School failing to teach Niece.

[Gromit]

My second oldest Niece will be taking her GCSE's next year I'm really worried that she will come out of school with no qualifications. She is a bright girl but has a learning difficulty, one that has been passed down from my father. Both my sister and I have the same problem. We are in the minority that is only able to learn if we are shown how to do something several times, we then need to repeat it until said task sticks.

I found out yesterday that her school is 3rd from the bottom on the league tables for Bolton with a pass mark of 50%, meaning they allow half of their pupils to leave without any qualifications. I will add that my eldest Niece went to the same school gaining good grades, she doesn't have any trouble learning.

Niece number two was appointed a scribe by the school and given one to one help, this has now been withdrawn due to a funding shortage.

I am just wondering what other people would do in this situation? Would you get her to repeat last years work to do her GCSE's in 2013 or would you tell her to carry on with this year knowing that she will not get anything and hope she will want to go back to college to try again?

Cheers Debz

 

[Night Train]

Could she go to a different school? Maybe home schooling?

How well would she cope with additional schooling time and additional work load to get through? Perhaps via a private home tutor.

Depending on how she felt about staying behind or staying with her peers it might be as easy to progress through the year with a view to a more suitable college of choice to do the actual learning. Additional years in a school that is unable to support her may not be very productive.

 

[Gromit]

She is from a very poor background so no funds for private tutor, if I could I would pay for her education but I'm self funding my own education at the moment. I think being 15 will make it difficult to transfer her to a new school.

I think she has switch off as people have shouted at her and shown no interest. There is tension with other siblings and doesn't have any friends at school. Tends to have temper tantrums as she finds know one understands. (Very like me).

 

[steve52]

explain to her the difficulty and if you can work with her outside school, we have to try our selves since the system fails , meanwhile try and get legal aid and sue them for failing to teach as they are reqired to do. ps most of this is a tong in cheek rant so many schools fail our children (me included) but we need to deal with the children and parents who disrupt and allow the disruptin of the education of others grrrrrrrr rant over

 

[Night Train]

I think if the school can't be 'made' to provide the service she deserves and needs then I think she will be better off understanding that she is going to leave with nothing much and then do her best at college.

If she is able to inderstand the situation clearly then it is only biding her time until she gets a college course that will support her.

My God-daughter is similar and came out of school with nothing but a bad start and bad attitude. Her first college failed her too but she is now in a better college, with support, and hopefully she will achieve. She is now old enough to begin seeing the benefits of her new college and the effort she needs to put in to make the best of it for her own future.

 

[mac1]

She is a bright girl but has a learning difficulty, one that has been passed down from my father. Both my sister and I have the same problem. We are in the minority that is only able to learn if we are shown how to do something several times, we then need to repeat it until said task sticks.

Who told you this? Is this really a learning difficulty? That's a new one on me. I thought it was generally accepted that most people didn't pick everything up first time - it was stressed that repetition and review were important as most new information is lost if you don't work to commit to memory. One of the reasons for rote learning and the way the army trains for example.It might be a confidence problem.

 

[vernon]

There's a whole world of difference between failing to teach and failing to meet the educational needs of a pupil.

For pupils to receive extra help they need to be assessed and have a statement issued. The statement states what the learning difficulty might be and what should be done to address it. Local Educational Authorities are loathe to issue statements as they have to be matched by funding to address the statemented need. Pushy parents tend to get statements issued because they don't let themselves get fobbed of by the schools and the education authorities. Unfortunately in many educational authorities, educational psychologists are victims of cutbacks and their workloads have increased making the service rather stretched.

A fallback position is schools identifying the needs of pupils without statements and allocating a diminishing budget to addressing the needs through the deployment of teaching assistants. Difficult decisions have to be made and there's nowhere near enough money to meet every pupil's needs.

Address your concerns about the exam results of the school.

I think that you must be misinterpreting the results as any school that has half the pupils leaving without any qualifications would have been closed down under the current government and its Labour predecessor.

