Winter Term Report

1 = Exceeding Targets = E
2 Meeting Targets = M

Brief Report Nov 2009

Cat Scores June 2009

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Matthew has been placed in the C stream for now as I phoned the SENCo in July to find out where he was to be placed following these Cat tests and his Sats scores. He said that they were putting him in a large class of 30 in the C stream which I thought would be too much for Matthew too soon, so after some discussion the Senco decided he would be placed in a class of 14 children. I did not know at the time the actual Cat scores and assumed that he had done particularly poorly.
There was a Parents evening Monday and the CAT results were given out along with a presentation as to how the school interprets them. The average range the school uses is 95-105, tighter limits than usually published, they also use the upper confidence limit scores as the children's full potential, so that's 5 above the SAS score.
Naturally we had some question for the teacher, such as "how did you decide on the stream for Matthew?" The teachers are actuallly already discussing what to do with him and have been for a few weeks, he is a "quandry". They might possibly move him to the "B" stream at half term but want to make absolutely sure he would be able to cope. We are happy to go with the decision they make as they know what they are talking about - I think.
1 thing that worries me is that they think the lower verbal score is due to Matthew going to welsh school which is probably true to a small extent, but to me it is more the dyslexia . I also discovered 1 friend's son from the welsh school had 2 average and a below average in his CAT tests but he is in the "A" stream due to the his SATS being level 5s. The feeder schools have all been practising the tests - although how you can practise your ability to a higher level I don't know, the welsh school being a non feeder didn't do this, and I see this practise as unhelpful almost as though they are trying to cheat the system- to what end? The teacher also explained how these streams are all "fluid" and they will be moving the children around so I think any attempt to push up grades by the primarys should be ironed out, (some schools also push the SAT levels up as it's all done on teacher assessments in Wales).

School report click on it to enlarge

School report

Here is an extract from Matthew's report.

School report-Sats

Sporting Success!

Matthew won the most improved player of the year 2008/2009 in his Rugby Team. He was absolutely delighted as he kept asking if he would get it, as he knew himself that his skills have soared this year. It was very well earned, he had his sights on winning it for the last few months, he went out and worked his socks off. The team won a silver medal this year when Matthew was picked to play. We now have a "Wall of Matthew" for him to put his trophies on :) That's JPR WIlliams (an X Lions and Wales rugby star) awarding him his trophy.

Update

Thought I'd better give you all an update. Matthew's support reteurned after Christmas after an uncomfortable time with the school. He was given double support to make up for the lost hours - this cannot really make up for time lost but we have to be grateful for anything these days. He's much happier again. We had a parents evening in April where the teacher was very pleased with him said he was a bright child who came out with a suprising amount of facts verbally, he showed us a excellent piece of work that we know he's capable of, done with very little support (science), he's been holding his own in the class tests. The teacher allows him to answer questions in english if he's struggling for the welsh words which takes alot of pressure away.
His tutor is very pleased that he has improved vastly since she first taught him back in September, ordering his stories and spelling. He actually loves to read Tintin books and is asking me to buy him new ones all the time. He also enjoys history along with maths!

Secondary School Choice

The time has arrived when we have to make our 1st and 2nd choice of Secondary school.
We have chosen to remove Matthew from the bilingual Welsh school environment, for several reasons.

The first one being with his Speech and language problems we have decided that one language is quite enough to cope with, for him and for me. Although his Dad speaks Welsh he simply hasn't the time in the evening to help with the welsh reading/spelling and I have become increasing frustrated at reaching for the dictionary constantly. The welsh resources for reading schemes are non exsistent and Matthew is continualy bringing home books too hard for him (and me, although I have taken several welsh courses and do have a good understanding of grammar and vocabulary) even although I have asked the teachers to monitor the books.

The second reason is thet the secondary school we feed is a poor secondary school on the discipline front, we have alraady moved our older son from there to another welsh nedium school and we were hoping it had improved, apparently not. I also cannot find this years results printed anywhere (no surprise there). At the recent year 7 taster visit, 2 boys in the class were bullied at dinner time with not a teacher or 6th former in sight and the swearing on the yard was appauling.

The 3rd reason is that we have am English medium school which has for 4 years running been in the top 250 schools in the UK, their Estyn school report was all 1s and 2s. It always has open days for the parents to look around (none at the welsh comp.), we went along and it was clear to us that they were extremley proud of their record and were actively promoting and selling their school to us parents. The children calmly moved lessons around us. They admit they have their problems as do all secondary schools but are extremley strong on discipline and communicating with the parents. So hopefully we have made the best choice. The school is 10 mins walk away and Matthew's best and second best friends are also going there for the 2nd and 3rd reasons above, Matthew is extremely pleased about that. They went for the taster day last Friday and had a great day, even although they actually had 4 lessons on that day.

Support Disappeared

Matthew has been back in school for 2 weeks now. His 1:1 support for 5hrs a day seems to have disappeared.
True to form, I had to contact school about it. Spoke to the SENCo who tells me the support is still being funded by LEA (great), BUT the TA who supported Matthew for most of last year has been seconded to the Foundation Phase (this is the new way of teaching for nursery classes which requires larger number of staff to children ratio to supervise, which in theory I fully support). The new trainee LSA has also been seconded to the Foundation phase. The Headteacher is trying to employ a LSA, but she told me this over a year ago and we haven't seen one.
I contacted the LEA to try and understand how this can happen and it was them who told me they are funding his help and that the Headteacher should contact the Head of Learning Support for help and advice.
My husbands take on it is "they have removed much needed support so that the nursery children can play outside"