A Checklist of Reasons Why Students Perform Poorly – Are you looking at the right ones?

A checklist of reasons why student perform poorly in studies
31Mar 2021 by Principal

Over here in iMatter, we make use of this simple checklist to evaluate our students against their performance in school. Through discussions with our students about their learning, It enables us to at least have a grasp of the possible issues they are grappling with. Though this post is aimed at students performing poorly, it can very well be used as a checklist to explain why students excel in school by reversing the viewpoints below. (We have a longer and more descriptive version of this checklist guest posted at Singapore’s Finest website. It includes several suggestions on how some of these reasons can be managed.)

A Caveat

Many factors/reasons tend to overlap one another and determining the underlying cause(s) may not be easy as the obvious reason may not be the real reason. Nevertheless, if parents or educators want to bring about a positive change in the student’s results, it pays huge dividends to uncover the underlying cause(s).

The 8 Reasons

  1. I don’t understand the subject
    To us, this is not an actual reason. We need to probe deeper to find out if the following factors are present.
    1. Lack of ability in the English language
    2. Poor cognitive ability
    3. Overwhelmed in terms of content or/and time
    4. Poor foundation in the subject
      In our opinion, this is probably the most worrisome factor and the hardest to solve. To make things worse, it is rather commonly encountered.
  2. Poor memory
  3. Lack of interest and/or motivation in studying or the subject
  4. Unhealthy pressure from self and/or parents
  5. Laziness and procrastination
  6. Irresponsibility
  7. Distractions
    1. Gaming
    2. Social media
    3. Family issues
    4. Financial issues
    5. Boy-girl relationship (BGR) issues
    6. Getting bullied
  8. Poor on-site performance during the test or exam
    1. Carelessness
    2. Anxiety & stress
    3. Poor time management
      Be very skeptical of this explanation from a student as from our experience, the real reasons probably lie elsewhere.

Summing Up

Though the knee-jerk reaction to poor grades is to jump on the tuition and enrichment bandwagon, the solution may be complemented by open communication between parents and child, cocreation of mutually acceptable learning goals and counseling by third parties.

We did not address students with genuine special educational needs (SEN) in this post as we believe they deserve a separate checklist by itself. We did however briefly explore this topic in a previous post, Why Your Child Does Not Need Tuition.