There is something slightly strange that happens when a child improves.
We are pleased.
Then, almost immediately, we notice the next thing that is missing.
A student who was failing Mathematics gets 62. Wonderful. Now we begin talking about 70.
They reach 70. Good. It could have been 75 without the careless mistakes.
They get 78. Very good. But next year will be harder.
A child who could not write a coherent paragraph finally writes one. We are delighted. Then we notice the vocabulary. The vocabulary improves, and now the argument needs more sophistication.
This is partly what education is supposed to do. A growing child should meet a growing standard.
Still, I sometimes wonder whether we move the goalpost so quickly that the child never quite experiences the important fact that they reached the previous one.
Improvement becomes ordinary surprisingly quickly
Adults have one advantage over children: we often remember earlier versions of them.
I remember the student who could not factorise without help. A parent remembers the child who once needed someone beside them for every composition. A school teacher remembers how uncertain the class looked in January.
Then capability grows and, quite properly, becomes normal.
Nobody celebrates every time I tie my shoelaces. Things we can do reliably are supposed to stop feeling remarkable.
The problem comes when improvement becomes ordinary to the adults before it becomes visible to the learner.
From the child’s side, education can begin to feel like one continuous conversation about insufficiency.
Whatever I can do today is apparently not enough, because everyone is already discussing what I cannot do tomorrow.
That is not necessarily anybody’s intention. It can simply be what progress looks like when every achieved standard is immediately replaced by the next one.
Difficulty can remain while ability rises
I see this often in tuition.
A student begins the year weak in algebra. Every question feels difficult. We work on the foundations and, eventually, the basic manipulation becomes reliable.
Then we move into harder questions.
The student struggles again.
From their point of view, March felt difficult and August feels difficult. The emotional experience is remarkably similar.
So the child says, “I am still bad at algebra.”
But the March struggle and the August struggle may be happening at completely different boundaries.
In March, the student could not perform the basic operation. In August, that operation is secure; the difficulty is now recognising when to use it inside a more complicated problem.
The feeling is the same. The capability is not.
Difficulty can remain while ability rises.
I think children deserve to know when that is what is happening.
A harder problem can hide a better student
Imagine two photographs of the same child.
In the first, years ago, the child is struggling with a Primary Mathematics question. In the second, the child is struggling with Additional Mathematics.
If all we record in both photographs is “struggling”, then apparently nothing changed.
Of course something changed.
The problem moved, and the learner moved far enough to meet it.
Successful education does not promise a life without difficulty. Often it gives a child access to better difficulty.
The questions become richer because the student is now capable of reaching them.
So when a child is struggling, “Is this hard?” is not always the most informative question.
I sometimes prefer: “What are you struggling with now that you could not even reach before?”
That question does not romanticise struggle. Some difficulty is unproductive and needs repair.
It simply stops us from confusing the presence of difficulty with the absence of growth.
Parents naturally see the distance still to go
This is completely understandable.
Parents are responsible for helping a child prepare for what comes next. If an examination is six weeks away, the unfinished work matters. If the target is 85 and the child has 72, there are thirteen marks between where they are and where they hope to be.
That gap is real.
But perhaps the child is looking at another equally real number.
Previous mark: 58. Current mark: 72. Movement: fourteen marks.
Both views belong in the conversation.
If we speak only about the thirteen marks still missing, the fourteen already gained can disappear.
The same 72 then carries two very different meanings.
One says, “You are still thirteen marks short.”
The other says, “You have already moved fourteen marks, and now we can look at the next thirteen.”
The second is not lower standards. It is simply a more complete account of the journey.
This is not a case for empty praise
I am not suggesting that adults should respond to every imperfect piece of work with enthusiastic praise.
Children are perceptive. They notice when encouragement has become detached from reality.
If the work is weak, calling it wonderful does not make it strong. The next examination may disagree rather loudly.
What interests me is not praise so much as evidence.
“You used to need me to start these questions. Today you started all three yourself.”
“Last month this took twelve minutes. Today it took eight.”
“You still made an error, but this time you found it without being told where to look.”
