It makes better sense to discuss this question with parents. The discussion that follows could be shared with parents, without any need to edit.
There are two parts to this question –
- How do I know that my child knows everything (academic)?
- How can a child, who is in the know of things, fail to secure good marks or feel confident?
The first question is the more important and interesting of the two because it lays the foundation for the second question. There are three sources of ‘knowing’ whether your child actually understands the things she ought to know:
- Child’s self-certifications – self-certification is a right that should only follow the highest level of knowledge and skill. Short of the same, a child’s assertions of his knowledge cannot be taken at face value. You (parents) will have to be the informed judge to assess your child’s actual knowledge. Obviously, the quality of assessment will be limited by your own understanding of the academic content that your child has to transact. In case you are not confident enough to judge, personal assessments of the child should not be taken as final and you must look for other sources for assessing your child’s knowledge. This may sound like fuelling a trust deficit with children but this is the safer bet.
- School’s progress reports – this method of evaluation of a child’s knowledge is fully dependent on the way your child’s school organises assessment design, evaluation parameters, reporting formats and timing as well as the possible motivations of the persons responsible for evaluation. School progress reports become poor quality litmus tests when the five parametres are not professionally executed with the highest level of propriety. Here is just a sample of the ethical dilemmas; teachers’ have to contend with: poor grades due to ‘correct assessment and evaluation’ which will impact school’s performance records or why open the Pandora’s box of previous-class weaknesses. It is not always easy for most teachers to do justice to students. School progress reports are not very insightful, actionable, and continuous.
- Tuition teacher’s reports – it may surprise many of you but our assessment of tuition teachers’ report is also unfavourable. It is only as good as your own ability to judge the reliability of the report – it takes advantage of you not being in a position to evaluate his reports. This is the least reliable input for evaluating your child’s actual knowledge and skills; tuition teachers are far less likely to be objective because a fundamental growth in the child will wean the child off tuition and that is against their basic livelihood interests. As a result, tuition teachers have to continuously justify their continued contribution while showing progress in their students – quite a contradictory situation; often children end up in a roller coaster ride of highs and lows across various chapters/topics to help tuition teachers keep their job. Further, many tuition teachers are simply not as good as school teachers.
Of course, we do not expect all parents to have the proficiency to judge the content knowledge of their children or sit on judgment on the progress reports of the school or the tuition teachers. The best way is to use truly independent assessments; online learning websites are the best bet for the fairest assessment of your child’s academic progress. Mentoring Million Minds (www.mentoringmillionminds.org) is one such option for maths and science education.
