Transcript:

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 97: The day in 2010 that I realised there’s more to academic success than subject knowledge - Today I’m going to explain what I believe that gap is - and what I picked up on that day that could help your teen catapult their performance, confidence and success.

Hey VIP’s! I hope you and your teens are fantastic.

Before we get into this episode, I want to let you know about what I have in store for you for Episode 100 of the podcast. This is episode 97 so we’re not far off, and I have spent a lot of time thinking, brainstorming and researching all the different things that I could do to make it a super-special and extra-valuable episode. And what I realised is… that I’m not the best person to figure that out. 

You are. The listener. 

So I’m going to try to create a super-special episode - by taking on board what you and your teens have found the most useful and impactful strategies or concepts - or just something that has made you think about things in a different way - and creating an episode that’ll be an excellent resource in and of itself. I don’t know exactly what that is going to look like - or sound like - but I can promise you it will be super-valuable. And hopefully a bit of fun as well. So to make this happen, I need to ask you a favour… would you take two minutes - it could be while you’re standing in line at the grocery store or waiting for your coffee, it could be while you’re waiting at pick up for your teen after school or a sports meet. Just two minutes. And tell me: 

what has been the most useful or interesting or impactful thing that you or your teen has learned or picked up from me at any point? 

It could be something from the podcast. It could be from one of my webinars. It could be from a Facebook Live or even just one of my emails. Or, if your teen has in any of my programs or been to a workshop or coaching or training, then it could be something from those. 

Whatever it is - big or small - I’d love to hear what has been MOST impactful for YOU. 

You can send it through in whatever way is easiest for you: an email to support@rocksolidstudy.com - or just reply to any of my emails and that will come through to that inbox. Or send a DM to Rock Solid Study on Facebook or Instagram or you could even leave your feedback as a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast and I’ll pick it up that way.
But get that through to me by Monday 13th May at the latest and I’ll then use all of the feedback to put together something that will be of most value to YOU and your teen for episode 100.

And so I figured, I’d use this episode to go first and share the moment that made the biggest difference to how I see education and assessment today, how I work with students and basically my work in the world today.

It was the moment I realised that subject knowledge is not the only thing that creates success for students when it comes to exams, essays and assessment. In fact, in my opinion now, it only accounts for half of it. The other half is the skill of being able to apply that knowledge - in the way the question or task demands and in the way that the mark scheme or success criteria requires.

Now, if you’re new to the podcast, I recommend going back to episode 1 where I explain the study success formula which is - Knowledge PLUS Application Equals Success.

Because, I can tell you, that it isn’t just students who focus mainly on the knowledge part to try to achieve success, teachers do because the syllabuses and curriculum documents do, and I did too for the first four years of my teaching. And did so successfully. I became head of department, I even had one year as head of faculty, I won a UK National Teaching Award in that time, partly I will say for my general enthusiasm, like I had a huge rainforest wall display in my classroom, I made my lessons super interactive, and I like to think interesting, I ran extra tutorials, after school clubs, all the things you do as an energetic teacher who’d found their vocation, loved their subject and generally had a background of always working hard. That was me. But also because of the outcomes and results I had a part in creating. 

MY students got some of the top GCSE results and we had double the number of students taking Geography as an option by my second year of teaching, and when the school got Ofsted inspected, I got observed and rated as Excellent. 

Now I don’t share all of this to blow my own trumpet. I mean I am proud of all of that - but really I think that it’s relevant to share to prove that up to this point, I was focused solely on the subject content and there were no issues with that. And that, like most people, I thought that academic success was all about knowing the subject content, and the more and better you knew it, then the better you were able to answer exam questions, write essays and complete assignments and coursework. Which is true - to SOME extent.

It wasn’t until the end of my fourth year of teaching, when I did my first ever external exam marking for the GCSE exams that I realised there was more to it. That there was a whole other side to academics, to assessment, to exams and how they are marked. 

A few months before, I’d decided to apply to be an external exam marker. I was looking at moving over to Australia by this point, so could use some extra money AND I can honestly say even more than that - I really wanted to know more about how exams worked. 

It was like this mysterious world behind the curtain. Honestly, teachers don’t see or hear much more than the students do when it comes to how exams and mark schemes are written, the marking operation or anything else that happens before the exam papers are handed out in the exam hall and then shipped off after.

And I was genuinely curious. As a teacher who was invested in this stuff AND as the student I had been many years before who, like I know so many of your teens are - had experienced studying really hard, got great results in coursework, but rarely got the exam results that matched. I was a classic B+ student. Getting all A’s and B’s in my GCSEs and A-Levels - much more weighted towards the B’s I will add. But working all hours, slaving over textbooks til midnight sometimes to get those results. And it was always the coursework that brought up the results.

