Luckily, there are many options for tutoring support.

The tricky part is choosing between the options available; it can be tricky to know what kind of tutoring is best. Should your child work with a teacher face-to-face, or is online tutoring just as effective (or maybe even better)?

Let’s look at how both formats work, their pros and cons, and how you can decide what’s right for your child.

Why tutoring is a good choice

Every child learns differently. Some kids just need a confidence boost, while others might struggle to keep up with a fast-moving curriculum. 

In our experience, we’ve found that tutoring can help in both cases by:

• Providing your child with more attention in smaller groups
• Filling learning gaps (that you either did know existed or didn’t)
• Helping students build better study habits

A good teacher doesn’t just re-teach schoolwork; they help students understand how they learn best. 

That might mean developing problem-solving strategies in maths, improving reading comprehension, or simply creating a calmer, one-on-one environment where your child feels comfortable asking questions they might hesitate to raise in class.

Whether in-person or online, the right teacher can make learning enjoyable again and help your child rediscover their confidence.

How in-person tutoring works

In-person tutoring is often considered the traditional approach; your child meets with a teacher face-to-face, whether at home, a tutoring centre, or even in a local library. 

This setup can be especially helpful for younger children or students who benefit from hands-on guidance. Equally, sometimes creating a physical barrier between home and tutoring can prove useful. 

What are the benefits of in-person tutoring?

• Personal connections: Meeting face-to-face with a teacher can help build trust and rapport quickly.
• Fewer distractions: A structured environment can make it easier to focus.
• Body language and cues: Teachers can pick up on non-verbal signals, like confusion or frustration, and adjust their approach on the spot. Our teachers are very adept at this.

However, in-person sessions can also come with logistical challenges. Travel time, scheduling, and teacher availability in your local area can limit your options. 

For busy families or those living in rural areas, that can make consistency difficult.

How online tutoring works

Online tutoring has become increasingly popular, especially after the rise of virtual learning, which became essential during COVID-19. 

Sessions take place through video calls, interactive whiteboards, or specialised learning platforms that let students and teachers share screens, solve problems, and work through lessons together.

What are the benefits of online tutoring?

At Excel in Key Subjects, we ensure that young people derive maximum benefit from online learning. Here’s how we do it:

• Flexibility: You can fit lessons around your family’s schedule, no travel required.
• Access to more teachers: You’re not limited by geography, so you can find a teacher who truly matches your child’s needs and personality.
• Technology-enhanced learning: Digital tools like shared documents, quizzes, and recordings can make revision easier and more interactive.
• Recording lessons – for use to revisit the topic or revision: We record many of our online lessons, and provide access to students in a secured area for a period of time.
• We insist that both the teacher and the student have their videos on during the lesson. This is communicated to parents well in advance, and we see this as enhancing safeguarding.
• We insist that most work is in handwriting, rather than typing: We do this in preparation for examinations.

Of course, online tutoring isn’t for every family. For instance, your child might find it harder to focus through a screen, and technical issues (like slow Wi-Fi or device problems) can occasionally interrupt a session. 

Younger children, especially, may need extra support from parents to stay engaged online.

Online vs in-person: An overview

Here’s a quick comparison to help you weigh the pros and cons:

Both formats can be equally effective, it really depends on your child’s learning style, motivation, and your family’s lifestyle.

Deciding what’s right for your child

When choosing between online and in-person tutoring, it’s useful to think about your child’s personality and needs first.

• Younger children often benefit from the structure and hands-on support of in-person lessons.
• Older students, especially those comfortable with technology, may thrive in an online environment where they can take more responsibility for their learning.
• Consider your schedule too. If you’re juggling after-school activities and work commitments, the convenience of online sessions can be a huge help.

It can also be worth trying both. Many tutoring companies (including ours) offer flexible options, allowing families to switch between online and in-person sessions as needed. Sometimes, a blended approach, a mix of both, works best.

At the end of the day, the most important factor isn’t where the tutoring happens, but who your child learns from. A skilled, caring teacher who understands your child’s goals, strengths, and challenges will make all the difference, whether they’re sitting across the table or connecting through a screen.

The post Online vs in-person tutoring: Which is right for your child? appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

I remember a lot of things about being in primary school but one of my fondest memories from the time is the smell of fresh books. I remember the excitement I would get when we’d have to change textbooks once we moved to a higher level and the sheer joy I’d feel when I saw and touched the books. This continued for years and it was one of the most exciting things about advancing from class to class, but maybe I was just a nerd.