Schools report pupils successes under several headings so does your less 50% refer to:

The number of pupils who get five or more GCSE grades above C including English and Maths

or

The number of pupils who get five or more GCSE grades above C but not including English or Maths

or

The number of pupils who get five or more GCSE grades at any grade

Third from bottom does not mean that it is the third worst performing school. If its intake is of low ability then it will appear to have a low achievement in terms of number of GCSEs but a fantastically high achievement when measured in progress made by pupils during their five years in the school. Some of the Bolton Schools at the lower end of the table are actually performing better than some of the schools towards the top if the added value figures are taken into account.

Very few schools will entertain extending a pupil's education at Key Stage Four unless there are exceptional circumstances. Furthermore, there is usually little to be gained as the repeat year might not be useful for going over the previous year's work as syllabus's and modules and courses can change.

I am reluctant to recommend any course of action other than getting your sister to contact the school and exploring all of options open to her daughter. This might entail re-sitting some modules that she might have failed. It might also be possible to ask for special consideration from the exam boards and have her marks adjusted or extra time allocated for some of her exams. It's vital that action is taken now as exam entries are underway right now and late entries for re-sits will incur exorbitant fees that schools might be reluctant to take on.

 

[MontyVeda]

My second oldest Niece will be taking her GCSE's next year I'm really worried that she will come out of school with no qualifications. She is a bright girl but has a learning difficulty, one that has been passed down from my father. Both my sister and I have the same problem. We are in the minority that is only able to learn if we are shown how to do something several times, we then need to repeat it until said task sticks.

...

That, in my view is the fundamental problem with the education system. One size fits all doesn't work as well as 'they' would like to believe.

We need different types of education to address differing needs. It doesn't have to be in separate schools, just a much wider variety of approaches which genuinely cater for the masses rather than the majority.

 

[vernon]

explain to her the difficulty and if you can work with her outside school, we have to try our selves since the system fails , meanwhile try and get legal aid and sue them for failing to teach as they are reqired to do. ps most of this is a tong in cheek rant so many schools fail our children (me included) but we need to deal with the children and parents who disrupt and allow the disruptin of the education of others grrrrrrrr rant over

I doubt that legal aid will fund an action that is likely to fail. Who is to judge whether the problem is failure to teach or failure to learn? I'd be very reluctant to offer any diagnosis of the 'failure' without a portfolio of the pupil's work, grades, and assessment of special needs conducted by someone qualified to do so.

 

[vernon]

That, in my view is the fundamental problem with the education system. One size fits all doesn't work as well as 'they' would like to believe.

We need different types of education to address differing needs. It doesn't have to be in separate schools, just a much wider variety of approaches which genuinely cater for the masses rather than the majority.

I for one would welcome such an approach. The tax payer and Local Education Authorities can not afford to pay for the infrastructure to support such an idealistic set up.

 

[Gromit]

The learning difficulty she has is dyslexia, which was assessed after leaving primary school, the school has up until this year provided her with the help that she needs but has withdraw that help this year probably due to funding shortages.

If someone fails to learn, Is it not down to the way that person is taught?

D - U grades are seen as failure when going for certain jobs, I struggled with just having one C and the rest E grades. Luckily I was able to go back to college at 23 discovering I wasn't thick.

 

[vernon]

The learning difficulty she has is dyslexia, which was assessed after leaving primary school, the school has up until this year provided her with the help that she needs but has withdraw that help this year probably due to funding shortages.

If someone fails to learn, Is it not down to the way that person is taught?

All pupils can be taught given enough time, teachers and funding. Education is currently short of all three commodities to expect all pupils to get a fair crack of the whip irrespective of their ability.

D - U grades are seen as failure when going for certain jobs, I struggled with just having one C and the rest E grades. Luckily I was able to go back to college at 23 discovering I wasn't thick.

