Turban Explorer

Great. Thanks for your input.

northernbird

You're most welcome.

itigo

Do you use Chrome? It will only work with Explorer on our PC.......

hoveactually

Yes, the information is provided to the school but is only available to parents through discussion with the class teacher (according to Education Measurement).
There can be a problem at primary school, where the child has the same teacher for most subjects, if they simply don't get on with each other. Steve Biddulph says “boys learn teachers, not subjects” and I have found this to be true.

northernbird

Absolutely true and in the majority of cohorts females outperform males quite significantly.

itigo

With my professional head on - if it's anything like my experience of learning difficulties in this country, parents have to do the leg work unless it's extreme either way..........mega bucks and infuriating!

Amazulu

I wouldn't mind knobbing my son's teacher, she's very tasty.

HelenTD

The PP teacher referred him to the school psych for testing, but it didn't get done that year, and they said it would be done early in Year 1. I checked in about March and found out that the Year 1 teacher told the school psych to not bother. Luckily he did well in Year 2, winning the class prize and again in Year 3, so his brightness and hard work were recognised. Then came nightmare Year 4, and we paid to have him tested (WISC) and it confirmed that everyone already knew - except the Year 4 teacher, who just ignored it. Some teachers should just be sacked and banned from working with children.

At our school, it's terrible for bright kids, and I would say that it's not good for every other kid. At last the penny is beginning to drop for a lot of parents, not just the parents of the bright kids. There seems to be a great deal of resentment of the bright kids, so their parents have a secret underground club of support for each other and the kids.

My poor lad had a terrible time last year, as did most of the boys unfortunate enough to have this teacher. We had high hopes for this year, but instead of the bright shiny star teacher we were promised, yet another dud. I fail to understand how these teachers can believe that the work is at the right level, it's not, perhaps only for the kids who struggle a bit. In fact, it's not good enough for them either. A couple of months ago I managed to get out of him why he had pretty much stopped doing any work at school, except for the stupidly easy spelling he was given and the stupidly easy maths. The totally useless, vindictive w*@2#! Year 4 teacher psychologically traumatised him:curse:. He's now pretty much lost this year at school as well.

rajj

Just a thought as I couldn't help noticing the Eek's in your posts after the numeracy result. I have a strongly held belief that kids who's generally perform badly in numeracy will 'suffer' a similar trend in other areas of study eventually. For such kids personal maths tuition for a year or two would be beneficial as it instills confidence. At least that's my experience with one of my sprogs - who (in my opinion independant of what her teacher or maths naplan test results suggested) seemed to be struggling for a while. I kept insisting on the tuition and glad to report all is well with her schooling.

HelenTD

He does go to tuition for maths and English. Initially he found it difficult, as he hasn't had to use his brain for a couple of years, but for a few weeks now he's really enjoying the satisfaction of learning something new. Still having a few problems with writing stories, but slowly improving. The worst thing is that he was always a kid with great language skills, but he is still getting over the cruel moron last year and this year's one is no better, except there's less humiliation and bullying in class.

This school really hates it when kids go to tutoring. They make negative comments to you, about you to other parents and teachers, but worse of all, they make negative comments to the kids themselves. This is all an effort to undermine you and your child. My son and another child have both had the class teacher may comments like, "it's bad going to tutors, they're not proper teachers" and "tutoring is not good for you, you should be taught by teachers in schools". The irony goes right over their heads.

carolinephillips

Narrow minded bigotry seems rife.
Cann you change schools rather than struggle on with this one?

HelenTD

He just doesn't want to move away from his friends, and he is a bit shy, also not that good at sports, a bit on the small side. There are several families in the same position, which is why we have a underground support club. Unfortunately the principal lies when parents go to interviews with him about enrolment - what's to stop a principal at another school doing the same? Other schools that do the right thing by these kids will only take kids who live within their catchment. So, you get trapped, unless your child is at an early enough stage where moving to another school would work. In our case, he did very well at Years 2 and 3, now it's dived and it is due to the Year 4 teacher last year and this year's poor excuse. If a child has been traumatised by a teacher, it's hard to get over that, but we're working on it.

Strategies used by parents at our school are to go to tutoring and/or to teach the child extra stuff after school or at the weekend. This is an extra burden on families and kids (financial, time and effort), when other state school kids in WA get appropriate teaching for free, during school time.

You can also take the issue to a level higher than the school, after showing that you have communicated to the school about your child's special needs, and that the school hasn't met them. To try and stop me communicating with them, the class teacher refused to give me her email address (but gave it to other parents, who kindly passed it on) and the deputy airhead told me that she would keep me informed about my child's progress, instead of me asking the teacher how he was doing. Said deputy airhead then didn't keep me informed, so I've got her there. I can show that his performance has dived and that they didn't appropriately inform me, and that they haven't taken any action to turn it around. Actually, their action was to provide him with even easier work, to build his confidence - the confidence that they have damaged by their actions. So, he and others are bored by the easiness of the normal classwork, but the teacher is giving him even easier work.