You motivate students who’ve switched off by redesigning the work and the room around them, rather than pushing harder on the student. Give them a real say, work they can succeed at and an adult who knows them, because self-determination theory says motivation runs on autonomy, competence and relatedness (Ryan and Deci, 2000).
Say you’re a head of Year 11 in mid-April, and you’re trying to work out how to motivate students in a tutor group that’s gone quiet. The summer exams are a few weeks off, and every lesson someone asks what the point is. You could turn up the pressure.
I’d change the room first, because pressure’s the one thing they’ve already got heaps of.
What the latest survey says about motivation in England
About one in four secondary pupils in England say they aren’t motivated to learn.
In May 2025, the Department for Education asked pupils in Years 7 to 13 how motivated they were to learn. Their answers came out at 70% very or fairly motivated, 20% not very and 6% not at all (DfE national behaviour survey, 2025). That’s down from 75% motivated in April 2024. It’s one self-reported question, answered by just over 3,000 pupils and weighted to represent pupils in state-funded schools in England. So I wouldn’t build a strategy on one year’s dip.
Do the sum for your own room, though. If a class of 30 matched the national picture, about eight of them would say they’re not motivated to learn. You’ll meet them this term, so it’s worth having a plan.
Motivation is something you can design for
Motivation rises and falls with the conditions around a student, and teachers can learn to set better conditions.
Ryan and Deci’s theory names three needs. Autonomy means feeling you’ve some say in what you do. Competence is feeling you can do it, and relatedness is feeling connected to the people around you. Their 2000 paper points to studies where choice, acknowledging feelings and chances for self-direction raised intrinsic motivation. Where students saw their teachers as “cold and uncaring”, they showed less of it. With a switched-off student, I’d start with relatedness. “If you are meeting someone where they are at, they feel an instant connection to you. That’s where real learning happens.”
The kind of motivation matters as well. A 2021 meta-analysis pooled 344 samples covering 223,209 people (Howard and colleagues, 2021). Doing the work because it’s interesting was linked with both success and wellbeing. Valuing it was strongly tied to sticking at it. Working only for a reward, or to stay out of trouble, wasn’t linked with performance or persistence. It also went with lower wellbeing. These are links across many studies rather than proof of cause, but the direction’s clear.
The bit I like most is that it’s learnable. Reeve and Cheon reviewed 51 intervention studies, 38 of them randomised controlled trials, and found teachers can learn to teach in a more autonomy-supportive way (Reeve and Cheon, 2021). Their seven behaviours include taking the students’ perspective, giving explanatory rationales, acknowledging negative feelings and using invitational language. None of it needs a budget, just time to practise.
Why rewards and threats can backfire
Rewards and threats can get a task done today and cost you motivation later, especially when they’re attached to work students might have enjoyed anyway. The best-known evidence on rewards is a 1999 meta-analysis of 128 experiments (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999). Tangible rewards, and rewards people expected, undermined intrinsic motivation. The harm from tangible rewards tended to be greater for children than for college students. Positive feedback raised intrinsic motivation in college students, but in children the effect was small and wasn’t significant.
To be fair to rewards, the finding has limits. Unexpected rewards made no difference. The main analyses also left out boring tasks, so the warning’s mostly about rewarding students for things they might have done for their own reasons. I wouldn’t scrap a merit system on the strength of it. I’d stop using prizes to sell work that’s interesting in its own right.
Threats are a different story. Ryan and Deci list “threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations, and imposed goals” among the things that diminish intrinsic motivation.
Dave Putwain and Richard Remedios tested the exam version with 347 Year 11 students in two schools in England, before GCSE maths (Putwain and Remedios, 2014). You’ll probably recognise their example of a fear appeal. “If you fail GCSE maths, you will never be able to get a good job or go to college.” Students who heard more messages like that, and felt threatened by them, had lower self-determined motivation. They also scored lower in the exam.
The authors suggest checking whether your message is about succeeding or about avoiding failure, and practising better ones with colleagues.
I’d add one thing. Write the new line down before the assembly, because the old one comes out under pressure.
