What can a learner do about low grades?

12 Nov, 2017 - 02:11 0 Views

The Sunday News

Charles Dube

LEARNERS need to have clear objectives or points of focus if they are to enjoy learning and achieve good results. A number of stakeholders should positively contribute towards the success of the learner. These include the parents or guardians as well as teachers. How do all these people including learners measure success? We all agree that our focus is on whether the child has passed the examination. What marks has the learner achieved?

Any marks above half the total are considered reasonable and acceptable. Those below the half mark bring the ire of the teacher as well as parents and guardians. Such results lead to strong lectures from the stated stakeholders to the learner. A reasonable learner is also disturbed by failing to get good marks and beat others in the class. All this shows a strong obsession with marks. Every learner writes an exercise, an assignment, test or examination aiming to get the highest marks. With that achieved, there comes relaxation.

This relaxation is not good for the future. The learners have not learnt or gained anything. Anything done should benefit the learner. Focus should be on what the learner has learnt from that performance and how she or he can improve. Regardless of results focus should be on what the learner has learnt from that stumble rather than on the marks. The same applies to teachers, a list of red marks or poor results by their learners should not make them despair. They should consider that as a challenge and devise new strategies to achieve better results in future.

Teachers should learn from their learners’ performances and improve on them. You can improve a school known for scoring zero percent pass rate by learning from previous weaknesses. Draw lessons from those failures and improve. After an exercise, test or examination, learners should not just focus on what they got and stop there, but, they should pause and ask questions like, “Did I learn anything from that test?

The focus should be on what you learnt at school, as experts state, school is after all about learning. I have always admired parents or guardians who despite all the challenges they might be facing take their children to school. A child who has been to school has a better perception of life. She or he is an asset rather than a liability in the home and is able to reason out issues. It does not really matter whether that child is gifted or not in class but going to school helps improve his or her development.

Let learners learn at school. Positively the new curriculum has come in handy in that direction. Learners are encouraged to do things than be told. Rote learning has come to an end. If such approaches to learning are adopted it will be realised that learners will derive some form of satisfaction even from poor performances, that is, if questions like, “Did you benefit from it? Did you learn anything from failure?

Looking at failure positively has led to many success stories. There are thousands of learners who passed their O-level examinations at more than one sitting. They were learning from each sitting and never gave up each time they did not make it in the examinations. These are the points of focus learners should know and adopt. Last week I shared with you advice to do with Form One enrolment to schools from experts. Today we offer more of that advice looking at what questions to ask a school when looking for a Form One place.

Having a thorough understanding of schools before committing might help solve the conflicts which arise later in the relationship between schools and stakeholders. Parents or guardians should not just follow the wind when choosing schools for their children. Avoid embarrassing situations like where the learner is offered a boarding place, for example, as a parent or guardian you cannot afford to pay the first instalment of fees at the school of choice. The fault is with you as a parent because you have not done your research to ask about both the boarding and tuition fees.

First things first, you should ask about the fees and whether the school offers payment plans. Make sure you stick to the terms of reference of the payment plans. Do not change what you have agreed upon as the school will lose trust in you and terminate the contract you might have initially agreed on. Of course, before anything else you should find out about the entrance requirements and admission procedures.

Parents might as well ask how the school addresses behaviour problems. People might ask the reason for asking such a negative question, but, to me it is quite relevant especially considering that we are talking about young learners. Children being children can succumb to peer pressure and find themselves on the wrong side of the law. They can ask what is expected of parents at the school. On top of all these, parents can ask what the school policy is on religious matters. This is quite pertinent as a misunderstanding on this can lead to nasty situations.

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