There’s no such thing as an ‘unfair’ school result. And here’s why.
I’m going to say something quite controversial this column. Here goes… When it comes to your child’s school or university results, there’s rarely such a thing as an unfair result. It’s a challenging opinion, I know, but hear me out.
The idea that a result is unfair stems from some false ideas. The first furphy is that the quantity of work always equals outcomes, and that hard work equals a great result. That concept applies to a lot of things, such as exercising more to get more fit or reading more to improve your vocabulary. More effort in those endeavours pretty much guarantees a better outcome.
But with assessment work this idea doesn’t always apply. Unfortunately, when doing an assignment, or essay question, your child’s extreme labour toward an answer might not match what the teacher is looking for. Or a child doesn’t hasn’t yet developed the skills. If this is the case, then regardless of how much work they do, they are not necessarily going to do well.
There’s even a level of extreme effort that can sometimes backfire when doing assessment or performance work. For example, preparing enough to feel confident when doing a speech might result in a great payoff. But if they continually polish their talk, then they’ll come off sounding unnatural.
The second reason ‘unfair’ is the wrong term for a result on an assessment piece is that the person who set the assignment is marking the work. They know what they are looking for and they have the education and experience to know what a good piece of work is and is not. To question the result given by the teacher is to suggest that you or your child knows better.
And even if you are a nuclear physicist, your child’s science assignment might still not be perfectly on the right track. In fact, often when parents help their child too much, they take them down the wrong, highly convoluted path. You child might not do well, regardless of how much information you inserted or how many As you got back in your day.
Results aren’t randomly generated. There is no school or university assessment done without a criteria sheet which dictates exactly what benchmarks are needed to do well. It’s a highly transparent process of telling students what they need to do if they want to do well.
Teachers aren’t trying to be mean. Most times, they work very hard to be fair. I recall having piles of essays — the A pile, the A- pile, the B+ pile etc. — and continually re-jigging them as I marked. Often, I’d think, ‘Emma’s essay is as good as Justin’s, but Sam’s is better than them both, so Sam goes into an A’.
The only reason that a mark would be unfair if the child did not have an equal opportunity to do as well as their peers. Examples might include not being given as much time as their peers or not allowing for their disabilities. That’s unfair.
I understand that your child working hard but not getting the result they wanted is a challenging experience. But rather than saying the result is ‘unfair’, the term I’d prefer you use is ‘disappointing’. Because that’s what happened. Your child worked hard, but their effort was misplaced, and they didn’t quite hit the mark.
That’s a much more positive way of looking at it, rather than suggesting that the teacher has deliberately been mean to your child.
Most importantly, we do children a disservice when we claim their disappointing result is ‘unfair’. In fact, we may hold them back from improvement if we claim that their mark is all to do with other people (their teacher, the school, the coach). Rather than make them feel like the world is against them, we are better to encourage their internal motivation to take the opportunity to develop their skills. This action has a much better chance of them improving their result next time.
So, allow your child to feel upset, and empathise with their situation. But then move on to more positive actions, such as helping them to undertake the sorts of actions which will improve their result the next time. Some tips are below.
Takeaway for parents
What you can do.
· Listen and empathise with their situation. You might offer a personal anecdote, such as the time you worked hard but didn’t get the job or promotion. This will normalise the experience.
· Don’t ring and explode at the teacher or ask for an ‘apology’ for disappointing your child.
· Instead, coach your child on ways to approach their teacher to get feedback on how to improve next time.
· It might be helpful for them to really understand how to read a criteria sheet and know what is required.
· Remind your child that future success comes from getting up, and getting on with it, not wallowing.