Education has evolved since then. Instead of hard-copy books we can touch and smell, many schools now teach pupils and students with e-books using e-lessons on computers and tablets. No doubt, this has made things quicker and more convenient for many teenagers, especially during the pandemic period. It would have been terrible if education had to be put on hold until everyone could attend physical classrooms to hold physical books because there was no other way to learn. Also, from the standpoint of conservatism, it’s more environmentally-friendly, as the less paper is needed for books, the fewer trees will have to be felled to create books.

Clearly, screens have their purpose and sometimes they make learning easier but an abundance of research today shows that just as digital learning has its pros, compared to the traditional method of learning with books, there are just as many cons. For example, when reading on a phone, tablet or computer screen, students have the ability to scroll through information very quickly, word-spot and skim. This helps them to get to the point of the text faster but it also encourages glossing over important pieces of information and this could create gaps in the learning process. It’s not as easy to scroll past important information when you’re reading a printed book. Skimming is still possible but not at the same rate. The truth is that today’s generation of children and teenagers have become experts at scrolling and skimming, not because scrolling takes literally zero effort but because it has become such a routine activity. They scroll when on social media and since they spend a considerable amount of time doing this, it’s practically second-nature to them.

Reduced attention span is also a major factor. Many teenagers have very short attention span and most online content is now geared towards feeding that frenzied consumption of data. Whether it’s the ability to fast-forward video clips or skip ads or simply scroll past information deemed to be irrelevant or boring, teenagers are being taught to be less-focused on the content and more focused on the speed at which they can consume the content so they can move on to the next thing as quickly as possible. This doesn’t help because in most cases, it affects comprehension.

Furthermore, there’s the element of distraction. When reading on a phone or tablet, because there are many other functions of such devices, one could easily get distracted by notifications which may pop-up on the screen. For a teenager already struggling to comprehend a certain text, such a notification will easily steal their attention away from that difficult or boring page and onto something else they may find interesting.

Despite this, it has been argued, that students that use interactive touch screens are more engaged with learning and that this technology improves education. If anything, this proves that the answer to the question of which medium is better for learning is not as clear-cut as we’d like it to be. This means that we cannot simply conclude that print books are better for learning than screens. For certain sets of students, learning with screens that are colourful, stimulating and interesting is more beneficial to them than plain white or brown sheets of papers which they will find boring and hard to concentrate on, let alone learn anything from. Dyslexic children and teenagers usually fall into this category of learners.

At the same time, we cannot cut out all forms of digital learning entirely, it may just be a matter of learning how to read/study with a screen without getting distracted. It may be inevitable especially if their school mandates it. It takes discipline which is a very useful trait for any teenager to have, to succeed in this highly digitalised world.

Here are a few easy steps that can help your teenager overcome the danger of distraction when reading from a screen:

• Don’t Multitask: It’s tempting for a student to think he/she can read a book and browse at the same time. That’s not a good idea. Having multiple tabs open at once that you can easily switch between makes it hard to concentrate while reading.

• Turn off the Internet Connection: For many teenagers, this is a must-do because as long as they have access to the internet while studying, they are never going to concentrate. The temptation to either check social media or browse using the internet browser will be too strong. But if there is no internet connection, there’s no chance of them getting distracted that way. Even if they don’t intend to browse, internet connection = pop-up notifications and this in itself is already distracting enough. Unless of course, they need the internet connection to study or take online lessons. In that case, they will need to be disciplined enough to focus only on the lesson and nothing else. Turning off these notifications is also a good idea.

• Eliminate Stress, Fatigue and Hunger: Even while reading print materials or hard-copy books, these factors could still distract any student, how much more when they have to focus on reading from a screen. Your teenager should ensure they are not sleep-deprived, stressed, tired or hungry while attempting to study digitally, as these things decrease their chances of assimilating the content they read.

• Take Notes: Writing/jotting things down as you read is one of the best ways to make sure you are actively engaging with the material. Reading can easily become passive, but when a student takes on the additional task of jotting down or summarising the chapter being read, this forces the brain to understand what is being read and studying becomes a less passive activity.

