Heard yesterday that one of my pupils passed his English GCSE - yet he can't read or write!

[Moomin]

Wondered what others think about this amid the 'dumbing down' discussions being banded around at the moment.

I joint-taught a group of kids who had been in the special needs and 'bottom band' classes throughout their school life. Several of them had statements and we always had a CSA in to help them in class. The boy in question is bright socially and a quick thinker but his dyslexia is so chronic that he can't recognise the majority of words and his written work is almost indecipherable. He was able to do his 4 pieces of coursework with limited help which we declared when his folder was requested by the board. His oral work was good and gained him a D grade. This made up 20% of his final mark; the written coursework also was worth 20%. Exam was 60%.

We did worry about how he'd cope in the exams, as he wasn't allowed a reader or writer for English, unlike other subjects. In the end, for the poetry papers, I just advised him to look for any words he did recognise and try to write about anything he remembered from the lessons. We knew the Reading paper would probably be beyond him but said it was worth him coming to the exam anyway just for the Writing section of the same exam which we thought he's cope with if he recognised any 'key' words and this could stimulate a piece of writing. Anyway, I heard yesterday he got a G, which is a pass after all.

Yes.. teacher's spelling mistakes do grate.. they could at least use a dictionary!!

Also, I was actually told by dd1's teacher they she will only correct one or two spellings in each piece of work so that the child doesn't get discouraged! So how are they supposed to learn the correct spellings?

Mmmm

Nice to know standards are rising.....

A woman I work with with to her son's parent/teacher evening. She spent some time looking through her son's English work book and came across the following comment from the teacher -'James could have wrote more'.

My friend took out her own red pen and corrected it and then demanded to see the teacher.

She could be a scary woman to work with.

ive done similar in my ds's school books/records. One teacher wrote "james was abscent" and another upon setting spellings for her year 1 class gave them "fourty"

I do think examples like these are appalling - I hate seeing bad spelling and grammar errors in the 'public' domain.

At KS2 & 3 there is a real drive towards improving general standards in literacy and a lot is being done at these stages to try to improve the 'basics' as part of the every day curriculum at KS2 and through English at KS3 - with varying results though. The most success we've had at our school is when literacy is taught in an integral way rather than tacked on in 15 min bursts, otherwise the majority of pupils can't use what they learn in context. The KS3 and KS4 curricula are very different though, which is a nonsense, but don't get me started on that one...

As far as exam questions printed in the papers go, if the paper's agenda is to show how GCSEs are dumbed down, they are obviously going to print the questions that 'prove' their theory, so I wouldn't say that this gives anyone an accurate insight into the curriculum at GCSE by any stretch. I could get some past papers out and show you questions that would flummox many people just because answering them successfully relies on a person having learned or acquired skills in their lessons, and also to have some knowledge of the way in which to model an answer, IYSWIM.