Students who did poorly on their Year 6 SATs are expected not to do well on their GCSEs, and they often don’t get the same attention paid to them as the students who are expected to score high. That means lower set assignments and fewer resources and interventions made available.
And that would be frustrating enough by itself—but there’s also the psychological aspect to consider.
Once a student hears, often enough, that they’re “not expected to do well,” they internalise it. And once they’ve internalised it, they’re far more likely to disengage from the process.
Why try to get better if it won’t make a difference?
No matter how old they are, no matter how many assessments they’ve struggled with, there should never be a point where a student is made to feel like the future is not for them.
Most of the time, it involves taking a step backward—the kind of step that their school can’t usually help them take because they have to stick to their curriculum.
And for students who are frustrated, it usually takes more than just a few extra Year 6 maths worksheets or another look through that list of Year 6 spelling words to catch them up.
Think about anything you've ever learned to do really well. How did you get good at it? You almost certainly did these four things:
You got an expert to show you how to play and got the whole story up front.
You learned the basic moves of the game and practiced them until they were easy
Then you practiced those moves in combination with each other
Finally, you played the game a lot.
Assessments are no different. You can get better than you ever imagined by following those four steps.
Which means, if a student has had trouble with some of a subject’s more basic moves in the past, the most important thing they can do is go back and re-master the fundamentals.
with our clear, simple approach to English and Maths
with more than 150 video lessons and exercises that break down every aspect of English and Maths fundamentals, so that no matter what your starting point is, you can practise until it’s easy.
Our MyGame video series are specifically designed to teach you how to prepare to play your best game, no matter how you’ve done on standardized tests in the past.
We teach habits of thinking, feeling, and learning designed to let you let go of past beliefs about your limitations and approach learning joyfully!
I like MuchSmarter because I'm only ever competing against myself and not other people.
It makes practising fun and not stressful.
I was getting less than one quarter of maths questions correct in practise. I worked on my maths fundamentals on MuchSmarter and wound up getting two-thirds of the questions correct on my final assessment!