• You can always print anything that needs deeper reading: Aside from all that has already been said about screen learning,prolonged reading on screens may have long-term effects on a person’s vision. So, it is advised that if your teenager has to read long texts or texts that require more than one reading, as most texts do, it is better to print it out and avoid the negative effects of protracted screentime. If your teenager doesn’t get very far while reading/studying on-screen for whatever reason, this will definitely solve that problem.

In conclusion, the reality of the education system today is that screens and digital text are here to stay. As the world becomes more technologically advanced, this isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Still, it is best that children have a solid foundation using the traditional method of learning from books. Then as they grow and develop and become more mature, they can graduate to learning with screens. Research after research has shown that reading from books enables students to read slower and comprehend better. In the end, what is most important is that they are able to strike a balance which helps them to effectively comprehend through either method.

The post From Distraction to Distinction: Pros and Cons of Digital Learning for Teenagers appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

The post The Productivity Revolution: How to Study Smart for GCSE and A-level appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

I’m using the word “tribe” here as I struggle to come up with a better word, despite the risk of this word being open to all sorts of interpretations.

In my three or so decades as a teacher in the English secondary education system, for half of which my role also includes being a parent, I’ve never met a single parent who does not care about their child. Every parent cares about their child, it just we do things in different ways to show how much we care. This is a week in which, globally, so many children have been and are still being killed senselessly. No killing is good but killing of children in particular is difficult to justify under any circumstances.  I’ll leave politics to those who are good at it, as I am not one of those. One thing we must do, however, in this part of the world, is not to take for granted  how fortunate we are to live in a relatively safer part of the planet.

Back to the word tribe, I am using this word to describe those of us, who as parents, place great value on the education of our children, as if it is everything.  It isn’t, of course, but it comes close. After health and food, education comes a close third, and I’m not just speaking about academic qualifications alone. In my categorisation, I put safety and shelter under health.  I will shed more light on certain news items with regard  to education in the next part of this blogpost, and, hopefully, that will help you, as a reader, to try and see how I define this tribe of parents.

As is always the case, there has been so much in the news about education recently. Despite the fact that the adverse effect and legacies of things like COVID and the teachers’ strike linger on, they are not so pronounced at present.

The main items of education news in the media at present are about RAAC, post-sixteen qualifications and school attendance. RAAC affects a tiny number of students and school attendance is not much of an issue for this tribe. This is because they are the type who will make sure their children do not miss school unnecessarily; unless they are in intensive care or something close (an exaggeration!) or unavoidable. The post-sixteen issue is something the tribe keeps a close eye on, and whilst good leadership and direction by politicians are helpful, they’re not absolute, these parents will do their own research and choose the option they consider best for their offspring.

I must say there is not necessarily an ethnic connection to this tribe, as I see people from a diverse ethnic groups subscribing to the values that I am speaking about. The people I put loosely in this so-called tribe are represented disproportionally by those of certain ethnic minorities. In my observation, it is in the order of, first,  East Asians – mainly Chinese people, but others as well, followed by South Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans, Scottish, Irish and English; however, this is a generalisation and not completely accurate.  This should not be too surprising, as non-native (another colloquial phrase!) or foreigners, tend to be over ambitious in any country in the world you go.

Some of the issues that I think are more immediate to people in this tribe, in terms of motivating their teenagers, is getting them to do what I list below.

1. Put sufficient number of hours into their schoolwork – including homework assignments and revision for exams
2. Be better organised
3. Spending less time on their electronic devices – mobile phone; game machines like X-Box, etc.
4. Better sleep – like going to bed earlier…
5. Learning for the joy gaining knowledge, and not just for passing exams
6. Wanting to work, mainly for the purpose of buying more gadgets!
7. Eating healthier

I must stress that I am not speaking here as an expert, as I am not; and I do not have the solution. In my own household, it is an ongoing thing, as we struggle as parents with these matters. We just try to do our best all the time.

I must say that there are other serious matters that are perhaps more important than what I’ve listed above. Things like mental health and other health issues, abuse of drugs or of others or by others and so on. These areas are where I have zero expertise, so I must not try to address them, as this is better left to other people.

Before I conclude this, I’ll quickly mention one main issue which is beyond the control of the teenagers, and, in fact, well beyond the control of we parents. It is that thing which society has not yet decided to address. But, if dealt with, it will not only save money and time, but will make learning and teaching more fun.

