The children at the center have exams going on. It was super frustrating that the children would sit with us just a day before their exams were starting.  Initially I tried to explain the concepts behind their ‘Science’ lessons so they can better perform in their exams but quite soon I realised that this may not necessarily be the best strategy. Typically when I was in school I would often do this for my friends. This worked out a lot better then because once my friends understood the concept they had the language skills to be able to answer the questions that were on the exam. They did not need to memorise at all other than key phrases. With the children I worked with today, though they knew the answer to most of the questions they were not able to put it down on paper since they lacked the English skills. For example one of the questions was about what the raw material to produce sugar is. While most learners knew that they made sugar by processing sugarcane they did not know how to write this out. I ended up evolving my strategy to help them mostly with spelling and helping them construct answers based on the way the questions are phrased. Perhaps this is something that I can specifically focus on going forward. I also realised that for the most part, the children were not coming to us much earlier because in their minds it was impossible to prepare for the exam until the teacher had given them the revision questions from which the question paper is made. This is typically given a day or two before the exam and they memorise from this. Since there is no benefit (in terms of scoring better marks) in understanding the concepts at all they don’t find it as valuable to learn the topics. The times that they are interested in learning it is mostly out of their own curiosity. The children have learned to be motivated by marks and grades and they feel satisfied when they do well in school. Unfortunately the system is in such a way that they see no benefit in learning and understanding since it doesn’t translate to better marks.