GuelphToday received the following letter to the editor from readers Toby Warnick and Olivia Oldrieve how holding students back a grade after they failed can affect their well-being.
There have been many discussions on whether elementary or middle school students in Ontario should or shouldn’t be held back a grade if they fail. However, none of those discussions included how it would affect a child from their point of view. Now we (two seventh graders) are going to be sharing with you how we see it and how we think holding a student back a grade would affect them.
There are many reasons why some people might think that being held back a grade would be beneficial to students who are struggling academically. However, being held in a grade has lots of negative impacts on students' mental health, physical well-being, and lives in general.
There are multiple other ways for a student to catch up to the expectations of their grade. For example, tutoring is a great option for students to have one-on-one help with the subjects they are struggling with the most. It is proven that over 80 per cent of students greatly improve because of tutoring. Since tutoring does cost money and is not always accessible for families, summer school is a free alternative that also shows massive improvement for students.
Studies show that friendship creates a sense of belonging, improving mental health and physical well-being and creating a better focus on school. Students being held back a year, therefore not being in the same class as their friends and losing that sense of belonging would make the school even more difficult for that child and their mental health.
Legally parents or guardians have to give consent for their child to be held back a grade in school which would most likely make the child upset and angry with their parents causing fighting and arguing at home, which would make their home life as well as their school life more difficult. If that child already has a difficult home life, their parents most likely would be upset to hear that their child should be held back a grade which would again make their home life even more difficult, which would be the last thing the child would need.
Repeating a grade for children in the past has done little to address the students' individual learning challenges. For example, if a child were to be held back a grade because they have trouble reading and writing and that child is diagnosed with dyslexia, the school might not be able to properly assist their needs, so they might think that choosing for the child to repeat the grade would be the best option for them. However, repeating a grade would do little to address their learning challenges and therefore isn’t helpful for the student. If the child's individual learning needs were addressed appropriately by the school, their parents or by professionals, that would increase the child's ongoing success significantly more than repeating a grade.
Lastly, repeating a grade has short and long-term effects on students. Students who have been held back a grade are proven to face more bullying, have lower self-esteem, and have anxiety and behavioural problems. It’s also shown that repeating a grade can cause depression and school dropout. Given that over one million Canadian children have been diagnosed with mental illnesses such as depression, personality disorder, anxiety, etc., we should not be contributing to anything that is proven to increase those numbers.
We hope you can now see why holding a student back a grade has a negative impact on their life and is not something that any child should have to endure.
Toby Warnick and Olivia Oldrieve
Guelph
