Below is a post I put up on my FB page. I still feel very angry about this, but having read the comments in this thread, I now understand why it is happening:
The most useful piece of advice I was ever given as a Special Educational Needs Coordinator was to consider any situation which arose from the point of view of the child concerned. This has been on my mind over the last few days when I’ve been speaking to children with learning difficulties and professionals who support them in class.
In the UK, children have now been back at school for at least a week and many of those who are at primary school spent their first few days after the long summer break being assessed. For children in the higher end of the age group, in what we call Key Stage 2, this takes the form of written tests.
From the point of view of their teachers, meeting a new class who have just spent six weeks away from school, this makes sense. They are under enormous pressure in our data driven system to demonstrate that each child makes progress whilst under their care and they want to have a baseline which they feel they can trust, rather than relying upon the data generated at the end of the summer term.
Whilst, in a saner world, we might question what it feels like for a child to be met with a week of formal testing when they are just getting used to a new teacher and being back at school again, we could also argue that this practise will help children get used to being tested, which is after all very much part of our education system.
However, let us hope that any child who is insecure or anxious (maybe home life is a bit chaotic and the long holiday wasn’t much fun -just one possibility) – let us hope that those children did not find a week of tests too challenging and were able to demonstrate their ability.
Then again, when we contemplate a typical class of thirty children, especially, but not solely, in inner city schools, there will be among them some children who have learning disabilities of one kind and another. So what is it like for them? A child with Dyslexia, ADHD, ADD or any type of sensory processing disorder has to work much harder than a neurotypical child, just to be in school and to try to do what is required of them. Returning to school after the break might conceivably be more stressful for such children, so why would anyone add to that stress by putting them through a week of formal assessment?
So, again in a saner world, we might imagine that these children with learning difficulties of one kind or another, would be given assessment tests which were set at an appropriate level for them. It is by no means uncommon, for example, for a child in a Year 5 class to be operating around the level expected of a child in Year 2. Clearly, common sense would suggest, wouldn’t it, that said child would be given Year 2 assessment tests?
Sadly, outrageously, our world is not so sane. It is common practise in many schools (not all, thank goodness), that the children are all given the tests relevant to their age, regardless of academic ability, special educational need or, indeed, level of spoken and written English, for children new to this country.
So a child who is working well below ‘Age Related Expectations’ and who already finds the classroom environment challenging due to their learning difficulties, has to sit through a week of being faced with tests that they do not understand, whilst sitting surrounded by most of their peers who appear to be able to do them. What impact might this experience have on their stress levels and general self esteem and consequently on their future learning?
I wonder what it feels like to be that child in that situation...................
Glynis Roberts
isyourchilddyslexic.com/course/