Conservatives plan to make 'failures' resit last eyar of Primary

[Peachy]

yes, because my poor SN DS1 needs to be amrked out as a 'failure' at 11, separated from his friends and held back with his younger (NT) bother....

Cue, I suspect, one angry child who becomes even ahrder to teach and engage

At dd1's school 'snobbing' is a regular activity in Class 2 (the seven to nine yr olds.)

What I don't get is why keeping NT kids in a school that has failed to teach them the basics for another year is going to help.

Filly you're doing the same as us then exactly- keeping ds3 off as well, although have negotiated an Easter start as otherwise he'll enter in Yr1 which wouldn't work either.

I do think Sn kids would be kept back, I think a lot of LEA's would use it as a pre-Statement excuse in fact, therebyy delaying X anount of funds. Last figure I heard for ASD was 1 in 88.... thw worst thing you can do with a ASD child who has settled is to move him or her unless there's an absolute imperative. Too many transitions- one into a new class, followed by the school the following year.

Yes, Peachy, there is nothing in Cameron's article to say he'd keep SEN children back but the LEAs will find a way of doing so in order to save money.

The education system in this and my native country frighten me.

Hence, why in response to the thread 'If money were no object, would you send your child to state or private school', I said I'd opt for home ed with professional tutors.

kindersurpise - in Holland it was rare to be held back . I did 5 years at a Dutch primary and in that time I can only remember 1 girl being held back.
I think if the child is otherwise bright but has not grasped what was being taught in class then he/she was held back. Obviously if there was a learning difficulty this would be addressed. Sometimes there is no underlying cause, the child simply may not grasp certain topics, or (like my ds) be so young that he struggles to keep up with the level of the class.

I do remember doing a lot of extra work at home though - mental maths at the dinner table with my dad almost every night, literacy work with mum at the weekends, as well as their constant revision of my homework with me.
I do the same with ds - I have to, otherwise he would really fall behind too far

In keeping with what many have already said here- perhaps the problem is DC doesn't go far enough!

I think we're getting all confused here between genuine SEN and NT kids. I believe DC means it would be a good idea to keep NT kids back at primary til they HAVE mastered the basics which are crucial to secondary school success.

He hasn't gone far enough in that every child should be assessed every year from preschool for ability to cope with the next school year, academically and socially and placed accordingly. Too many of us are thinking of our own child, alone, cast adrift in the year below their peers- Well, wouldn't a good few of those peers also be repeating?? And as for numbers, wouldn't a good few kids also be working at a year above their 'chronologically correct' school year?

Of course there's a real issue about Ed Authorities refusing to issue statements so as to avoid the costs of SEN provision. That's a separate thing- not less important, just separate.

IMO, NT primary age children fail to reach the required standards for one or all the following reasons:
-They're lazy and cruise along, safe in the knowledge that they'll go on 'progressing' through the years til they're popped out, at 16, functionally illiterate and full of anger at society for 'failing' them.
-They just haven't quite got the maturity to be able to master that particular subject area, yet. Give them another shot, another year and they'll be away.
-They have the sorry misfortune to have been born into rubbish family backgrounds where no-one cares about them or their schooling.

I believe any teacher would be able to identify these causes. What we need is the will and the money to address them as soon as is possible in a child's life. Repeating a 'dodgy' year may be one solution amongst others.

And, fwiw, it so ANNOYS me the way politicians blame the schools/teachers for all society's ill. Can we not see a correlation between the highest teenaged (thus presumably unplanned-unwanted) pregnancy rates in the western world and so many failing kids? See my final point above! And yes I KNOW you don't have to be a teenaged single parent to be a less than able parent- anyone can be! but it's merely the statistics that bear the trend out that I'm talking about.

Finally, no I'm not a teacher or a TA! I'm just a parent who would like to see those issues of parental responsibility dumped back where they belong- the parents' doorstep, not the teachers' workload!

Hmmm - the SEN/SN thing could get mighty tricky.