So, I applied to be an external exam marker and got accepted. Little did I know that the very first day of this new little venture would eventually lead me to where I am now, having founded Rock Solid Study and the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program. Because from the word GO, I was hooked. I went to the marker training day. Back then it was just one day, at the exam board offices. We’d all go along, sit at round group tables in this kind of large office room and be given general mark scheme training and then go through every single question and mark criteria one by one. 
And I’ll share with you the two things that really hit me and I think will be helpful for you and your teen to be aware of.

First was the fact that the cut offs between marks are very specific and can be pretty cut throat. Now, as someone who likes black and white and hates vague, this was great for me. However what really struck me was how I knew this would pan out for students, including MY students who’d sat this paper a few days before. 

It was clear that some students would write a great response ABOUT what was asked, but they would miss the mark - literally - because they didn’t respond exactly TO what was asked. 

I specifically remember seeing this in an extended response question about pollution. I can’t remember the exact wording of it - and I have actually gone back and looked to see if I can find it online, but this was back in 2010 and their papers don’t go back that far unfortunately - I would really LOVE to go back and find it again. But the mark scheme stated that in order for an answer to be classed as detailed, not just relevant or appropriate - again, I can’t remember the exact wording - the student had to state the exact TYPE of pollution they were discussing. Now I had scripts - scripts is the word we use for completed exam papers - that literally mentioned fish being killed - so it was obvious that they were talking about water pollution, But if they just said pollution, and not water pollution within their response, they could not make it to that top level of marks. 

Of course it was obvious that they were talking about water pollution, they were writing about fish - it wasn’t air pollution, or visual pollution, it was water pollution. But as markers we aren’t allowed to read meaning into an answer. That means, we can’t take two and two to make four. The student has to give us the four. We can’t take what they’ve written in one place and make the link to something else for them. 

This is an issue I also see happening a lot in answers that clearly know their stuff, but they just aren’t quite putting it across on the right way. They rely on the marker making the connection or bridging the gap in their points. Which doesn’t happen . Which is why I so often coach students on being really obvious and explicit in their writing. Like, I know it’s obvious when you say that the earthquake made buildings collapse and then you later talk about people having to move into temporary shelters. But you need to explicitly state that buildings collapse, therefore people lose their homes, or their homes are destroyed and therefore they are made homeless and have to move to temporary shelters. Which actually I could say LOTS on about extended explanations and detail, but I’ll save that for another time.

But with that example - I know they think that it’s obvious - and in some ways it is, but they have to state it. The marker can only mark what is on the page - and do so according to the mark scheme.

So, back to the pollution question… I spent the whole rest of my day in that marker training just itching to get to class the next day to tell every one of my senior students to make sure that any time they ever write the word pollution ever again, they precede it with what type of pollution they are talking about. Even if it’s obvious. And even if they’re not in an exam. Side tip: So many of these tips and skills should be practised outside of exams so they become second nature when they’re IN the exam and they’re on edge, their brains are feeling frazzled or they’re stressed and under time pressure. 
I want students to have as many elements of exam technique as possible to be executed on autopilot.

There were of course loads of other examples of ways students lost marks in frustrating ways - and brilliantly - although I have to say less frequently - gained marks in really… smart ways. By just managing to hit a criteria, really succinctly or with minimal words or fuss. Now, I say smart - whether it was intentional or not was not always clear. But I do want YOUR teen to be smart about this stuff. 

So, from that point on, I was building in as much exam technique as possible into my teaching. I realised there was a gap in education - a big gap in the skills of applying the knowledge I was teaching and the students were learning. Years and another continent on, I was continuing to see these issues and wanting to spend more and more of my time and energy helping students build these skills, develop the awareness of how it all works and expand this to essays, assignments, and everyday tasks in their classwork and homework. Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And I’m still seeing this SO often. 

And so, I tell you all of this to consider - where is your teen not stating the obvious? Whether that’s using subject terminology or making specific connections or linkages. Where are they writing a great answer ABOUT what the question is asking but not writing in response TO what the question is asking? And where are they missing out on marks they could be getting if they perfected their exam technique - or even just had SOME elements of exam technique. 

Where could they be answering questions, tackling assignments and coursework, writing essays in a SMART way, in a strategic way. 

And I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve gotten something of value from this podcast, or from one of my webinars, Facebook lives, emails, free resources… I’d really appreciate you sharing it. 

Email to support@ rocksolidstudy.com your story of something significant, pivotal or just a little bit thought-provoking that you’ve learned or picked up along the way.
 
And I’ll repay you with something super-cool for episode 100. No idea what it will be, but I promise it will be worth way more than a 2 minute email.