Psychologist Abraham Maslow says children can feel shame, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, and peer group rejection when they are seen as underachievers. They develop feelings of inadequacy, and parent evenings and school reports are reminders of not being ‘good enough’.
For the student with a learning disability or different learning style, such feelings may be particularly acute. It may leave the child dreading going to school and developing physical illnesses in order to stay home.
According to the theories of Maslow, children need to feel a sense of safety and security as well as a feeling of love and belongingness to meet their ‘hierarchy of needs’. If the child does not feel safe in school or loved at home, these can contribute to underachievement.
Whenever the topic of underachievement is raised it is usually associated with particular groups. African Caribbean boys are often at the top with research showing that only 44 per cent achieving a GCSE grade A* to C.
GCSE results have shown that white working class boys, usually identified by those on free school meals, also feature at the lowest end of the attainment scale with just 24 per cent achieving a grade A* to C. African Caribbean boys on free school meals do slightly better at 27 per cent. If we include GCSEs in English and Maths the figures are starker at 14 and 15 per cent respectively.
A disproportionately high percentage of looked after children also have poor experiences of education and their educational outcomes remain significantly lower than for all children. Research shows that 42 per cent of young Londoners leaving care at age 16 or over in 2004 had one or more GCSEs or GNVQs, as against 49 per cent nationally and 95 per cent in the general population. Only one per cent of looked after children progress to higher education, against 37 per cent of young people nationally.
And it is not unsurprising to find that pupils who have moved around and changed schools a lot are also more likely to have significantly higher educational needs than their counterparts. These children are more likely to be socially and economically deprived and more vulnerable to underachievement.
The truth is that underachievement is far more complex than simply looking at a set of statistics based on ethnicity, or gender or class. For example, girls have statistically done better than boys and the gender gap between them widens Key Stage by Key Stage. The difference between affluent and poorer areas, which statistically do worse, must also be taken into account. So a boy receiving free school meals and living in a deprived area is more likely to be affected by these disadvantages.
Professor Marilyn Fitzgerald, writing in The Guardian a couple of years ago, pointed out that in purely numerical terms, white boys will be most affected, but the link between boys’ underachievement and ethnicity means that the impact on boys from ethnic minority communities, which are most likely to be deprived, will be greater.
She reminds us that there is ‘far more overlap between different groups than the crude images shown by graphs might suggest’. Some poor boys will do far better than some affluent boys, and a lot of girls perform much worse than a lot of boys. Besides, the figures lump people together as white or black or Asian when there are distinct differences within these groups. Bangladeshis statistically do worse than Indians, Irish boys do better than whites from other backgrounds, and those from white Gypsy Roma backgrounds do worse of any group.
And what of the affluent living in deprived areas, or children from ethnic minority backgrounds living in affluent areas?
Gifted children can underachieve, too, and this proves that school marks are determined by a number of factors, intelligence being only one. Arguably the most frequently unidentified gifted and talented student is both gifted and has learning difficulties.
Personal issues, such as domestic violence or family breakdown, can also contribute to children failing to achieve as they should. Research shows that pre-school children exposed to domestic violence can suffer developmental delays impacting on hearing, speech and language. Exposure to domestic violence has been linked to lower educational attainment, long-term psychological problems, and use of violence in adolescence.
Steve Sinnott, the late general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), once said that socio-economic status, peer pressure, street culture, institutionalised racism, low teacher expectation and an inappropriate curriculum, all play a part in underacheivement. Although at the time referring to the NUT’s charter on raising the acheivement of Caribbean boys, his comments remain true of underachievement in general.
Teaching staff, pupils and parents are all part of the school community each with a role to play in raising achievement, he said. And this must be done ‘in a spirit of partnership, not blame’.
Click here to read our article on how you can support your underachieving child.