Many children are on the SEN register because they have, for example, problems learning to read. No diagnosis, but problems learning to read. So for example all the children at our school who took part in the reading recovery programme were on the SEN register. Some had a diagnosis of dyslexia, many didn't. Some had statemnts, some didn't. Some of the children with statements had no diagnosis, some of the children with a diagnosis didn't have statements.

They would all presumably have failed a literacy test. Sorting out which ones came to us at 11 and which didn't would have been problematic to say the least.

Exactly tellUsMater, its not simple or clear cut at all- tehre'd always be kids falling through the system. Quite often you find high correlations of SN kids in low achieving schools with aprents who themselves have SN and are unable to advocate. It took us (and many others) so much hard work to get DS1's needs recognised, for every ds1 there's another kid slipping through the net somewhere.

There is another explanation for this proposal of course. What does a politician ike? GCSe passes to escalate under their leadership! What will your average low achieving kid do if repeating a year? IMO opt out as soon as lehgally allowed, hence at present before the GCSE year (assuming they turned 16 in their penultimate uear of Secondary)- and therefore they wouldn't tkae their GCSE's....

Just a thought.

I'm all for remedial work, extrension of SN education ( a combination of more Sn palces and mroe outreach as I have one ds that would thrivve in SN school, and another that would benefit from outreach support). In fact i don't have isues with repeating a year in certain circumstances- but when you ahve a child who will never be able to achieve at a certain level for whatever reason, then there's no real positive to that, certainly not one outweighed by the negatives relating to self esteem etc.

AS for 'genuine SN and NT kids'- I think in a mixed MS environment there's a far wider spectrum than that, with a great many kids falling somewhere in the middle. If thsoe kids are simply regressed for a year, the opportunity to genuinely help by placing in appropriate support will be lost or in many LEA's deliberately shirked.

"AS for 'genuine SN and NT kids'- I think in a mixed MS environment there's a far wider spectrum than that"

That's exactly it.

The idea that there are children with SN and everyone else is just a lazy NT child who need a kick up the pants is rubbish, as anyone who has worked with SEN children will know.

yep, my Dh was almost sent to SN school at 7- now as well as being a transport manager he owns his own electronics business

No Sn, but support required in certain areas to get there. Me? I'm doing pretty well at my degree now but was in Sn class through Secondary as failed at maths. Passed it last year though.

Even most Sn kids in MS schooling share their difficulties with NT children, so the right support will be beneficial to many mroe children than those on any register- well know bright kids with social issues, or kids great at languages and terrible at sciences. A referral based workshop system was run at college, where kids dropped in and out as personally needed- cant see why this wouldn't work with younger children as well.

What's needed is to a great extent is resourcing and curriculum flexibility. We ran a three year reading recovery programme for children who had a low reading age on entering secondary. The children were withdrawn from one MFL and learned to read instead. In small groups. Expensive. Very effective. We would have loved to do a numeracy one as well, but curriculum flexibility was quite an issue as well as the extra costs involved.

I heard of a case of Dutch twins. One was kept back a year in early primary because she couldn't swim. Well, with all those canals its more serious than the 3 R's! [apparently it worked out fine]

On Tory idea,my take was that if any 'holding back' was to be done it should be more like year 3 or 4 so (a) theres more time in primary left to deal with fundamentals and (b) child gets to make some new friends to move on with.

That sounds good. there's often other stuff that can be done as well though- for example, DS1's language skills are very high, he cant translate them onto paper though. School / LEA refuses access to a voive recognition program / laptop- personally I think with that access he'd fly! Well I know he would, SALt have said he's top few per cent spoken language.

there's an awful lot that CAN be done, but so much is budget constricted sadly.

Imagine two idential twins boys. One child born on 31st August and the other child born 1st September. One child will start school a year earlier.

The older child goes to school. He struggles with learning to read and write. He is immature and gets into trouble when sitting on the carpet. In year one the pace of work increases. The little boy can't cope and is put on the special needs register.

