To feel these parent are not understanding ( WhatsApp and Sats )

[Bringmecookies25]

I will try not to drip feed.

DC clas have been preparing for the Sats with mocks/ practice and this has included doing it exactly the way it will happen on the day which has lead to other students noticing “ access arrangements “
today a parent queried in the class WhatsApp group about this
for example “ Henry has said that some people are not completing the tests independently and staff are writing/ reading for them and that a few of them do not finish at the same time and can leave the classroom “

it was politely explained by one parent and seemed to be accepted by parent of Henry - this thought triggered another mum who to be fair is often triggered to pipe up and go on a rant about how it’s always the children who get it easier and it will not be a fair judgement for secondary school sets etc
( area means most children will be going up to the same secondary school ) they then started rambling about GCSEs like what happens at GCSE they get an easier ride in them to get in to colleges ?
this then caused a trickle ( not most ) but a few of the other parents to join in agreement.
My DC is one of them who will be receiving the access arrangements and probably more so than the others as they will have extra time / breaks / scribe and reader in maths etc.
from mocks my DC is likely to get
WT nearly WA in spag - last came out at 97
WA in math - last was 102
GD in reading comp - last was 117
will score low in teaching assessment of writing.
one of the complaints was which I did take to it to beinf towards my DC that sole on the children are not even behind and it just means they will be benefit and have less stress than her DC.

I just wanted to shout at them they have no understanding of the situation and that the point of access arrangements is not to give them a better chance than others but to give them an equal chance !

Ignorant twats. I bet for all the apparent jealousy they wouldn’t swap a NT child with a ND child or child with SEN. What an embarrassing bunch.

I'd like to say I'm shocked. But a few of the mums, and it was mums, at our primary school were some of the most awful people I've ever encountered. At least you know who to avoid going forward. How shameful.

My ds has some adjustments. I always respond with 'the school assessed him as needing these adjustments. Let the school know if you think your child has a learning disability and they'll take it seriously.'

It's disablism from people who don't have a clue what some children have to cope with.

Nope. Knowledge and understanding of the subject being tested are not the same thing as speed of thinking. Exams don’t test for speed of thinking, they are there to assess how well you know your subjects. So someone can have the knowledge and understanding but because of a problem with processing skills will just take longer to express it. Hence the adjustment.

No, SATs don't. But GCSEs of below 4 will. So scrap heap at 16 then.

Your restrained op. I wouldn't have been able to resist a sarkey comment

Id be tempted just to post this

Not great at your job then. Slow processing is no indicator of intelligence. I speak personally as a higher rate tax payer who falls into this category and who has been head hunted by international organisations.

But go ahead and discriminate all you like. You can have weaker candidates who are able think on their feet or candidates who fall into the top 1% percentile for ability and intelligence with slow processing. I've worked with some of the former. They're frequently not the best employees, but possibly this is matched by the lower level recruiting agent sourcing them.

I'm an exam invigilator for gcse/a'level exams.. some of these would be appalled by the 30% of kids who have some sort if access arrangement. None of them however would want their kids to have the issues/disabilities that are the reason for their adjustments.

Exactly this.

A large percentage of kids that have extra time at GCSE don't use it, well that's consistently the case at DS's school anyway. I believe extra time has become harder to get and a push to replace it with rest breaks where possible. I think it can be misused by schools (private particularly) and I've seen a couple of cases where I've wondered if a student might have gamed the system by working slowly when being tested.
Most students though aren't hugely helped by the extra time, often they've finished the exam well in advance because they struggle in a number of ways IME.

Secondary school CATS are often used to set the kids but I think DS's school also used the SATs.

This is not entirely true - arguably exams test for both and always have done.
It's reflective of the work environment where "ability to adapt to a fast paced environment " is frequently listed on job specs.

But there’s a difference between being able to work quickly when doing something which fits with your skill set and which you have chosen to do for a living for that very reason (e.g. engineering) and being able to work quickly when you are specifically being asked to spend 30 minutes doing the very thing you are unable to do (e.g. spelling). It isn’t sensible to call this a test of intelligence. I’ve always found humanities easy and maths more challenging (and so am a lawyer). DH is the opposite (and so works in finance). How do we decide who is “the most intelligent”? Actually, my exam results were better than his. He literally earns ten times as much as me. Which one is the deciding factor?

Also, at this age, the things they are being tested on sometimes have no relevance to the skills they will need in the real world. I have never been asked in any workplace to make lists of correctly-spelled unfamiliar words for half an hour. What kind of employer would prefer you to spell more quickly and risk making mistakes in a client email rather than just… using spellcheck?

Or a clutch of grade 8 and nines and a good degree and on scrap heap (well Macdonald's) as no job vacancies

Yes, possibly. Very very sad. Shouldn't be that way. Hopefully though with good GCSE grades, FE or an apprenticeship will be possible.