Nobody rings home about a child who is polite, present and getting sixty per cent. That is precisely the child we see too late.
Schools notice two kinds of student: the one doing very well and the one causing trouble. The child who sits in the middle, hands in work, says nothing and gets around sixty per cent is invisible, and that is the child who arrives here in grade ten with three years of accumulated gaps.
This is not a criticism of teachers. With thirty children in a room, attention goes where it is demanded, and a polite child who never asks a question is the easiest to leave alone.
What to watch for, as a parent.
Homework that takes a very long time. This is the clearest early sign and it gets misread as diligence. A child spending two hours on thirty minutes of maths is not working hard, they are working without the tools, and they are exhausted before the difficult year arrives.
A child who cannot explain what they did. Ask them to talk you through one question they got right. A student who has understood can explain it badly but recognisably. A student who has memorised a procedure will say the steps in order and be unable to say why any of them happened, and that memorisation stops working at about grade nine.
Marks that are stable while the work gets harder. Sixty per cent in grade seven and sixty per cent in grade nine are not the same achievement, and a flat line often hides a widening gap.
Avoiding a subject. Children stop talking about the thing they are failing at long before they stop doing it. Ask which subject is their least favourite and why, and listen for the difference between boring and confusing.
And reading, at every age. A child who reads slowly will find every subject heavier, and it is usually diagnosed as a maths or attitude problem in secondary school. If a child under eleven is not reading fluently and for pleasure, that is the most important thing in their education and nothing else comes close.
What we can do about it earlier is a great deal cheaper than what we can do about it later. A child in grade seven with a two year gap can close it in a term or two alongside their normal work. The same child in grade ten, with an examination coming, has to choose between repairing the gap and keeping up with the class, and we have to make that choice with the family and give something up.
So if your child is quietly average and you have never had a call from school, that is not necessarily good news. Bring them for the assessment. It costs nothing, it takes a session, and about one family in fourteen leaves with the news that nothing is wrong at all.
