to be pissed off with this school (and myself)

[lola88]

Dniece has jus moved schools 2 weeks ago as Dsis has moved to the area i live in we live in a village with a class of 20 old school was inner city with a class of 28.

Her old school said she is doing well and has no problems she is where she should be for her age (5) however at her new school her teacher told us she is quite behind her struggles to read and write and can no complete anything without the teacher constantly standing by her telling her to consentrate. I had never done home work or anything school related with her before as i only have her fri-sun but now since i get her from school i do.

I took her 45 mins to complete her reading book and math work sheet one day and the next an hour to write 3x make made and like plus 3 sentences including the words. Her old school was over run with 2 teachers job sharing and over 1/2 the class having no or broken English to start her new teacher explained that often the children who don't speak good english need a lo of extra attention so take a lot of teachers time otfen leaving the other children with less attention so fair enough he teachers have a hard job.

I'm really annoyed tbh i understand that her old school had to many kids and no enough resources but how the hell could they say oh she's doing great when she can hardly write 8 weeks away from Primary 2. I'm so annoyed at myself for not doing more to check on her my sister suffers depression i should have known she might not be on top of it. I feel like he school have let her down and so have i :( now her summer holidays are going to be cathing up with what she's missed.

My experience then is that Y1 (or P2) is a very important year where a lot of the bases need to be put in place. If anything this is the year to put of lot of resources/effort to support children that are struggling. After that, in Y2, the emphasis on the mechanisms for reading are supposed to be acquired and they don't spend that much time on them.
This can be hard for children who aren't quite ready to learn to read at 5yo though...

Sadly leafy rural schools and city schools are totally different worlds.

I've spent time in a couple of big city schools in large less central, run down council estates. Even though there were very few EFL DCs the standard of reading and writing was way below my DCs village school.

I was helping in Y3 (7yo) and only the top 3 or 4 DC in the class could read anything like as well as you'd expect.

The vast majority could not write full sentence answers even when the science sheet gave them the spellings.

Getting several of them to copy the date of the board and start the first line of work took one to one attention (these were not the SN DCs who had a TA), they simply wanted to to disengage from the whole business of school.

If I was the OP I'd repost this in primary education, where I know there are teachers who might be able suggest short light fun things DN might like to read and do in the holidays.

She is only 5, my dyslexic DD1 didn't learn to read until she was 11. At 14 her nose is never out of a book (serious thick books like the Hobbit).

Even DD2, who's just sat the extra level 6 papers and reads far better than I do, probably was 5.5 before she read properly.

Your DN has plenty of time to catch up, just make sure she learns to enjoy school and value learning.

Sadly a love of learning is something many city DCs parents and peer group don't give them. Schools can only do so much :(

Prima - I'm fairly sure Finland don't include students with SEN in their stats, whereas in the UK we do. That's why their stats look so much better.

Of course the same number of students in Finland have dyslexia as the rest of the world. Although they may well diagnose less or more......

(unless you are suggesting dyslexia is caused by English teachers ?)

OP - forgive me. I thought she was at the end of Y1. If she's only at the end of Reception then I wouldn't expect too much from her.

IndigoBell -the PISA methodology states that children with SEN can be excluded from the sample by their home country. Do you have any reference for the statement that Finland exclude theirs, and that we include ours? And what is the impact of that exclusion on the overall results?

I have to say I find it quite unlikely that SEN children's results are the only reason why Finland is strikingly outperforming the UK. It sounds like an easy cop out, like we can put our hands out in the face of our very poor performance and just say that's because we had included SEN children.

Of course I'm not suggesting that dyslexia is caused by English teachers - don't be daft. I think the state of science on dyslexia is that it has a universal neurocognitive basis, however some languages are simpler to master than others, and therefore dyslexia does not cause as much problems for, say, an Italian reader/writer than it does for an English one, because Italian has a very stable orthography, whereas English doesn't.

But your P is all about her being slow and easily distracted, which is a completely different thing to not being able to do it.Maybe at the old school the teacher was better at keeping the children on task?

Also 'at her new school her teacher told us she is quite behind ' .why is she talking to you about your niece?

s/be 'But your OP...'

Blimey, She's 5 and probably concentrating on other skills at the moment. Behind?

My friend took her son out of our local junior comp a while back and the new C of E School said he was "behind". My child stayed in the comp and his grades ended up being far better than the child who moved.

*put our hands up, not out

oopsi my sister has no interest in her schooling and has told the school to speak to me or my mum about it i take her to and from school so i'm the one who sees the teacher and asks the question.

She can do things when she wants to i think she's just been left to float along. at the old school they had a learning ladder and she told me she could never get to the top so she stopped trying :(

It makes me so sad that she's going to have to put in so much extra work to catch up.

She's 5. That's 5. Back off. A 5 year old that can write 3 sentences is not behind.

Sounds to me like the poor love has too much homework to do at 5!

at the old school they had a learning ladder and she told me she could never get to the top so she stopped trying

That's one thing you need to mention to the school. I actually think that stopping trying like this when you are 5yo is a HUGE problem. She should not have been put in a situation where she was failing all the the time. And she obviously need some self esteem boosting too.

Tbh there is no point doing 'extra work' if she doesn't think she can do it or it's too difficult.

When dc2 started Y1 (p2) he was about one year behind in literacy. They never said 'Oh here is some homework at the level he should be working at.
They gave work that was at his level. For a long time, he worked at reception level. but because he could do it and was proud of what he was achieving (and made proud of his efforts), he tried very hard. And he catched up with his peers.

Again have a word with the teacher and tell what you have told us.

