Assessment by local council education dept

[snowydc2003]

Hi my eldest son is in Yr 2 at primary and is accelerated in most things. He is a level 4b in Literacy and spends every morning in year 6 doing literacy with them. His maths is also far and above and he used to go to year 5 for that but we stopped it as all the extra lessons upset him. Everything is easy for him but gladly he is a normal happy little boy, he just has an extraordinary brain.

Anyway, at parents evening tonight his teacher mentioned that after Easter he will be assessed by an educational expert from the local LEA. He is not bothered as he is used to being assessed and loves to as he says " show off my brain"!

What I wanted to ask is has this type of assessment happened to anyone else? I thought they would manage him within the school, which they gave been doing but I am not sure where they are going with this? Any thoughts, we are in Buckinghamshire.

yes, it's very usual. every school get ed psych hours and they prioritise as appropriate. it sounds as though school have got themselves in a bit of a pickle by taking the 'easy' option of just moving him up year groups rather than doing sideways extension work, so they have now got to the point that they don't know what to do with him in september. dd2 was tested as working 7 years ahead in literacy at 5 (yr r), but fortunately she was in an infants only setting, so they couldn't take that road!

they'll do (or re-do if he's had it done before) wisc iv and wiat testing probably, and work out exactly where he is. then decide how to support him as they haven't been using their imaginations v well so far.

the results can be quite shocking, but are good to give you a giggle when he next does something really stupid like walk into a door.

it's all good. they are just working out what to do. as he has been consistently moved up through the years for lit (i am guessing) they now run the risk of demotivating him if they don't do it again, and it's obv problematic because you are in a straight through primary, and he can't transition to the secondary.

in reality, they should have been differentiating with a closer peer group to allow themselves some wiggle room (imo). never mind - they will come up with a solution. when you know what it is, i would look at it carefully and weigh up the pros and cons. i wouldn't (for example) let my (now) yr 3 go up to the secondary for lit. even though she would love to from an academic pov. they sound as though they are on the ball though.

hope he has fun. mine love 1-1 time working their brains, too.