Tutor, or exam technique?

Two different problems

Two things can put a mark below what your child knows. One is a gap in the work: a topic that never landed. The other is what happens to the knowledge on the way onto the page, in 3 timed hours. A tutor fixes the first. Only a change in method fixes the second.

Exam Diagnostics ZA is a South African service that marks a full Grade 10–12 mock exam paper mark by mark and reports every lost mark, with a strategy report and a video walkthrough, within 24 hours. The report exists to answer exactly this question, before a term of Saturday mornings goes into the wrong one.

Both problems produce the same symptom — a mark lower than the work deserves — and both are usually met with the same offer, because more teaching is the thing most readily available. Sometimes that is the right answer. A percentage on a report card cannot tell you when.

The five reasons a report sorts marks into split across the two problems. Wrong method , misread and didn’t remember are gaps to teach. Accuracy and not written down are marks the method was already right for. Where your child’s marks sit in that table is the answer to the question in the title.

Signs it is knowledge

It is knowledge when your child cannot do the question with the pressure off. Sit down with a past paper, no clock, notes closed, and work through the questions that lost marks. Where the answer still does not come, a tutor has something to teach, and the hours will move the mark.

• The same topic is wrong in every test, term after term.
• Your child cannot start the question, rather than starting it and going wrong.
• With the clock off and the notes closed, the answer still does not come.
• Formulae and definitions are missing rather than misapplied.
• A page of working arrives at an answer that could never have been reached that way.
• Your child cannot explain the question to you afterwards, even with the memorandum open.

Those marks do not come back from a checking routine. Somebody has to teach the topic, and then your child has to use it until it is automatic. That is weeks rather than an afternoon, and it is money well spent when it is the problem you actually have.

Signs it is technique

It is technique when the work is there and the paper does not show it. The answer arrives with no working under it. The arithmetic slips in line two. The last question is blank because the clock ran out. Your child explains the question to you an hour after the exam without difficulty.

• The paper stops before the end, with questions never attempted.
• Answers appear without the working that carries the method marks.
• The first line is right, the third is wrong, and everything after it follows the slip.
• Homework marks and exam marks do not agree with each other.
• Your child recognises the mistake the moment you point at it.
• The same kind of loss shows up in three different topics.

Marks lost this way are the ones a report counts as recoverable, because nothing new has to be learned before they can be collected. The change is to how the paper is written: the working on the page, a checking pass over the first three lines of every long question, and a rule about when to leave one and come back.

Misreads sit awkwardly between the two. The method was never wrong, but the question your child answered was not the one on the paper, so a report treats it as something to teach rather than something to recover. Misreads and slips: marks lost early covers what to do about those.

What each one costs

Tutoring is typically R100–R200 an hour, bought by the week and open-ended. A marked diagnostic paper is R299, once, and it tells you which of the two problems you are looking at. The cheaper answer comes first, because it decides whether the expensive one is needed.

Neither number is the real cost. The real cost is a term spent on the problem you did not have. A diagnostic carries its own check against that: if a paper turns up fewer than 10 recoverable marks, it is refunded, because there was nothing worth handing back.

How to tell in one afternoon

You can separate the two yourself in an afternoon, with a past paper and a marking guideline. Write it under time, mark it, then take every lost mark and ask one question: could my child do this with the clock off? The answers sort themselves into two piles.

1. Write a full paper under time One sitting, 3 hours, closed book, phone out of the room. A past paper for the right grade and curriculum will do.
2. Mark it the same day Go through it against the marking guideline with your child at the table, while what happened where is still fresh.
3. Ask one question at every lost mark Could my child do this with the clock off and the pressure gone? A “yes” goes in one pile, a “no” goes in the other.
4. Count the two piles A heavy “yes” pile is a technique problem, and it comes back quickly. A heavy “no” pile is a knowledge problem, and that is what a tutor is for.

Two rules make the afternoon worth having. Write the paper under time, or the result describes a different exam — running a timed exam at home sets out how. And sort every lost mark, not only the ones that annoy you.

If you would rather have it done question by question, with the recoverable marks counted and the concepts behind them listed, that is what the sample report shows, and it arrives within 24 hours.

When we recommend a tutor

When the lost marks sit in wrong method, misreads and definitions that would not come, the gap is knowledge and a tutor is the right spend. Our own answer to this question is one line: “If the gaps are knowledge rather than exam technique, we recommend tutors who work from the report.”

A report makes that first conversation short. The tutor does not spend three sessions finding the gaps, because the gaps are already listed by question with the concept behind each one. Ask for the report to be read before the first lesson.

Diagnose a paperFrom R299. Report in 24 hours.