Bored at school despite good grades: why?

“She gets good marks. And yet she says she’s bored.”

For some parents, this sounds like a contradiction: if the child is doing well, why worry? Because succeeding at an exercise and being engaged in what you learn are two different things.

When success hides a lack of challenge

A child who understands quickly can get very good results. If activities stay at a level they have already mastered, they slowly lose the urge to search. What they are missing, then, may be difficulty itself.

Learning also means meeting situations where the answer isn’t obvious straight away.

Beware the shortcut “she’s doing well, so she needs more challenge”

The shortcut would be misleading: a child can be bored for many other reasons. They may:

• not be getting enough sleep;
• be going through a difficult time;
• have lost their motivation;
• not see the point of certain activities;
• lack confidence;
• need more independence;
• prefer some ways of learning to others.

Better to look for the cause than to force an explanation onto it. We go through several of them in why a child is bored at school.

How can you tell if they lack challenge?

Watch what happens when they meet something harder. An under-challenged child often gets interested again when asked to search, compare, create, solve, explain, make connections or defend an idea.

If even new activities leave them cold, the cause probably lies elsewhere.

The right level of difficulty

We rarely learn at either extreme. Too easy: “I already know.” Too hard: “I can’t.” Between the two lies a far more interesting space: “I don’t know yet, but I can have a go.”

That is the space individualised teaching tries to create for each child.

More work is not the answer

When a child finishes quickly, the reflex is to hand them more exercises. But if the goal has already been reached, ten more exercises just produce the same experience ten times.

You can change the nature of the task instead: “You’ve found the answer. Can you prove it another way?” Or: “Can you make up a question that this would be the answer to?” The child isn’t doing more; they are going further.

Thriving doesn’t mean being stimulated all the time

Another trap: no school can be exciting every minute, and it isn’t there to entertain children. Thriving at school also comes from:

• the satisfaction of having understood;
• the pride of having progressed;
• independence;
• curiosity;
• getting past a difficulty;
• relationships with others;
• the feeling of being able to act.

So we are not looking for a child who is never bored. We are looking for a child who finds meaning in what they do at school, and makes progress there.

What to do when the boredom lasts

Start by watching:

• Since when?
• In which situations?
• In which subjects?
• With which teachers?
• What do they do when they have finished?
• How do they react when an activity becomes genuinely hard?

The answers will help you tell a passing moment of boredom from a more lasting problem. They also let you check that apparent ease isn’t hiding something else: a child’s abilities and their success at school don’t always go together.