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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

How to support an underachieving child

Boy studying
There are lots of ways to help an underachieving child. Find expert advice and tips on how to encourage them to develop in their weak areas here.

When it comes to supporting an underachieving child, what you can do as a parent initially is rule out any physical or neurological causes for underachievement. Start with a full medical examination, including both eye and ear tests. If no physical problems are found, it’s then helpful to look for emotional, environmental, and family issues that may be causing or supporting underachievement by distracting the child from learning.

Once you’ve covered that, try the following tactics to support their development.

Unique learning styles

We don’t all learn in the same way. Some children will be comfortable researching information using books, others may find the interactive nature of the internet, videos, CDs or even interviewing someone suits them better.

It’s important that a child be given an opportunity to discover their learning style by exploring a variety or combination of ways to successfully accomplish a homework task or school project.

Personal interests

Can these be used to anchor a child’s interest in learning? We all have an interest that can hold our fascination. When this desire is stimulated – whether it’s steam engines or street dancing – we eagerly invest time and money to develop that interest.

Unfortunately, academia doesn’t always easily accommodate our interests but we can often find a way to harness that enthusiasm – for example, reluctance to read may be tackled by encouraging a child keen on football to read their favourite club’s season report.

Change the label

Finally, a child who is underachieving may simply have talents and abilities in areas outside traditional academics. They may excel as artists, sail boat builders, hair stylists, or mechanics.

The greatest gift we can give these different learners is permission to be themselves, and encouragement to follow their passions. It is important to replace the label of ‘underachiever' with ‘differently achieving’.

Remember that Albert Einstein was labelled as an ‘underachiever’ as a youth. His alternative vision of the world is one that has earned him an indelible place in history. Should we have any less faith in our own kids?