My thoughts on a page.

I am up to my eyeballs in testing.
Two of my children are doing state exams,
one for no reason (that I can see),
the other is doing his final exams,
and depending on results,
will select his course and college.

I can understand that in order to move on,
my eldest must undergo some sort of exam.
I think it is an incredibly wasteful experience,
to have him studying seven subjects,
when he has no interest at all in two of them.
However that is the system and so be it.

What I cannot cope with,
is the testing that my youngest has to put up with.
She is eleven.
It has been very obvious for quite some years,
that she is as brilliantly dyslexic,
as her older brother.
Last year she was, yes you guessed it,
“Tested” for dyslexia,
and it was the first test she did,
where her results were spectacular.
On a scale of 1-10,
she is a brilliant 10 for dyslexia.

We could have saved them a fortune in the department,
as we see evidence of it every day.
Take the other day for example.
She was playing with her older sisters phone,
out in the hall.
She decides to send us a text,
even though we are only in the room next door.
We could hear her getting frustrated,
whilst writing the text.
As we are used to her creative spelling,
we were smirking imagining the text we would get.
However to our dissapointment,
every word was spelled correctly.
Then we heard her shout in,
“Don’t laugh at the spellings,
I tried to correct it but the phone kept changing it back”.
The phone was on predictive text!

Two weeks ago they were tested in school.
It is a state test,
designed to check numeracy and literacy.
It is also used by the school,
to make a case for resource teachers,
depending on the numbers who show up below par.

My problem with this test is twofold.
My daughter is already classified Dyslexic,
so should show up in the school statistics already.
My second issue is the test itself.
She has a reading age way below her years.
She cannot read the test.
She is as bright if not brighter than many in her class,
yet for one and a half hours she sits there,
and feels stupid.

When I asked her how it was,
this is what she said.
“They ask the question, which is the odd one out,
“blah, blah or blah?”,
“I look at it and just guess a,b or c.
I never put down the letter I did for the question before”.
Then she adds, “I’d say I must get some of them right”.

Listening to her I cannot understand,
why on earth she needs to do this test.
It is of no benefit to her or her school.
In October I will get the results.
Her literacy and numeracy are not up to scratch.
Shock horror, tell me something we do not know.

So I have made a decision.
Next year when her class are sitting this test,
my little lady will be absent.
My protest will not involve debate or argument.
But it will not be negotiable.
On testing day we will be somewhere else,
answering very important questions such as,
“Would you like ice cream with your chocolate cake?”.

photo credit: ccarlstead via photopin cc
photo credit: justinrussell via photopin cc