I am speaking about the issue of class disruption. The set of behaviours that are acceptable in the classroom vary from school to school. However, in my view the barrier is set pitifully too low. I recently went to cover a sixty-minute lesson at a grammar school, but my reputation in teaching as a disciplinarian teacher did not prepare me for what I experienced in that lesson.

I was utterly appalled and shocked about the behaviour of the teenagers. If this is happening in a grammar school, God, help us. Of course, it is the teacher’s fault that children are badly behaved, as he or she is lacking in classroom behaviour management skills! At least, this is what the people in the profession often say. We like to blame the government on not spending enough and tinkering around the edges on certain issues. Yes, there is some truth in that but until we recognise the adverse effect of classroom disruption, and its impact on better behaved young people, and we are prepared to deal with it, it will only get worse and ruin more lives. This is too big an issue to address here, but I will be doing so in the future.

In the next few blogpost in this series, I will make an  attempt to address each of the seven or so points that I’ve listed above. This is because these are things that we as parents have a chance of perhaps trying to do something about. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not at all an expert and I have no solution to offer as such, I’d just like to highlight and perhaps share some experiences and ideas.

Please do make a comment, as we are trying to share ideas because every parent has something to say about the points I’ve listed above.

The post The Intentional Parent: How to Advocate for Your Child’s Education appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

Following up from my last blogpost…. The notion of fingers not being equal should not be interpreted as some people being inherently better than others as human beings, as that is not only dangerous but untrue. Yes, some of us can do certain things much better than others; each individual has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. The eagle is happier soaring high in the sky whilst looking for its prey. If you want to sit in your lovely garden, around your big pond, and take great pleasure in feeding eagles and watching them waddling about and quacking – like a neighbour of mine used to do with his ducks when I was a child, you will be very frustrated. On the other hand, if you want to get your duck to fly and soar high in the sky so you can watch it in its magnificence like the eagle, you will be extremely disappointed. All the duck wants to do is to quack and waddle, and, in fact, if you push the duck too hard, it may poo on your head!

I do not know if one could apply the analogy of eagle and duck to university students. My recent experience of interviewing and working with young people from Imperial College reminds me of the pleasure I get when I teach Physics to bright seventeen and eighteen year olds, most of whom are much brighter than me. I will restrict myself and not go too much into this, as I may end up overindulging myself. Before I conclude, though, I’d like to explain the second point I made above: nurture and nature, as this leads nicely into it.

Nurture vs Nature

I specifically targeted Imperial College students when I advertised for scholars to do some tutoring over the summer. Not because these are the only bright university students around, as I could have widened the net and targeted students at other institutions. There are young people at less reputable universities who are brighter than many students at Imperial College, but I’m not going to go deeper into this.

What I discovered in my several interactions with Imperial College students is the amount of work they have to do to keep up with their degree course. Despite the fact that I studied a similar degree course to many of these your people, I was wrong in my assumption that although getting to Imperial is hard, but your life become a little easier once you become an undergraduate there.

Almost all the Imperial scholars I spoke to told me that it is harder work to keep up with the rigour and demand at the university than when they were studying for A-levels. I can see that all these young people are bright, of course, as they’ve got at least two A*s at A-level, with a handful of them having gained five A-level grades that include four A*s and one A. Despite this rather impressive academic achievement, the interaction that I had with them, and my experience of teaching A-level Physics to high achieving teenagers since the early 1990s,  tells me that nurture has a greater role to play in achieving academic excellence than nature. Yes, in most cases, bright students get top grades, and there is nothing necessarily too extraordinary about that. At the same time, I’ve seen young people of just above average academic ability getting the very top grades at GCSE and A-level. Sadly, I’ve also seen very bright teenagers drifting about, doing very little study and ending up with low exam grades, and in some cases failing their exams.

I’d just like to clarify one key point, which is that the norm for Excel in terms of the teachers we’ve been working with in the last 19 years is professional teachers. Those who are either teaching full time in secondary schools and working for us part time on weekends or those who are semi-retired, with a vast knowledge and experience in teaching. At the same time, I’ve employed a handful of undergraduates and graduates who are not professionally qualified teachers, but who are exceptional teachers and who have helped the students they taught to achieve highly.

In concluding, I think every human being has something unique to offer; and in most cases it is something that is useful to the marketplace, i.e. something that other people value highly and are  willing to invest heavily in. That thing that each of us has can be brought out in all sorts of ways. For young people, it can be by the parent’s guidance and direction, the inspiration of a good teacher or by the child themselves being very determined and focused.  Last month, my niece got 12 Grade 9s in her GCSE and she is not even aware of how exceptional this achievement is. She is not aware that, in 2022, only 13 students obtained 12 or more Grade 9s at GCSE in the whole country.

