My DD 9yo / year 4 is dyslexic and struggles at school, particularly with assessments.
She goes to a very academic focused primary school but we have always tried to downplay assessments i.e. they are so the teacher can see what you need to work on and praised the effort. But she is starting to become terrified of tests. She drew sad faces on some questions on her recent maths test and it broke my heart.
This all wasn’t helped by the teacher at the end of last term handing back the paper in the classroom and then explaining how papers are calculated for year 6 SATs (2 years away!) i.e. combining grammar and spelling for a total score etc. She then explained the cut offs for WTE, Ex and GD. So, my DD saw her decent grammar score turn into a WTE when combined with her disastrous spelling score. Similarly her excellent maths arithmetic score downgraded by the reasoning (although still a solid Ex).
This, combined with everyone in the class knowing what she got as they had to write it on the front page, massively damaged my DD’s confidence and self-esteem. Most of the children at the school get GD and go to highly competitive grammars so she feels she is one of the ‘thickest’ in the class.
The teacher piles praise on to my DD with smiley faces and certificates for trying. But my DD has quite high emotional intelligence and sees straight through it, so she views it as a consolation prize for not being as good as others, which has compounded the issue!
The above naturally led me to question the methods and ask what school were doing to support my DD with her dyslexia. They provided a very generic plan that looked like a copy and paste for a child with just any general SEND requirement. I rewrote a plan with her specialist dyslexia tutor and asked them to stick to it.
But the teacher then ignored the plan with the latest round of assessments and sent my DD out with four other students for questions to be read out to her. This led to her getting her lowest ever maths grade. She went from being EX to Below Expectations with a score of only 40% as the TA jumped forward too quickly to the next question and my DD got confused and felt pressured.
This has made her feel all her hard work is getting her nowhere and even more upset about assessments and tests. Fortunately there are no more this year, but she was incredibly emotional while they were going on last week.
I have blown my lid at the school and been offered a meeting for next term with the new teacher. But fundamentally, I feel that just too much focus and importance is being put on tests and assessments that fundamentally mean nothing to my DD or her future. And sending her out and special treatment is compounding the feeling of importance being placed on them.
I just want to rip up the dyslexia plan and ask the school to forget they even know she has a diagnosis. I know they won’t be able to do that, but I just feel because of their approach a mountain has been built out of a mole hill.
My DD now thinks these assessments and her scores are incredibly important and feels hyper aware of her differences. We keep telling her that don’t matter, trying to contextualise them etc, but the damage is done.
In the assessment where she got 40% and had drawn sad faces next to questions she struggled with, the teacher unbelievably messaged me to say she was really proud my DD had shown more confidence in these papers – despite having written “don’t be sad” next to one of the sad faces!!! So she can’t claim she hadn’t seen this.
How do I row back from the damage caused by the school? Am I being unreasonable to ask for all test adjustments to just be dropped so we can make as little fuss about the future assessments as possible? I genuinely don’t care what she scores, I just want a happy, confident child. But she is super aware of the scores and what they mean now so how do I do that?