When your child knows the mate­ri­al at home but still doesn’t get good gra­des in exams, it is huge­ly frus­t­ra­ting for both child and par­ents. It is often accom­pa­nied by fee­lings of hel­p­less­ness and incomprehension—does the child sim­ply not try hard enough? But be careful: care­less mista­kes are often the real reason. An annoy­ing and per­sis­tent pro­blem for many child­ren, but one that can be sol­ved with spe­ci­fic strategies. 

The root cau­se of most of this is time pres­su­re in exams. Focu­sed on finis­hing, child­ren for­get to be careful—no mat­ter how often they have been remin­ded before­hand. The first step is the­r­e­fo­re always to prac­ti­se time manage­ment with the child. At the start of every exam, take a moment to plan rough­ly how much time is available per task, and then get on with sol­ving the tasks—always do the easy ones first and lea­ve the dif­fi­cult ones until last. Only then can you keep a cool head. 

And only with a cool head is the child able to app­ly all the other spe­ci­fic stra­te­gies against care­less mistakes.

For exam­p­le:

• In maths, wri­te down every step. Try­ing to do small cal­cu­la­ti­on steps in your head is the source of most care­less mista­kes. This also appli­es to units of mea­su­re­ment, which are easi­ly mixed up and cost points. Always wri­te them down too! 
• After each task: quick­ly check your cal­cu­la­ti­on! Does it make sen­se? For exam­p­le, with sub­trac­tions: does adding give you the ori­gi­nal value again? 
• For spel­ling: always plan it as a sepa­ra­te step at the end. First the wri­ting pha­se, then take a quick breath, then the che­cking pha­se. It can help, for exam­p­le, to go through the words back­wards. This tricks the brain’s “care­less mode”. 

Every child also has their own spe­ci­fic care­less mista­kes that they make again and again (for exam­p­le, mixing up minus and plus, mis­s­pel­ling cer­tain words, for­get­ting capi­tal let­ters). The­se need to be iden­ti­fied and avo­id­ance stra­te­gies tail­o­red to the child need to be prac­ti­sed. With a bit of crea­ti­vi­ty and per­sis­tence, this works in most cases. Repe­ti­ti­on is key: the right stra­te­gies for avo­i­ding mista­kes must be prac­ti­sed often and for long enough until they beco­me auto­ma­tic and are not for­got­ten even under exam pressure.
And when the first suc­ces­ses start to appear, the joy for both child and par­ents is huge. We will be hap­py to advi­se you on this topic!