Why does my child write irrelevant answers in economics essays and how to fix it?
I (George Chantry) voice dictated every one of these articles to give my honest, transparent view on economics A-Level tutoring to answer parent questions, having worked in the tutoring industry for nine years. Please WhatsApp me if you want to discuss anything in the articles further or have any further questions.
An all too common problem is that a B student who forgets the topic name writes about something completely irrelevant and gets 0. They have good content knowledge, but poor awareness of what the questions are assessing. Too many students have a tendency to just make it up and assume they will be fine — which gets them a D overall.
What the exam is actually asking
An exam is about assessing your knowledge of a particular debate. Ask a question like "how do you improve traffic flow?" — they don't want you to just give them any idea that you've got on the topic. They want you to explain, in real detail, the specification content and theory underlying that question. You have to link that question back to the right bit of the specification, and then give a thorough, best-practice coverage of the area of the specification you've linked the question to.
I had a student at a boarding school who wrote about traffic lights as a policy intervention to fix traffic, which scored 0. On the syllabus, traffic is a negative consumption externality, so you need regulation and taxes to solve it. Otherwise you waste tons of time in the exam on irrelevant content. Students unencumbered by irrelevancy have an advantage.
How I fix it: reading their work with them
I say: can I just read it with you now? You send it to me. And then you fix, systematically, everything that is counterproductive to the student's own success in terms of exam technique. There are so many counterproductive things a student can do — in terms of structure, irrelevancy, not knowing the mark scheme, not explaining the diagram, not putting down what they know on the page. You have to have the student's work given to you. Then you take the student's work and reason with them: what you did here was good; what you did here counts against your interests; so you want more of this and less of that. Most students can adapt to that specific kind of feedback. That's a real benefit of tutoring that you can't get in a group setting. It's very difficult to deliver unless you're a subject domain expert — particularly an expert in the exam specification and the mark scheme being assessed. School teachers don't necessarily have the time for this, because they have a whole class.
With one student, I saw he was writing down loads of irrelevant material. I said to him: this is all irrelevant, there's not much point in doing it. If you continue with this, you'll end up with a bad result again and again — but you can make this minor pivot, and things will be much better for you. I told him specifically how he was going off topic. I pointed it out many, many times, and his eyes opened up. He went: oh, wow, yeah, that makes sense. And then he just stopped doing it. That's where tutoring can be invaluable — it can give very large returns in a short space of time. The parent was super happy.
The parent gave me a review, with an update on results day:
"Update on A level results day - our son jumped from a Grade D to a Grade A and has got into his first choice of university. Many thanks to George for helping his achieve his potential."
Parent, on results day
Reasoning with them in terms of costs and benefits
You have to reason with these students in terms of costs and benefits, and what they want. I explain in a lot of detail why writing irrelevant answers is a bad idea: if your answers are irrelevant, you're leaving all the marks on the table. You're going to get a worse grade, and moreover you're going to put a lot of effort in with no return. It doesn't make sense to write something irrelevant — you want to put all your effort and time into something that is relevant.
Even the most disgruntled and despondent students in a school setting respond really well to this, because they really are fundamentally invested in trying to get a good result. They don't want to invest a load of effort with no return. No one wants to do that. It's clear guidance with a clear rationale: you are laying down some rules or guidelines, but you explain why those rules and guidelines are important and necessary, and why they're in the student's best interests.
Showing them the official mark scheme
You want to get the student's work for a given question, get the mark scheme, and have the two side by side. You tell the student very clearly what they're currently doing, then compare that to the mark scheme. Ideally, show them the mark scheme itself — show them where the points are awarded. It's much more credible and serious if a student can see it on the actual official mark scheme, like Edexcel or AQA. If they can see that the mark scheme they want to hit says they have to do these things, they're more likely to take it seriously and say: okay, this is a rule I'm actually going to follow.
I did this with another student, who was not trying to implement any of the exam techniques. I went back, showed him what he was doing compared to the mark scheme, showed him why what he was doing wasn't going to work, and then gave him a better version. I said: let's make this tiny tweak, and you'll get the marks. I showed him in detail how it works — how you get the marks — and then got him to practise. I said: can you do it now? And invariably he could, for me, on the spot.
Even the most disgruntled and despondent students in a school setting respond very well to this kind of feedback, because no one really gives them that level of attention and detail in terms of what they need to do to improve. People tend to take it on board, because it's very rare that you get that kind of one-to-one attention on your own work.
Telling them what they did right
It's also good to take their specific work, compare it to what the mark scheme says, and say: look, you're doing a great job here. You want to be very specific about where they're doing a good job, because if they're just getting critical feedback all the time, that can be disheartening. It's important to tell students: this is what you're doing that's really good. To do this seriously, you have to actually read what the student has written and be specific — this specific thing you did here was really good. Then you say: I'd like you to do this in every single essay you ever write. Whenever the student spontaneously manages to align with the mark scheme, you point it out and say: well done, that was excellent.
How fast this moves
When a student scores a U in A-Level economics due to not being able to map the question to the right topic, a relatively small tutoring investment can turn that U into a B immediately. It can happen within two to three hours of focused tutoring on helping the student map the question to the right topic. I took a student from a C to an A* in two lessons, focusing entirely on helping them map the question to the right topic. Applying knowledge to the exam is just one of many things I diagnose in lessons, but it gets students massive mark gains quickly — because loads of students are clueless at it, yet good in other departments.
"George is an outstanding tutor with exceptional knowledge of Economics and has a unique tutoring method that is so impactful. Only after a few lessons my son has managed to grasp the key topics and approach the Essay type questions with huge confidence. He had previously struggled for months trying to achieve his best results despite working relentlessly. I wish I had known George a lot sooner as he has unlocked my son's confidence and potential in very short period of time. Thank you."
Satbir, parent
Where I learned this
This is not taught in schools or universities, but it was a key part of how I got three prizes at Oxford. I always started every exam answer with "this problem is a subgame perfect equilibrium problem", and so on. If students make the first sentence of their essay about categorising the problem to the right topic, they instil confidence in the reader's mind that they know what they are doing.
Have a question about your child’s A-Level Economics? Message me — I reply to every one personally.
WhatsApp George — free initial call