National Standards and Students with Dyslexia

I was reading a students summary from GSE the other day and this is what it said:

'To understand dyslexia means you have to understand how a person processes information. Schools are built around the activities of the left brain - reading, writing, spelling, mathematics - all of which are abstract sequential thought processes. 90% of the population have no problem in these areas. There are some people who prefer to process the information in their right brain. This is the way they are wired. The right side processes information in whole, concrete images which are reality based. The learning process is grounded in the auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic senses. This reality based visual imagery makes it difficult to break things down into parts. Hence individual letters and sounds are abstract, maths is abstract and so is time. Learning problems around reading, writing, spelling and maths is the result of the brain preferring the right side to process information in whole visual concrete images.'

To me it is obivious that assessing these students to the 'National Standards' will do nothing to help them and will only mark them as failures again and again. We need to stop over assessing and start helping these children to expreience success.