The younger boy starts reception on the same day his older brother starts year one. He is mature and finds the task of learning to read and write easy. Being older means he can concentrate and do well.

These two boys are genetically idential. The older boy doesn't have SEN anymore than his younger brother.

I think in the UK too many children are considered to have SEN. Having a summer birthday should not be a reason for being on the SEN register. It is better for such a child to delay starting school.

Repeating a year is not even considered an option in the UK. Prehaps we need to be less rigid and schools to have it an option.

Have to say i don't lknow any summer born kids on the SEN register for just that (DS3 is, but then he's ASD and fairlys everely at that). All the other kids on the reg I know of at their school atm have CP, 2 with dyslexia, twins with ADHD

"AS for 'genuine SN and NT kids'- I think in a mixed MS environment there's a far wider spectrum than that"

that is SO fkn true

kids also develop DIFFERENTLY. Some need to play in puddles for quite a long time before they can learn to read. And then they normally learn very quickly and catch up with their age group. c.f. all of Scandinavia.

dp did not SPEAK until he was 3.5. He has an Oxford first and a phd.

My brother and dp's brother were both ludicrously late readers, like around 10. Had they been streamed at this age, they would have been fkd. BOTH have engineering degrees, and BOTH now read to the point of being quite seriously anti-social.

"Have to say i don't lknow any summer born kids on the SEN register for just that (DS3 is, but then he's ASD and fairlys everely at that). All the other kids on the reg I know of at their school atm have CP, 2 with dyslexia, twins with ADHD "

Stastically most children who are put on the SEN register are boys with summer born birthdays. Summer born boys are developmentally in a weak position.

Prehaps we need to be a bit more selective about which kids are considered to need extra educational help. An immature child might benefit from starting school later.

It really is quite scarey how 'one size fits all' our education system is, and that if a child hasn't achieved something by a certian age then they get labelled (not SN but 'lazy' or 'difficult') - now this can happen at an age when children in Europe have hardly begun formal education.

But it isn't true that children can't repeat years, two August born children are repeating Reception at dd1's school. But the classes are mixed age anyway so perhaps it is less noticable there.

I agree with later starts- in fact ahve activated that for ds3, who was due to start today, he's starting at Easter but it took a LOT of groundwork to get that okayed- I wanted to repeat Nursery but they don't do that.

I didn't mean btw that it didn't happen, only as Is aid that I didn't know of any- but have mentioned also on many threads that our school v v reluctant to recognise SN/s at all, even post DX.

Dd1' sschool is tiny, as I mentioned earlier a boy is going from Yr1 to Yr 3 - he's been doing Yr 2 work anyway, because the classes are taught in mixed year groups.

Interestingly I looked into starting dd1 late, only b/c I think later formal education works better, but a teacher at the school said it was impossible, she'd have to start in Yr 1 etc. Now from what I have heard there is actually a lot more flexibilty and suspect that parents aren't given the full range of options.

Peachy, what do you mean by repeating nursery?

There's a nursery year at our school, we wanted him 9as did SALT) to re-do that. However, I stress that ds3 is a particularly pronounced case- severe language delay, still in nappies etc. He didnta chieve any of the Nursery targets he was set.

I've never heard of a nursery year, what age does that start?

Although flexibility in the Reception year is a good idea putting anything else into practice would be very difficult.

If 30 children have a reception place and there is a another child who needs to do reception again and also there is a child whose parents decided to defer a year and now want to start in reception, who gets priority? The children who are in the correct cohort or the children who are older?

Startouched, its the year before they start school- Academic year. Every school I know of locally has a Nursery atatched, however the schools back home in somerset didn't, so i don't know how common it is generally.

I don't think its that bad an idea. I repeated the last year at primary school as although I was considered bright enough to go to secondary school, my headmaster considered me too socially immature (I was a Sept baby but started school aged 3). Although it annoyed me at the time, it was probably the right thing in the long-term and I certainly didn't feel stigmatised.