In concluding, one has to commend the young people who are doing well and shining in any field of endeavour, be it academic, sport, music dance, or other areas. There are so many distractions these days and those who do well do so by being better at avoiding distractions and focusing on what they need to do to achieve the results they get.

Yes, there is a lot of optimism in the air; and no, fingers are not equal, but everyone has something great to offer. It is hard work for us parents to convince our teenagers of the potential they have, and it is even harder to motivate them to do what they need to do to achieve their best. Thank you for reading this, and please don’t forget to make a comment. I value what you have to say, and you do not even have to agree with me.

The post Leveling the Playing Field: Personalized Learning Strategies for Teenagers appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

Many parents actually enjoy the relative peace and tranquillity now that the children are back at school, particularly when they are working at home.

It’s not only those who work in a school or college who will understand what I mean by optimism in the air at the beginning of a new academic year, parents do too. As a parent, I usually make the point of going with my son and daughter to school on the first day of the autumn term. I often find an excuse to drive them into school on the first day instead of getting them to take the bus!

I do not always admit to it in the staff room, but I’m one of those teachers who actually look forward to the beginning of the new academic year in September. When you see the young people at the start of Term 1, you realise that half of the Y10 students – particularly the boys – are now taller than the average male teacher, as they’ve grown over the summer. This is the result of the refrigerator constantly getting emptied and the croissant you as the parent left on the kitchen worktop disappearing in nanoseconds. But they not only grow physically, they grow psychologically and emotionally too.

The thing that I like most about the autumn term is the optimism in the air. Parents and teachers begin the process of looking into what can be done to help the young person do better than they did in the previous year.  In many cases, they are usually successful in getting the teenager to buy into the plans they have for him or her, at least at the start of the year anyway. For us parents, it is a struggle to get teenagers to adopt a routine and do their schoolwork in the way we recommend. I do not know of any perfect situation where the teenager is completely on board with what the parents think is the best way. In fact, it would be worrying to have a teenager who is completely obedient, as this is not usually a healthy position. The reality is that some teenagers are more compliant than others. They must be allowed to do some thinking of their own, disagree with us on occasions, and even to make mistakes. All these are a necessary part of the growing up process, and within reason it has to be that way.

If you would permit me to share my own experience in the last couple of months with you. In August/early September, I organised what is called summer enhancement for GCSE and A-level, and the sessions were taught by young people I call Scholars. They are university students from Imperial College in London. These sessions were free, so parents did not have to pay, but the undergraduate tutors that taught them were paid at least the going rate for tuition by professional teachers, even though they aren’t. The whole experience taught me so many things that I cannot begin to list, as they are vast. Two, however, are:

a. Fingers are not equal, and we will be deceiving ourselves to even try to pretend they are

b. Nurture plays a bigger part in success than nature.

It is vital that I explain each of these points. The first point in particular needs explaining, otherwise one may sound too elitist, out of touch and perhaps abhorrent…

I will do this in the second part of this blogpost, which will be in a couple of days. Watch this space!

The post The September Spark: How to Improve Academic Performance Through Nurture appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

For me, yesterday was one of those days when events turned out differently than I had planned. I won’t say it is a wasted day necessarily, but I had to invest my time differently from the way I had anticipated, as I decided to go to a university open day with my seventeen-year old son. I had discussed the open day with him the previous evening and he assured me that it was all fine, that he could go with his friends from school. I accepted that decision, as I do not want to be too pushy about asking if I should come with him. In the end, my last minute decision to go with him was something that he appreciated.

I suppose one of the prices we have to pay as a parent is the vulnerability to getting our plans disrupted. I’m not just talking about the teenager eating the last chocolate éclair that I was looking forward to demolishing in my late evening raid!

One of the popular phrases these days when speaking about young people is “follow your passion” and this is often applied to subject choices at GCSE, A-level and all the way to university degree courses. I must say that I agree with that phrase to some extent, but largely, when I hear it, it makes me a little nervous and I’ll explain. Before I explain my scepticism about the notion of following your passion, I must say that I do not think anyone can call themselves successful if they are doing something they hate passionately or have near interest or zero enthusiasm for. No matter how much money or fame they may have doing that thing, doing anything just for the money or just to please other people is the ultimate definition of failure, as life is so short.

