It is a situation that puzzles many parents. Their child understands some things very quickly. They may have an impressive memory, ask surprising questions, be interested in everything. And yet their school results don’t match what their parents see of their abilities.

How can that be? Because a child’s abilities and their success at school are not the same thing.

Being able isn’t always enough

Doing well at school takes understanding, of course. But it also takes:

getting started on a task;
staying focused;
understanding instructions;
organising one’s work;
accepting to start again;
asking for help;
coping with mistakes;
memorising, then recalling;
working within a given framework.

A child can be very comfortable with one of these and struggle with another.

Understanding, and being able to show it

Some children give brilliant answers out loud but find it hard to produce written work. Others have fully understood an idea without being able to explain their reasoning. Others still can solve a problem when an adult sits beside them, and get stuck as soon as they have to start alone.

In none of these cases does “he doesn’t work hard enough” help anyone understand what is going on.

The trap of labels

A label can shed light on a situation. It can also end up explaining everything: “She’s clever.” “She’s gifted.” “She’s lazy.” “She’s sensitive.”

None of these sentences says what happens while the child is learning. The most useful question remains: what exactly do they do when they learn?

Avoiding situations where they might fail

A child who has built an image of themselves as someone who does well at school may experience failure as a threat. They may then prefer not to try, pick the easy task, declare the exercise “stupid”, crack jokes, wait, or give up quickly.

Why? Because it is sometimes more comfortable not to try than to try and discover you can’t do it first time.

The work of Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck showed this link between praise focused on intelligence, a concern with performance and the way children react to failure. Behind apparent ease, it is not unusual to find a child who doubts themselves.

What to watch for

Instead of only asking “What mark did they get?”, look at:

how they get started;
how they react when they get stuck;
how many strategies they try;
whether they accept corrections;
whether they can explain their mistakes;
whether they ask for help;
whether they can work on their own.

These tell you more about how a child learns than a single mark.

What if the problem lies in the setting?

A child can be at ease in one environment and much less so in another. The pace, the expectations, the level of support, the relationship with the teacher, the size of the group or the room left for independence all change their experience. The same setting can also have the opposite effect: a child who succeeds without effort and ends up bored despite good grades.

Changing schools won’t solve everything. But sometimes you have to look at how the child and their environment meet, instead of only searching for what is “wrong” with the child.

The right goal

A school where every child succeeded at everything would be counterproductive. What we look for is an environment where the child meets difficulties that match their level, understands their mistakes and, bit by bit, finds the means to overcome them.

So the question is not only “What is this child capable of?”, but also: “What allows them to turn their abilities into learning?”

Bright child struggling at school: why?