How to deal with a child's exam results

With the test period for first term coming to an end for the majority of our center’s students, it is time to look at, evaluate, and go through the exam outcomes. As the results are revealed, we see elated students that scored exceptionally well, with beaming parents feeling proud. We also see relieved parents when they find out their children has passed an exam, that they truly believed would not happen. We also see parents that are disappointed, because their children have scored a mark beyond their expectation. Within this pool of emotions, it is important for us to remember the young students themselves will feel happy, sad, or disappointed; not because of their own results, but because of the stress, expectation, or disappointment that their parents, or even for us at the Tutor Center, might unconsciously place onto them. The top percentage is always striving and attempting to stay on the top. The students within the median range are striving and trying to reach for higher marks. The ones that performed poorly are hoping they can do much better this time around. At the end of the day, we believe, it is important to remember that nothing is more important than a student understanding what they are supposed to be learning. Because, it is always lack of comprehension that effects the outcome of a student’s continual learning progress. A score or a ranking is merely a reflection of a fleeting period of time; but a strong foundation and true understanding of what they need to know, is more important and will continue to strengthen and affect their future years or learning.

There is never a “quick fix” to any problems; whether it be confusing grammar, shortage of understanding in reading comprehension, or an inability to write a clean and clear piece of composition. When an exam comes around, we always tell students, it is merely a time when they let teachers at school know what have learned and what they remembered. The school is not trying to trick them or make their life difficult. Rather, the teachers just want to know how much learning each student in the class has absorbed! Within a class size of 30 and above, it can be expected there will only be a certain percentage that perform exceptionally well, a percentage that perform acceptably, and a percentage that have performed poorly, because every student has their own method of learning and level of absorption rate.

At EduSteps, we make a strong effort to implement an “inclusive, live and learn” teaching approach where our students are taught in a small class sized environment that comprises of a 2-way communication channel with teachers and students both sharing, explaining, and communicating with one another. We want to make sure no students are left behind, and we don’t exaggerate our abilities on what we can do. We will communicate with parents so they know what kind of learning we are providing the students, and we try our best to ensure our students understand what they are supposed to achieve. We do this through video clips we send to home, and customized weekly lesson plans that target the needs of each student. We really try and go the extra step by having a teacher customize each week’s lesson plans for our students. Our lessons and what we are teaching are always changing, and evolving but we try to stay as flexible and open to our students’ struggles and problems.

In EduSteps opinion, we believe it is very important to keep in mind that parents don’t convey their disappointment to their children, because how you react will be remembered by them for the rest of their lives. Instead, a form of praise, understanding, and empathy that, we and parents, give the students is the strongest encouragement and motivation for them to strive and keep doing better. These small gestures and praises are indication to the students that we are working together for the whole journey. The students are at EduSteps because they are trying to understand, trying to improve, and trying to build a stronger learning foundation that they can benefit from.

It is EduSteps mission, that their learning with us, sets them up for many years of learning to come.