from my studying days 20 years earlier! No effort whatsoever made by the college to produce interesting/useful training/studying material. Worse still, that some of it contained glaringly obvious mistakes and it really wasn't a "good look" to be handing out worksheets with transaction dates of the 1970s when doing teaching in the 90s! I ignored the lot of it and used a combination of the official modern text books they were told to buy for the course (BPP I seem to remember), along with a modern text book I bought myself from a different modern provider for the same course (Foulks Lynch I seem to remember who were a big player at that time). Between the two books, and lots of my own examples from my years of experience, I re-designed the course week by week as we went through it - I was basically a week ahead, writing my own worked examples, slides, etc and using the alternative text book to base questions homework and worked questions in class. I got pretty close to 100% attendance, very high engagement with homework, and very high pass rates. The college kept asking me to do other modules but I didn't have time for more than one module.

Rather than random questions for different examples, I started the first lecture with introducing a fictitious company making fictitious products, and built upon it, week by week, ledger by ledger, until by the end of the course, we had a full set of accounts where the class could identify where all the figures had come from, and which were "real" to them, as they'd got to know the suppliers and customers names, the major suppliers and customers, the staff names and roles, the products, how the products were made, what components were bought from where, how much they individually cost, etc. If I say so myself, it was quite a master piece. But bringing it all to life and giving meaning to every single figure really gave "ownership" to the class. I appreciate they were either adults or nearly adults (age range was 17 through to mid 50s) so different from school age children, but I really felt a sense of engagement from them, even the youngest who'd basically just left school.

It sounds like you have chosen the best solution for your son. Does the SEN provision offer practical learning and PFA? Education is honestly so much more than just academic (although confession I am an acdemic type of leaner). Hopefully he shall find his talent and passion in life. Your daughter managing dyslexia in two languages that is an exceptional brain just one that processes differently. I hope she gets the reasonable adjustments she needs to succeed.

”doing well at school” is very subjective though. Of course not everyone is very academic and could be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants even with all the effort in the world. Someone who gets middle of the road grades but very well in certain areas that they are interested in and goes on to have a career in that field has “done well” in school given that they have gotten themselves the qualifications and grades to do a job that they enjoy. Such as someone doing well is wood works and maths and not great in other subjects but goes on to be a joiner. Someone really interested in home economics and goes on to become a chief. University and academia is not the only route to success. Some of the most successful people I know are tradespeople!

@AdaStewart

I learned that with the right teacher & encouragement, anyone can do well.

I agree with that. A really good teacher can make all the difference. I remember a girl in our form (Joanne) who was the form "idiot" - always messing around, never doing any work, disruptive, etc and basically a pain in the arse to be around. She wasn't nasty nor a bully, but she just clearly couldn't be arsed to do any work.

In fourth year, we both chose History for O Level, and because of the block choices, it was a very low enrolled block option - there were only about ten of us in the class as most people wanting to do History had chosen it in a different block so they could do Geography too, so we were timetabled into a tiny classroom, and a group of ten "misfits" as it were who didn't want to do both Humanities. When I saw Joanne was in our class, my heart sank. When the teacher showed us her seating plan and Joanne was sat next to me, I despaired! But the teacher was "old school", a matronly unmarried woman in her sixties who right from the first lesson made it clear she'd accept no nonsense - she had a "presence" or "aura" about her that commanded authority. Of course, Joanne would start messing around, not working in lessons, not handing in homework, etc., but unlike other teachers, our history teacher didn't start ranting and raving during the lesson, but kept asking Joanne to stay behind for "a quick word". After a few weeks, there was a clear transformation in the history lessons - she'd stop messing around and would actually do some work. She was the same idiot in other lessons, but was different in history. Over the weeks, the teacher turned out to be really inspirational for us all, really brought the subject to life, showed almost unlimited enthusiasm for what was a pretty dry topic. Even Joanne would start participating in group discussions, etc. After the two years, it turned out that History was the only O level that Joanne had passed!

It just showed how a good inspirational teacher can turn around a "poor" pupil if they've got enough "tools" in their ability and experience.

My brother wasn’t great in school, he missed a LOT of school in his earlier years due to cancer treatment and it was the 90s so never really caught up or got much support. He had dyslexia and probably some other mild learning difficulties that just made learning very difficult with him. My mother put so much effort into his education and tutored him every night for months and months prior to his exams and he done ok. But he was very good a PE was very physical and loved being active. My mum saw that end helped guide him to a career as a scaffolder. He works offshore now and makes a fortune. Much more than me with my university degree and good exam results! Nobody would look at his exam results and say he “done well” in school. But with my mother’s guidance he has “done well” in life.

Not unreasonable. Some people just don't have it. I suppose I wasn't a perfect student I barely revised for my GCSEs and did them while six months pregnant and got some pretty good grades.
Knew a friend who spent every spare moment revising and still failed every exam. Genetics play a big part

Our school system is set up almost entirely for kids who are academic. That is a very narrow skill set.

For kids who do not fit this, they are either unmotivated as they are all day every day being asked to do tasks they have no interest in and no aptitude for. Or they try but with all the effort in the world they will never do that well.

Then of course there are kids who have learning difficulties ( my son is dyslexic - a learning system based on reading and writing presents challenges to him other kids don't face), those who come from abusive households and a whole raft of other factors.

Yeah, of course some kids will do better if they try harder. Others do really well despite doing very little. Others will try hard and still not do well ( this was me at maths). Others will give up trying as they are in a system where they are square pegs being forced in round holes.

Your poor friend. That's really sad.

Yes they had to start their college qualification at level 1 instead of level 3 so spent two extra years at college, they are doing ok now though