B and C grades are seen as failures when going for certain jobs.

You need to be prepared for the eventuality that your neice might not be a B or C grade candidate. I teach kids that are bright as buttons and 'gut feeling' suggests a higher degree of intelligence than that suggested by the results of standardised assessment tasks.

Not everyone can be an astronaut.

Dyslexia, if officially diagnosed and statemented, attracts funding and gets allowances in examinations. It's not unusual to find that dyslexic pupils are funded with 'spare money' without official channels of assessment and funding being used. The difficulty arises when the funding sources dry up and no official statement exists to allow access to funded support. A lot of funding streams have disappeared in the past few years and there's quite a few casualties.

 

[Bobtoo]

Don't get too hung up on league tables. My son's school is consistently one of the top state schools in Scotland if the league tables are to be believed, but it's not because they are good at teaching. Mostly it's because it has an affluent catchment area but I've now discovered they are fudging the results by not letting any pupil do the final exams if there's the slightest chance they might get a poor grade.

 

[david1701]

can she be taught at home? there isn't anything in the gcse's an adult shouldn't be able to understand given an evening with the revision guide I've done a fair bit of tutoring and I know one on one time really makes a difference to pull up to a fairly basic C level type understanding. Not saying she needs tutors just a parent sibling or vague relation to put some time in?

 

[growingvegetables]

A fwiw – the most important things here are your niece's confidence in herself, and her trust in the patience and support of people around her?. Not easy, I know– both my sons are dyslexic to different degrees.

Hard facts

• Schools have to be interested in their league table statistics, and ****-all else; they are under pressure to make their “5 A-C” figures look good – by any means, fair or foul.
• What little budget is left, after the *ankers and the PFI merchants have creamed off their bonuses, tax breaks, and %age cut, goes to students in the lower middle range who can be raised from a D grade in the core subjects (English/Maths/Science) to a C grade. Gifted students, students with special difficulties, students with talents in other areas (music/languages/art/technology?) are "not a priority" (ie file and forget).There is the outside chance that you could get a special needs statement from the local authority (desperately hard to secure, as the granting of a statement imposes financial obligations). Your choice – put your energy into fighting for a statement, or into supporting your niece? At this stage - (imho) support your niece?

Put aside my cynicism about the****ed-up education system in England. A couple more positive facts– sorry, this is complicated

• if your niece gets 5 A-C GCSEs (that's a Level 2), she can go on to a Level 3 course in a Sixth Form or College – ie A levels or equivalent.

• if your niece gets mainly C-E GCSEs (ie Level 1), she can go on to a Level 2 course in a College.
• if your niece gets lower GCSE grades, she can go on to a Level 1 course in a College.

I've no idea if that is clear or not –the point is, whatever level she comes out of in school, she gets the chance to achieve the next level in college; in effect, a second shot at reaching a higher level, with a bit of care in a course that suits her strengths? And if it's in a college, who get paid by results, with a financial interest in NOT losing students fo rsomething as trivial as dyslexia, she should get a lot more appropriate support.

Sad fact (in my experience), colleges put a lot more effort into making sure their students succeed. I've been teaching “the most disaffected” 15-16 year old students in a school ... and it's mind boggling to meet ex-students after they've spent a year in college, and hear what they've achieved and how they feel about it.




Postscript

Dyslexia, however crippling it might be in the tiny-minded, budget-constrained world of a school, need not be a barrier. The biggest source of strength I had, in supporting my sons with their dyslexia, was two managers I'd worked under in Britain and W Africa. Far and away the best managers I've had, and both seriously dyslexic. ****, they found it hard to get to where they were, and it took them a bit longer, but you couldn't find better managers anywhere. Role models you just don't find in as chool

Eldest son – had several false starts through GCSE and A Levels, but graduated with a First Class Honours. Took a bit longer than most students – yup! And so what.

Second son – he's had the several false starts too, but it looks like he's found a course that suits his strengths and abilities.