Build Curiosity first, then early wins
Of the five parts of BRAVE, my framework for education, Build Curiosity is where I’d start with a class that’s switched off. It’s how I’d teach. No trial has tested it as a programme, so treat it as my way in and the research as the check on it.
Build Curiosity means opening with a question students want answered, before you hand over the content. It’s close to what Reeve and Cheon call inviting students to pursue their interests, one of their seven behaviours. In revision, put up the exam question that looks impossible and let them guess the first step before you teach the route. A wrong guess costs nothing at that point. Making that kind of mistake safe is the R in BRAVE, Reframe Failure, which I’ve covered in my piece on growth mindset.
Curiosity gets a student to have a go. What keeps them going is competence, the sense that they can actually do it. A Canadian study followed 1,478 children from Grade 1 to Grade 4 in maths (Garon-Carrier and colleagues, 2016). Earlier achievement predicted later intrinsic motivation, but motivation didn’t predict later achievement at any point. They were primary children, so be careful stretching it to Year 11. I’d still take the hint. Don’t wait for students to feel like it. Build in early wins and let the feeling follow.
How to motivate students in the week before an exam block
In the last week before exams, drop the fear messages and offer small, real choices. Start each lesson with a win, and make time for the students you’re most worried about. I’d lay the week out like this.
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Monday: swap the fear message. Write down what you’d normally say to a class that isn’t revising. If it’s about what happens when they fail, rewrite it around what success looks like and why the topic’s worth knowing. That’s the explanatory rationale Reeve and Cheon describe. Use the same words all week.
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Tuesday: give a real choice. Let each student pick which topic to revise first, from a short list built on their own mock or quiz gaps. Small choices still count.
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Wednesday: start with a win. Open each lesson with five quick questions most of the class can get right, then one stretch question. The EEF’s metacognition guidance asks teachers to “set an appropriate level of challenge” (Education Endowment Foundation, 2018). It also says pupils need “the motivation to accept the challenge”.
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Thursday: plan, monitor, evaluate. Ask each student for a three-line revision plan for the weekend, and check it with them on Monday. That guidance also asks teachers to teach pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. It’s one reason I’ve argued that metacognition should come before AI literacy. That matters even more if they’re revising with a chatbot.
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Friday: ten minutes each. Pick the three students you’re most worried about and talk to each one on their own. Ask how they’re feeling about the exams, and accept the answer before you mention revision. Then agree one thing they’ll do by Monday.
If you lead a year group, check the assembly script and any countdown on the corridor wall, as well as the lessons. Tell parents what you’re saying instead, so home and school send the same message. Give your staff the same conditions too. I’ve written about how a fear-first approach to AI holds schools back. Fear doesn’t motivate a staff room any better than it motivates Year 11.
If a student’s switching off looks like more than exam nerves, such as withdrawal, low mood or something changing at home, treat it as a welfare question first and talk to your pastoral lead or designated safeguarding lead.
How Colin helps
I help school leaders and teachers design for motivation, so nobody’s left chasing it one student at a time. In a staff session, I’d begin with Build Curiosity, the B in BRAVE, and get teachers writing the opening question for their next lesson.
I’m also co-founder and co-CEO of Illuminate XR, which we built to bring immersive AI and VR learning into schools. That gives me a business interest in what keeps students engaged, as well as a personal one.
If you’d like to talk about a keynote or advisory work for your school, trust or university, get in touch.
Related questions
What’s the best motivation for a student?
The kind that lasts is the kind students own, whether that’s interest in the work itself or a reason they genuinely value. Both were linked with better outcomes in Howard and colleagues’ 2021 meta-analysis. Working only for rewards, or to stay out of trouble, wasn’t linked with performance or persistence. So help each student find their own reason.
How do you motivate a demotivated student?
Start with one conversation before any new sanction. Find out what they think the point is and set one task they can succeed at this week. Then give them a say in what comes next. If it’s gone on for weeks, check with your pastoral team in case something else is going on.
Do rewards motivate students?
They can get a task done. But expected rewards for interesting work can wear down students’ own interest. Deci, Koestner and Ryan’s 1999 review found tangible rewards tended to do more harm to children than to college students. Save them for dull, routine tasks, and let the interesting work stand on its own.