What Students Who Have Fallen Behind In School NEED To Do

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Hi, my name is John and today I will be going through why certain students in NSW need extra support and how a private tutor can help.

In many NSW classrooms, particularly those in under-resourced communities, students enter high school several years behind grade level and can struggle to catch up. I’ve seen this happen quite often as a university graduate who has tutored many students for the last 5 years. Some of the students I teach are quite behind whether it be in maths or English and this is a huge issue as it puts them at a higher risk of not being able to get into higher education or worse dropping out of highschool.

Therefore, today I will be going through the educational problem that is impacting students who are already behind and struggle to learn more advanced concepts. I will be going through some research on the impact on individualised tutoring specifically what is being done in the US with Saga tutoring. I will then talk about its relevance here in the Australian market and how we can actually benefit from this information. Let’s get into it.

So the key problem we are facing is that students who are already struggling to develop the critical foundational skills are being taught more advanced concepts in schools that are beyond their level. As a result,  they can enter high school several grade levels behind, particularly in math. For example, the times tables is typically taught in year 1 as part of the NSW curriculum but my team and I here at Bing’s Academy have met several students in year 4 and 5 who are still struggling with it. And when they are being taught fractions and division in their primary school, they are going to fall further and further behind if they do not get help. And this makes sense.

You can’t learn harder concepts like dividing numbers when you don’t even know your times tables properly. When students have not acquired the prerequisite skills, they can experience significant difficulties learning new material that builds on earlier concepts, furthering the gap between students who are below their grade level and their peers. This is an indication that many classrooms are not well equipped to help students who have fallen behind to catch up as they cater to the majority.

This is also supported by the NAPLAN exams which every student in Australia in Year 3,5,7,9 has to complete to determine their baseline level in a variety of different topics like spelling, numeracy and writing. On a whole, NSW is faring better than other states as we tend to have around 10-15% of students who are either at or below the national minimum standard for each age group. With 96,000 students completing the Year 5 Naplan exam in 2019, that equates to about 10,000 students are struggling.

An interesting insight that I also noticed was the fact that there was 8% of students who was either below or at the national minimum standard in year 3 in the 2017 writing exam for Naplan. When they were in year 5 in 2019, that number doubled to about 17%. This suggests that if the lower performing students are not given specific help, it will result in them suffering even more academically over time.

I believe a solution for students who are falling behind should be individualised tutoring and this is supported by the evidence. A study was done in the US where students who were on the verge of failing maths were put into the Saga tutoring program.  This involved assigned students to be given a one-hour tutoring session as part of their class schedule. Tutors met with 2 students at a time and spent the lesson reviewing foundational skills, targeting the weak areas for each student and working on the current topics that they are learning in regular math class. The results were astounding. Students who were behind learned an extra one to two years worth of math beyond what their peers learned in an academic year. It raised the participant’s national percentile rank on 9th and 10th-grade math exams by more than 20%.

This is a very similar approach to what we do here at Bing’s Academy however all our classes are 1 on 1 so the level of customisation is even higher.

So what are the 3 key strategies you can use here in NSW to make use of this information?

Firstly, if your child is already behind, it will require a lot of work to bring them up to the current standard of their year group but make sure to not put a lot of pressure on them otherwise it can backfire. Instead, be patient if you are teaching them at home and going through different content and homework.

Secondly, you want to be consistent every day so that they can learn quicker than their peers and actually catch up. If you don’t have the time to teach your child yourself every day, this is where private tutoring will probably be a good option. Although it is important to know which tutors are legit and which ones don’t know what they are talking about – ill likely make a video on that soon.

Lastly, don’t do any group tutoring at one of those coaching centres with 5,10,15 people in the same room otherwise they are going to go through harder topics and you won’t be able to keep up. It will be like school and you will probably be wasting a lot of time and money. If your child is behind, you want to be in a class of 1 or at most 2.    

 So in conclusion, Australian classrooms are not adequately designed for students who are falling behind. They need immediate intervention otherwise they will run the risk of not completing high school or getting into university. We know that having a tutor is so important and just remember the 3 strategies – be patient when teaching your child because it is possible to catch up, study every single day and if you do have a private tutor make sure it is in a group of 1 or 2.

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