My year 5 child was recently assessed (privately, referred by us) at being at high school level for maths - can't recall what year at high school but high school nonetheless.
But he can't even get into the maths extension class for his year level at school.
aggghhhhh.
This is the same school that wouldn't let our other child in the 'tech' group, despite outperforming them all on ICAS computing exams.
Ongoing issue with the school - limited resources and the same few families get what they want ALL OF THE TIME. We're not one of those families.
The thing we find very frustrating is that we know three of these families and we know that the children in each family are assessed as being "moderately gifted". At their first assessment, our kids were assessed as being EG. Don't want to get into a "levels of giftedness" debate and clearly there are many issues to consider with needs, but I also think it's not unreasonable to assume that an exceptionally gifted child would find regular class work even more unsuitable than a moderately gifted child would.
TBH - I think we're simply a difficult family and have been placed in the "too hard to deal with, too resource-intensive, let's ignore all of their requests and hope they go away" basket.
Yes, they're extended at home, after school activities, holiday programmes. But the unfairness of it all does make me angry.
Hi there angry, I feel for you. At the primary school my children attended the PTA and board families were in everything, the proletariat were only included if absolutely necessary to make up the numbers. If the resources truly are limited how would the school react if you took your children out of school to be extended (if you can) on a day trip or similar? Just a thought.
Frustration can be a very tiring thing to cope with. The best thing is to find ways of taking positive action. You could try educating yourself on the rules the Ministry says schools have to follow [the NAG's] these state that Gifted Students must be identified and catered for. If you have an independent and valid assessment that supports your view you have a pretty good case to then phone and speak to a ministry of Education Student Support Advisor. Lastly remember like many things - stick with it, just do it postiively and not adversarily if you can.
Keep a record and reward yourself for perserverance and every time you make one small step forward!
Victoria - you are not far off the mark with regard to who gets accommodations from this school.
Alison, yes, we have ed psyc verification of the giftedness, and level of giftedness. This is accepted by the school. The school does have some expertise on giftedness. But, their solution with us has been to accelerate (2x) and feel they've done their job. We've phoned the Ministry several times, constantly battled, and been met with resistance because our kids are accelerated - as if that solves everything. We've kept records of everything and may end up with a formal complaint.
Despite my children's level of giftedness and acceleration, they don't qualify for an IEP.
We don't have the report yet on the latest assessment but there was some discussion that we might be dealing with a PG boy. Just great - child like that, skip him 2 years, say 'what more do you want' then leave him because the MG kids who haven't been accelerated need special accommodations.
