I AM a parent of a nine-year-old child in a Buckinghamshire primary school who has special educational needs (SEN).

He has been diagnosed with complex specific learning difficulties. Despite early identification his needs are not being met and although he has made some progress he is still lagging behind his contemparies by at least three years.

In addition he has emotional and developmental difficulties which are not being addressed. The headteacher is sympathetic but admits that her budget does not allow for such complex difficulties to be addressed. The school requested an assessment from Bucks LEA.

This was refused on the grounds that some educational progress had been made (no mention of the other difficulties). When I spoke with the education officer I was told that as long as some progress was made and my son achieved a reading age of ten years by the time he took his GCSEs then everything was OK!

Apparently this is the reading level one needs to access the papers nowadays.

The GCSE exam does not mark on spelling, punctuation or grammar, only on content ( I assume this does not apply to the English examination), therefore my son will have the possibility of passing some subjects.

So after having spent 12 years in full-time education he would be able to leave school with a basic literacy level of a ten year old!

I cannot believe that this is acceptable in the 21st Century.

No wonder we have a nation of disaffected, semi-literate children leaving our schools. All of the studies show that 50 per cent of the young offenders in prisons and other institutions have some form of specific learning difficulty, dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD. Is this really what we want for our children?

What happened to the government who quoted education, education, education!

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