It's far too soon to be worrying the OP even more with suggestions of dyslexia - the child is only 5! It sounds as though she has just been in a school where due to issues with other pupils the bar has been set low in terms of expectation, and the teaching has been at a level that suits the majority, that is all.

There will be a period of readjustment but if she is naturally of 'normal' in terms of capability and attention span she will catch up in no time at all. The last thing the OP needs to be doing is getting angry and making a huge deal out of it at this stage.

The other thing is that if she is just your niece and you collect her as a favour, and you are not her legal guardian or carer, then the school will not be wanting to engage too much with you (quite rightly) about whatever is going on with her attainment levels, so you will not really have the full picture anyway. Shouldn't her mother be doing her homework with her?

Don´t panic!

Sounds as if she needs a confidence boost, poor little thing.

A mother who isn´t interested, a new school & an old school that told her she´d never get to the top of a learning ladder.

I agree that you must talk to the school & see if they will work something out with you.

As for working in the holidays-yes but only if it´s not too much per day!

It's the confidence issue that would worry me.

Dd wasn't really reading or writing much better when she was 5, but shot ahead at age 6, is now an avid reader and has been top of top set in English for years (predicted A*s).

Ds otoh was told in Reception by his mates that he wasn't very clever and believed them; though he can actually read perfectly well (Yr 7), he never does so voluntarily and is way behind where we reckon he could be.

lola - poor wee thing has just moved school and home. There will be massive differences between what the kids are leaning and their rate of progression. Just now, teacher needs to focus on your DN's wellbeing and making sure she's settled into school and feels secure there. Hopefully then that will go some way towards addressing the prob of distraction.

Really feel for her, must be such an unnerving time for a wee one. Lots of kids forget most of what they've learned in P1 after the holidays anyway...!

About the England-Finland comparisons, I would say several factors are likely to be involved:

Finnish is a more phonetic language so that will help.

(I don't know how the SEN reporting works, but that is possibly an issue)

Finland has had a restrictive immigration policy for a long time and will therefore have relatively few non-Finnish speakers in the class: unlike their Scandinavian neighbours, they take in few refugees so do not have to deal with many traumatised chilldren from war zones.

But most importantly in comparisons with England, Finland has less sharp class divisions and therefore fewer parents who do not support education or feel it is relevant to them.

Well educated parents is a good start if you want well educated children (and I suspect that is why the Swedish education system has been able to sustain so much mucking about without slipping even further down the league tables).

It is not Ok for your sister to leave this to you and take no interest in her schooling, that is terrible.

She is 5, she has just moved home and school and her mother suffers from depression.

She can read a little, can write 3 sentences and can do her maths worksheet with help.

She is absolutely fine. She needs loads of confidence boosting and fun. She does not need to spend the summer "catching up"

Research shows there are no long term benefits to learning to read and write before age 7. By 11 outcomes are the same. I wouldn't worry about lasting damage or make it a big issue. What had happened with the last school had happened now. With very young children ability to learn is very tied up with confidence and security. It isn't surprising if these things aren't great for her right now. Give her time and support and don't put pressure on her to complete tasks if she is not wanting to as this may make it worse, communicate well with the teacher about what is going on an how she is feeling.

*has!

thank you all.

Feeling better about it all now DPs aunt is a primary 1 teacher and is giving me some fun things to do to help her catch up. She's started saying she wants back to her old school because it was easier so i'm hoping to help her catch up in the easiest most fun ways possible have just been to tesco to but outdoor alphabet play mats for her :)

I agree that her mother should be doing all this but unfortunatly as with a lot of things in the world wha should happen and what does happen are different, the school understands they should go through me if the parent specifically requests it they are happy to deal with aunts or other caregivers, it's sad to say but people like my sister are not uncommon these days many people don't raise there own children.

Hopefully she can be caught up by sept and will be feeling better about herself luckily she has many other strong points lots of friends and activities she does so for her school is not the be all and end all.

I honestly don't think she needs to catch up!

what seeker has said, she is 5, has issues at home and has just moved schools, give the kid a break! by all means read to her and encourage her to try and do things and build her confidence but DONT make a big deal out of this.

and with regards to children being at school for 2 yrs and being behind ie reception and yr 1 and then not catching up ime that is balls, all 3 of my elder boys were 'ate' reading, they just werent interested, and then in yr 2 age 7 when they were ready it 'clicked' my ds3 is just at the 'clicking' stage now.

ds1 was the same not interested, but once he got it he was fine, was way above where he needed to be by yr6 in sats etc, now in yr 8 at high school, top sets for everything and flying, on level 7 for most things.

ds2 is 9 (almost 10) in yr 5 and way ahead of where he needs to be, just did the sats with yr 6 'for fun', again late reader, didnt get it till yr 2 adn then flew, he was young and is slightly immature emotionally and simply wasnt ready, we always just read to him and encouraged his interest in books etc.

ditto ds3 and both ds2 and ds3 had IEP at one point, but the teachers i spoke to regularly were always happy they were making progress and agreed they would get it when they were ready and they did, well ds3 is doing :)

bizarelly ds4 is just 4 and is obsessed with phonics and numbers and letters etc, so i suspect he may well read earlier than his brothers did.

children can and do struggle to read, YES it may be dyslexia but ime you always jump into these threads saying dylsexia, they wont catch up, they will struggle etc (and i appreciate you have experience of this) but not all struggling children will have dylsexia, some are simply not ready to read at age 5 or 6 yrs and that is totally normal in many cases. by all means read lots to these children, practise phonics with them etc, but keep a relaxed attitude, your stress will pass onto your children and it may very well be that they simply arent ready to read!