Now, let me explain why I think following your passion can sometimes be dangerous and may lead to profound unhappiness later down the line. If you follow your passion and you are not successful in what you do. As for the word success, each person has their own definition of what success means for them. But earning a lot of money or being in the very top bracket of people in your field of work or whatever you do should not be the only thing that constitutes success.

In the week or two leading to the visit to the university open day we attended yesterday, my son had been wrestling with the issue of which degree course he should apply for at university. He has always been leaning on the side of studying something relating to physical sciences and that largely reflects    his subject choice of Physics, Maths and Further Maths. His fourth subject has changed twice since he started A-level last September. He started with History, changed to Economics and he’s now back to History. Three days ago, he was seriously considering going to university to study Economics and he came to me late in the evening to tell me about his decision. Now, while I personally like Economics very much and consider it to be one of the more useful of degree courses, and, depending on the young person’s talent and position and other factors, it may be a good idea to study Economics as a first degree, I am likely to discourage some students from  doing so. Let’s put professional courses such as Law, Medicine and Engineering aside for a moment. I would recommend Maths, Physics, Chemistry and History before Economics as a first degree. After studying any of these seven subjects courses I just listed here, as being above Economics, and even others that I have not mentioned here. One can still go on to do a postgraduate degree in Economics or Business or Management. Yes, even without having studied Economics or business at any level ever before. I must also quickly point out that I also would not usually recommend Law as a first degree, as I am of the view that one is better off studying something else before Law, as it is the university where one obtains the first degree that matters more than the actual degree course, for most courses anyway.

Getting back to where I started, after the open day at Imperial College yesterday, my son is now less sceptical about a Physics degree than he was before going. He was relieved to learn that most people do not go straight from a university degree to get a job in what they have studied. The conversation for the last six or so months has revolved around him not knowing what he wants to do in life, for which I constantly reassure him that it is perfectly normal at this age. The key thing is to develop your talent well and try to study something that gives you more options, especially when you do not know what you want to do. The good thing is that he has a list of about three or four professions that we all know that he is decidedly unsuited to – Medicine, Engineering, Computer Science and Accountancy. The problem is that he likes Economics, Physics and History – in that order – at the moment! The reason why that is a problems is that if you are applying to a competitive university, Physics is on one side, and Economics/History on the other. These are at two opposite ends, and writing a good personal statement that will persuade the admission officer of a good university will be tricky.

Just to conclude on the notion of following your passion, what I say to young people is that it’s good to follow your passion as you are extremely unlikely to succeed in doing something you utterly dislike. However, before you go for your passion, also try to think about   where you want to be in say 10 years’  time. Not only in terms of the job you want to be doing but where you want to be living and perhaps what money you’d like to be earning. No, money is not everything; however, it is more dignifying to earn a decent wage and have more options in life. The other point, which I believe applies to most people, is that not many are so passionate about one particular thing for a long time. For my son, his passion has fluctuated between Maths, History, Politics, Physics and Economics in the last few years. We all go through phases, and what we are passionate about today may not be what we are passionate about tomorrow or in a few years’ time.

Links to related blog posts are below :

The post The Great Debate: Choosing a University Degree: Passion vs Career Prospects appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

This quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt brought hope to the American people during the Great Depression.

Like in any endeavour that is aimed at succeeding, there is an element of fear in the minds of teenagers who are taking GCSE and A-level examinations. There are a couple of other F words such as false and failure that are just as bad as fear. 

I suppose we’ve all been there as adults, and the truth is that failure is real, but it is not so helpful to devote too much energy into being fearful. It is more productive to invest valuable resources such as energy into doing what needs to be done in order to thrive.

It is perfectly normal for there to be a tiny bit of trepidation when one is going for something big. Afterall these examinations are the first major tests in the lives of these young people and they have wider ramifications for the future.

What we can do as parents is to help reassure our teenagers at this crucial time in their lives. The reality is that some of us parents are more anxious about the whole exam thing than the teenager who is actually sitting the tests!

It is perhaps more fruitful for us not to show so much anxiety as this can make the teenager nervous, which is not good for anyone. I’m probably as guilty as some other parents on this, as I can’t help myself sometimes. Whatever we do as parents, we have a duty to help calm the nerves and, although it may be difficult, it has to be done.