“Your last composition did not have a clear position. This one does.”
Those statements are encouraging because they are specific and true.
They also tell the learner something useful about what is changing.
Progress needs a before and an after
“You are improving” is kind, but it can be vague.
Improving where? Compared with what? What became easier? What can the child now do with less help?
A before-and-after comparison gives progress somewhere to stand.
Before, five prompts. Now, one.
Before, familiar questions only. Now, a changed form is manageable.
Before, the method was known but the paper was never finished. Now, there are ten minutes left to check.
Before, the first wrong route ended the attempt. Now, the student can back out and try another.
These are not trophies. They are coordinates.
They tell the child, the parent and the teacher that we are not starting from zero again.
We are standing somewhere new.
A snapshot can hide the direction of travel
Education gives us many snapshots.
A report-book grade is a snapshot. An examination mark is a snapshot. One evening of homework is a snapshot. A tutor sees ninety minutes. A parent sees home. A school teacher sees the classroom.
Each view is real, but learning happens through time.
A student at 60 and moving steadily upward is not in exactly the same situation as a student at 60 and moving downward, even though today’s number is identical.
Likewise, three children who are all “below target” may require three very different conversations.
One may have moved from 40 to 58. Another may have sat at 68 for three months. Another may have fallen from 78 to 69.
The first needs us to protect what is producing movement while continuing the climb. The second may need us to find what is blocking progress. The third may need us to ask what changed.
Current performance matters. Direction matters too.
After a test, perhaps ask two questions instead of one
Suppose a child brings back 71.
Rather than moving immediately to “Why not 80?”, I like two questions:
What moved?
What still blocks the next move?
Both matter.
The first helps us avoid destroying something that is already working. If a new revision method genuinely improved recall, keep it. If slower working reduced avoidable mistakes, keep it. If the child has begun checking independently, protect that habit.
Then look at what remains.
Adults sometimes respond to an imperfect result by changing everything at once: new timetable, new worksheets, new strategy, perhaps even a new tutor.
Sometimes change is necessary. But if part of the current approach is demonstrably working, replacing everything can throw away the working part together with the broken part.
Acknowledging progress is therefore not merely about morale. It can improve the next decision.
The learner needs to see that effort sometimes works
There is another reason to leave markers behind.
A child has to decide whether continued effort is worth it.
Adults know that improvement can take months. Children have to live through those months one ordinary day at a time.
If every week contains effort but no visible evidence of movement, eventually “This isn’t working” becomes a reasonable conclusion.
Sometimes the child is right, and we should change the approach.
But sometimes the approach is working and nobody has shown the child the evidence because everyone is already focused on the next gap.
That would be a strange reason to abandon something useful.
Encouragement, at its best, may simply be accurate information about movement.
High standards and visible progress can live together
None of this requires lowering the target.
A climber can know they have reached 2,000 metres without pretending the summit is at 2,000 metres.
Knowing the coordinate does not move the mountain. It simply improves navigation.
How far remains? Is the current route working? Do we have the energy to continue in the same way? Does something need to change?
Progress information can serve the same purpose in education.
It is not permission to stop. It is information about where we are.
And it should remain truthful. If the evidence does not show improvement, we should not invent it to make a child feel better. If a capability looked better for one afternoon and disappeared the next day, perhaps it was not stable yet.
But when movement is real, I do not think we should erase it merely because another difficulty remains.
Move the goalpost, but leave a marker behind
Education has to move the goalpost.
Primary 4 cannot remain the target forever. Neither can PSLE, Secondary 1, or the first good composition. A growing learner should eventually meet harder work.
I am not trying to freeze the goalpost.
I only think we should leave a small marker where the old one stood.
You were here.
Now you are here.
The next target is over there.
Without those markers, a child can walk for years and feel stationary because the horizon keeps moving.
With them, difficulty begins to mean something different.
The work can still be hard. The standard can still be high. The next weakness can still need attention.
But the child also has something real to carry into the next attempt:
I have moved before.
Sometimes that is not praise at all.
It is simply the truth, remembered in time.
