how to get kids to try harder at school

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Ds is still only little but his attitude to school work is definitely to do it ass quickly as possible and not think too much about it. He is about to go into yr3 and I was trying to explain to him that it's good to try harder at school. His primary is ok but they dont really push the kids and mainly focus on the kids who are really struggling. How did you explain to motivate your kids to try harder at school work?

You could try reinforcing that he will need to study Maths and English until he passes the exams - and he might think he has gotten away with it when he gets “a job” but then find in order to get “the job” or keep the one he has he will suddenly have to resit them. Drill this into him if you have to because it hasn’t changed yet and is very unlikely to.

I had always nudged him towards doing his best rather than the minimum but the work ethic didn't really click with my son until Y5/6. A combination of competitiveness with his peers, a good teacher and experience from sports outside school of what you can achieve if you train and give 100%.

Always tried to encourage my DD to work hard and try her best but it wasn't until she got a low grade in a test that she decided the effort is worth it. After that it was the desire to get top marks as much as possible that drove her.

Then she became a teenager and decided putting in effort is a waste of time and energy

Try to only praise effort. Don’t praise attainment. Do it with everything, not just school work.

So not, “well done for getting 9 out of 10 on the spelling test,” or “Yes! You scored a goal!”

But “I can see that it took you three goes to get the right answer. I’m proud of you for keeping going until you got there,” and “I watched how carefully you concentrated on aiming that shot before you took it! Well done!”