The most popular acronym for the word fear is False Evidence Appearing Real, and there is a lot in those four words that sums up why young people should not be fearful, as long as they do what has to be done to prepare for their exams.

My seventeen-year old son was fearful of two things at the start of his A-level in the autumn: the volume and content of Medieval History and Mechanics in Further Maths. He finds the content dark and dry in that aspect of the History curriculum and he was not enthusiastic about learning it. He perceived Mechanics to be challenging and feared he may not do as well.

Winding the clock ahead a few months, he now finds many aspects of medieval history fascinating and the mechanics topics are some of his strongest areas in Further Maths.

A couple of months ago, he found himself with two dilemmas: changing school in the middle of the course and taking four A-level subjects while all his friends are taking three subjects. He thought I was being cruel to ask him to do 8 to 10 hours of study over the weekend.

I will sum this up with a quote by the American author and public speaker.

“F-E-A-R: has two meanings: Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.” — Zig Ziglar.

Please help me in this easy word teaser!

In the next couple or so blogposts I will be using two acronyms – CAN and SMART. I’d like to see if you can help to find a sentence that connects the three acronyms

FEAR, CAN and SMART – I’m trying come up with a sentence that is positive and motivational, using other words to connect the three words (the dictionary meaning of fear, can and smart)

All you need to know is the meaning of each of the three words, and you need not know anything about the acronym.

If you have any suggestion, please send it in an e-mail to SuccessTips@ExcelinKeySubjects.com

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I will start by just summarising or perhaps simplifying what in my humble opinion, matter most in terms of university admission and the bigger picture in the life of the soon-to-become-a-fully-grown-adult – the eighteen year old young person.

For a teenager in the UK, you need not be Einstein to get into a university. You do not even have to do A-level, as any Level 3 course will do, as there are so many universities offering so many courses, and the admission criteria can be rather lenient. However, not all degrees lead to what would be considered a graduate-standard job, as there are many graduates doing the so-called McJob! I’m speaking about flipping burgers at McDonalds or stacking shelves at Tesco. Taking a philosophical approach, and for someone who values knowledge, I think all types of university education have value – irrespective of which university or which degree. I see no reason why one should not just acquire knowledge for the sake of acquiring knowledge and for curiosity. I went to a graduation ceremony recently, and although it is from a university usually ranks very near the bottom of the UK rank table, it is nevertheless a joy to see all these proud and jubilant people, as they walk with pride and shaking the hand of the university vice chancellor. In fact, some of them were dancing as they approach the provost.

However, philosophy and ideas in themselves do not pay bills and not everyone puts ideas above pragmatism of everyday life. So many young people work extremely hard to get into a top university and this is not to mention the emotional, physical and financial sacrifice by their parents. Some may want to argue that there is no link between the university a person attends and their career prospects or live opportunities. I profoundly disagree and I have insurmountable evidence to back up my argument. There is a link to a BBC webpage below which shows the link between degrees and lifetime earnings. 

Many will say money is not everything, and I agree. One of my favourite words is “Choice” and what attending certain universities, or perhaps studying certain degrees does, is that it gives you more options. As I said earlier, every degree has a value or to be more accurate “perceived value.” Talking about perception, the question to ask is who decides which degree is worth how much? There is something called the market place, and there is no question that people with a degree from certain universities or with certain degrees, are perceived by the marketplace to be more valuable. I’m not here to ague about the merit or to go into the right and wrong of this discussion, but to merely highlight what is out there. Having knowledge and awareness on likely outcomes of the important decision of choosing university degree courses will allow the young person to make decisions when making critical choice, with wider ramifications for their future.

In conclusion, I will say that it is the university that one attends that matters more than the actual degree, with the exception of medicine. I do not completely agree that this exception applies to Computer Science or Engineering.

What I’d say to the young person is: have a goal; believe in yourself and do what it takes to get you to where you want to be. One thing I’d like to add to this is to try and have fun along the way, as the journey is also quite important. A key aspect of our purpose as parents is to help guide our children and do all we can to assist them in the decisions they make.

We parents are just a catalyst, as it will always be up the young person to do what is needed to be successful. Success is the more scientific aspect, one word that is perhaps more important than success is fulfilment, as success without fulfilment is not what we yearn for in life.

Link to BBC – Degrees and lifetime earning – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-41693230

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