Children with learning problems left behind in school system - (Full text for Easier Reading follows)
CHILDREN with learning difficulties are being left behind in the state school system, according to two private educators.
As a result many children will go into their first year of secondary school next year with poor literacy and numeracy skills, said former teacher Mr Allan Fuller, who is now a private tutor.
The system is doing nothing for thousands of children with dyslexia, according to former teacher Christina Alexander, who has developed a method to overcome the problem.
Mr Fuller said the problems in primary schools were caused by three factors:
For many parents a poor final year primary school report card was the first indication their child hadn't coped.
Many teachers, aware of the limitations of the system they must work with, were now advocating private tutoring for children who had finished primary school without the basic skills.
He said parents should have the same attitude to private tutoring for schoolwork and sport training.
"They will insist on private coaching and every possible chance for their budding golf player or tennis player, but throw up their hands in horror at the suggestion their son or daughter might make good use of tutoring to improve their basic reading, writing and arithmetic," Mr Fuller said.
Ms Alexander believes it's about time people with dyslexia came out of the closet.
She left the school system in 1978 out of frustration at the lack of remedial teaching for dyslexics.
Students were rebelling because they couldn't write essays... I resigned from the school to try to find out what we weren't doing," she said.
She developed a multi-sensory - seeing, hearing, feeling and saying - system, which she said had since been used to help 14,000 dyslexics.
The theory had been developed at the turn of the century but had not been successfully applied.
She said one of her first successes had an IQ of 135 but had genetic as well as primary dyslexia from a traumatic birth.
He was now a high school science master who says he was her guinea pig.
Ms Alexander says many dyslexics are on the verge of suicide.
"This is not good enough. Children with dyslexia end up at both ends of the schoolyard scale of bullying - the smaller ones get bullied and the bigger ones do the bullying.
"They are hiding the problem because of not receiving the help required," she said.
"Assessed early and using the multi-sensory system I have developed, there is no reason why these children cannot lead perfectly satisfactory lives, without prejudice and fear of losing their job if the boss finds out they cannot read and numerate as well as the rest of them."
Ms Alexander is organising two summer schools on dyslexia at Kooralbyn from December 17-20 and 21-24.