How Children Evaluate Themselves

Sometimes, as an exercise in self-evaluation, I ask the students of my class to mark their work on a scale of 1 to 10. (This is different from those times when I provide them with a rubric to guide them.) I might give them a very general direction like, "How involved were you? How much did you contribute to the rehearsal?" etc. Before they tell me their evaluation of themselves, I put down a mark on 1 to 10.

More often than not, students mark their work lower than I have.

Is this because they are modest or because they are far more critical of their own work than other people?

A recent self-evaluation had a Grade 6 student give herself an "E" because, according to her written explanation, she was "confused inside (her) head" when she went on stage. None of this confusion showed, of course, and I replayed the performance tape to check if it did. What was really interesting was that she did not comment on her greatly improved voice projection (and give herself a high grade for that) - she chose to be self-critical to the point of awarding herself the failing grade.

Is she the exception to the rule?