Parents evening . To much for ds

[Flossy1989]

I had parents evening for DS. He's in year 4 . But working at year 1 level . He has autism and learning difficulties. He had an ehcp . They have been doing year 4 tests called NFER? His teacher says ds is not expected to answer the questions but they just want him to have a go. Does not matter if they are wrong or not answered.

Ds has drawn sad faces in the book. I feel like he's trying to tell them he's not happy . Or am I over thinking? A part of me wants to ask the teacher to not get DS to do them. But another part of me thinks if I do that maybe I'm not helping him because in life there will be stuff he has to do that he's not happy with. And at secondary school it would probably be more so than primary?

If he's working at a y1 level, he should be doing the y1 NFER tests. How can they see progress in tests that he can't access? How can they see his gaps in the y1 curriculum if he's doing y4 tests? I have taught this age group and would never have put a child through this.

Thank you. I did wounder this to.

I absolutely agree. It's completely inappropriate to put him through this.

It's like asking someone with a walking disability to do the bleep test "but don't worry if you do really badly". Setting him up to fail and not giving any useful information. It's surely demoralising, and unhelpful for school.

If he's been assessed as being at y1 level he should be doing y1 tests. I'd recommend making a meeting with the teacher and senco to review what provision is in place for him in class. They have a duty to him to actually give him an education and the teacher should be making any adaptations needed to support him to access the work (speaking as a primary school teacher btw). I'm very surprised to hear that they're giving him y4 tests. I've heard of that for children working a year below but not 3 years below. That's so cruel and will make your son feel awful about himself.

Primary school doesn't need to replicate adulthood or even secondary school. It needs to prepare children for life but this situation doesn't prepare your son for anything and it doesn't give the school any useful information. It actually sounds like no one has thought about him when they were preparing the assessments and so just chucked the y4 test his way instead of going to photocopy a y1 test.

Thank you .the words his teacher used was we are not expecting him to be able to do it. But just to give it a go. I'm going to speak to senco.

Look at other schools which will cater for his needs better and consider specialist schools for secondary

I'm not looking for a different primary school he's been thete since 3 years old . He loves it there . And the change would upset him to much. But I will definitely speak to senco