If one word sums of the Yorkshire Coast, then that word is going to be BRACING….. A few brave dogs braved the North Sea but not for long. I lost a game of chicken and had to endure ice cold wet feet. That woke me up.
On the way back WE talked school. Sadly a school that is increasingly ‘missing in action’ as the May Exams fast approach, like an out of control Freight Train.
The more I see, the more I hear, the more I realise just how bad school has been for Hawklad. Looking back to when he was going everyday. He told me that he use to bin most of his pack up school lunches for two reasons. At least once a week he never got the time to eat lunch due to work requirements – I’m not sure a child going hungry is the best way to create an enriching learning environment.
The other reason, the MAIN REASON.
“Dad I used to get so stressed by school, so sad, so unhappy. I truly hated that place, I was scared of it. The teachers didn’t seem to care, the never noticed me. I was never allowed to be myself. It would make me sick, too sick too eat….”
Speaking with his NHS specialist, they can’t keep up with the tidal wave of child mental health problems in school.
How can this happen.
How have we got school so wrong, so stress filled.
The farmer is hard at work in the fields. Whatever it takes.
We have a real problem with education in the UK. Too much potential is missed. Too many pupils are served up factory production line schooling which is about the needs of the system rather than the needs of the individual child. If you don’t fit the expected mould then you are discarded.
The farmer chooses to focus on the crops that provide him with what he needs to keep going.
What a perfect indication of the health of the UK’s education system than hearing one of the loathsome, self absorbed candidates standing to be our next Prime Minister talking about a disabled child needing to go to a special school because ‘disabled children are generally aren’t intelligent enough’ to go to a mainstream school.
Unbelievable.
Unforgivable.
Lost for words……
Sadly it’s not an isolated view……
Had a long video meeting with school today about Hawklad. Call me NAIVE but I thought school might have been just a tad POSITIVE. A pupil against the odds teaching himself to read when school told him it was beyond him. From having a reading age of about 6 years behind the expected school standard to now reading History Texts without assistance. All achieved through his hard work in just over 2 years. A pupil who is getting really great marks in the exams and tests he sits at home. Definitely NAIVE I am.
‘We are concerned that his marks aren’t reflective of the true position”
“Are you sure that you are not helping him, or he is using GOOGLE to answer questions”
“He is performing way ahead of his predicted attainment levels”
“So he wants to go to college. Has he thought about some more vocational routes rather than college. He may probably not meet Our College’s entry requirements. College might be beyond his academic levels. Don’t want to disappoint him .”
“Other colleges and places might have offerings more suited to his level and requirements.”
“Unless he can demonstrate he can perform in formal exams then there is little we can do, course work and home work doesn’t really count these days. That’s how the system works….”
SPEECHLESS……
School can’t seem to get their head round the sad irony that he learnt to read and overcome his dyslexia when he was REMOVED from their CLASSROOM environment. Like too many pupils with dyslexia, with special educational needs, they are just dumped into the bottom set with minimal help. Assumptions are made on low attainment levels. To get even the most minimal help they are required to put their hand up in front of the rest of the class and admit they are struggling. That is never going to happen long term, occasionally when Hawklad did that, other kids poked fun at him. The teachers often focusing on those pupils with the worst behaviour so even if the hand went up, help never arrived. So he stopped putting his hand up and he started to fall behind. This is not an isolated case, it’s sadly reflective of modern UK schooling. It’s all about EXAMS. Schools become EXCELLENT because of exam results not because they meet individual educational needs. This school is no different to most schools here.
In the UK we have a looming food production crisis because we have become too dependent on factory, one big size fits all farming….
The school term finishes in a weeks time. Then it’s a 6 week break. I’m discussing with Hawklad what he wants to do. It’s his future. It’s has to be his call but I know what I would do in an instant if it was my call. Why does it feel like the school system is working against him.
This post was started about three months ago. Back then I had found an odd argument raging online about a Google Maps Image. One particular object on the satellite view was of much interest. It was either seen as a crashed UFO, some secretive Military Weapon or a Garden Trampoline. As it was clearly in someone’s garden then we might have the answer….
Frustratingly I didn’t save the Google Image, which kinda wrecks the point of the post. I know it’s not the same but here is another crashed UFO I have found in a garden. Why did it take Mulder and Scully so many series of the X-Files to find hard evidence of the an alien invasion when it took me 5 minutes on Google. Looks like every town and city has many of these crash sites.
Had to laugh today. One of Hawklad’s teachers has not sent him anything all year. We have made do by finding stuff on the schools online system and just hoping we are looking at the right things. Anyway, unbelievably that teacher sent Hawklad some stuff today. It was the marking scheme and answers to a mock exam that Hawklad is waiting to sit (still waiting for the questions to arrive). I always thought the questions came before the answers. School has changed since my days.
