Why a child can do a sum in class but not at home

Many parents tell us the same thing. The teacher says the child follows the lesson. The child says they understood. Then the same sums come home as homework and nothing works. The child is not pretending, and the teacher is not bad. A classroom gives a child four kinds of help that are missing at home.

1. The worked example was on the board

In class, the method is written on the board while the child works. The child reads it and follows it line by line. At home, the board is not there. The solved example in the textbook uses different numbers, and matching it to the question is itself a skill.

2. Every question was of the same type

In class, the students do one type of question, one after another. After the second question, nobody is choosing a method. They are repeating the last one with new numbers. Homework is usually the same, so it works for the first few questions and then fails when the types are mixed. A test mixes types from the first question. This is why many students do well in class, manage the homework, and lose marks in the exam.

3. The teacher was walking past

Even in a class of 40, the teacher walks past every few minutes. A child who starts wrongly is stopped at the first line. At home, the first wrong line runs all the way to a wrong answer and a rubbed out page. By then, the child has practised the wrong method.

4. The chapter heading said what to do

In class, the child knows it is the fractions lesson. The homework is the fractions homework. In an exam, nothing on the paper says which chapter a question belongs to. A child who has only practised inside a named chapter has never had to work that out.

What to do this evening

Before your child writes anything, ask them to say the first step out loud. Not the answer, just the first step. If they can say it, they will usually finish the sum. If they cannot, the method was never learnt, and the next forty minutes will be wasted. Put the book away and write a note to the teacher.

Do not sit beside your child and check every line. Then you become the teacher walking past, and the moment you leave, the problem comes back. Sit in the same room, close enough to be asked, but let your child start alone.

Once a week, write out eight questions from three different chapters on one sheet, with no headings. It takes five minutes. If your child can do these, they know the work. If they can only do today's chapter, they were following, not choosing.

Send the homework to school as your child did it. A page you have corrected tells the teacher your child can do it, and the teacher moves on. A page with the real mistakes tells the teacher what to fix.

When the problem is older

If your child cannot say the first step on most nights for several weeks, the problem is not the homework conditions. Something from an earlier class is missing. Give your child the same kind of question from two classes below. If that is also slow or shaky, that is where the work needs to start, not in tonight's exercise.