But many things puzzle me about school these days. Hawklad has had four other mock exams marked which he sat at home. The marks 85%, 75%, 66%, 65%. Clearly he takes after his mum as my exam scores often never exceeded my school age. Here’s the bit that puzzles me. School is still reluctant to move Hawklad from the bottom set, as that’s ‘the group they feel reflects his current attainment level’. Why do many schools as standard, pigeon hole pupils as low attainment purely on the basis of a term like dyslexia or autism or ADHD or ……. What happened to the idea of treating each child as an individual and seeing how high they can soar. No I don’t understand this, so I’m going back to something I understand far better. Crashed UFOs…..
French Homework is to complete a crossword. A French Crossword. Marks will be deducted for incorrect spellings.
Dad I can’t even do a crossword in English never mind French. I can remember the sounds but I can’t spell the words. The Teacher knows this but just says I have to try harder.
And we have more…
Drama Homework is to complete an acting related Word Search Game. Really. Very early on his previous school it was identified that he could just not do Word Searches Tables. The Psychologist who looked into this established that for some reason he was not able to visualise letters and collections of letters if they were printed diagonally or backwards. On top of this his dyslexia just made identifying words difficult. As this was stressful for him it was strongly recommended that his education did not use word based games. Fast forward a couple of years and his current school now requires him to do word searches as it’s the set task for the class.
I can see the point of a French Crossword for some kids but how is a dyslexic kid expected to complete this. Has our school system become so inflexible that we can’t just vary the teaching programme a little for each individual child need. Clearly not. The Government is committed to this Factory/Production line model of education. That’s for State Schools. Private Schools have more scope to flex the teaching programme. Unfortunately many can’t afford to go Private. But that won’t bother Boris and his buddies. As long as the chauffeur driven car turns up and the expensive wine keeps coming.
Ok I can see the point of a crossword for French for some BUT… What is the pigging point of a word search for Drama. I guess it’s all part of the Government’s drive to make every kid spell correctly the defined key words. Spelling is given a higher profile that actually understanding what the word means. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the best way to develop the next Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Cruise is to focus on spelling. Oh hang on a minute these have dyslexia as well. So no I don’t see the point.
We just set too many of our kids up to fail. They see other kids repeatedly praised for great spelling or neat handwriting while at the same time they are just told to try harder. How demoralising is that. A phrase you hear often is that kids with learning difficulties have to try super hard just to keep the perceived learning gap from widening. DAMM RIGHT THEY DO. Too many kids are forced through the same stereotyped classroom hoop. Never given a chance to demonstrate their unique skill sets as these are not in the areas deemed valuable by the Government.
Too many kids have been failed by our society. It’s not as if our society is particularly successful or sustainable on the back of this. This has to stop. When it does stop and we start allowing all our kids to grow – just take a few minutes to think how good this world will become. That is a hope worth fighting for. That is a hope worth voting for.
Beckies Mental Mess this week has been doing a great job of raising awareness about (ADHD) Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. I’ve just read Rory’s words which explain so well what it’s like to live with ADHD.
From here in this quiet part of Yorkshire ADHD is very much part of our life. It’s now officially part of our sons diagnosis. But it feels very much like a junior version. During the long and ever so frustrating diagnostic process which he went through ADHD was an after thought. It was missed. Never mentioned. Everything was lumped into Aspergers and Dyspraxia.
Then our Paediatrician changed. In his first meeting with our Son he genuinely seemed surprised that he could find no mention of ADHD on the records. A few weeks later it was added to the diagnosis. Why was it missed?
We where made aware that Aspergers in most cases goes hand in hand with other conditions. Everything seems to merge together to give a unique set of symptoms and personality traits. It is often difficult to unpick the individual conditions. Generally Aspergers and Autism are just used as overriding terms to cover a wide and complex set of interrelated issues. In our sons case ADHD was just missed. A specialist went through the original symptoms list. Of the 16 original listed symptoms which were defined as Aspergers related 7 were later changed to ADHD.
As soon as ADHD was on the medical record we were offered medication. Interestingly although our Sons the symptoms had not changed at all suddenly the addition of four letters prompted the option of drugs. We declined. Or should I say Son declined. In his words
ADHD hasn’t changed me. I’m still the same person with Aspergers. It’s just who I am.
Since we declined medication ADHD has never been specifically mentioned again by our Doctors. They have continued to offer behavioural therapy to try and ease the young Aspergers kid into this strange old world. Due to Government cut backs the therapy is becoming increasingly sporadic. Once someone gets past a certain age the health support basically dries up. But at least something happened. From an Education point of view basically no school interventions have occurred. No assessment of educational impact has been carried out. It’s the standard education package for all regardless of any specific needs. It’s so much easier to bracket individual kids as low attainment.
This is the shocking fact in education today. Certainly here in England. Specific educational help to those with a learning disability – some prefer to call it a learning disadvantage – is denied to too many kids in our society. Effectively they are seen as an expensive drain on resources. So much easier to write them off. How do we explain that to our kids. How as a society have we got education so wrong. We need to keep shouting as one day those in charge will listen.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 