Are Exams getting easier?

It was A Level Results last week and now today pupils notch up the record for GCSE results... and the critics are saying exams are getting easier!

They may well be for some but not for those who are challenged by reading and writing. Most A Levels are much harder for those with such difficulties regardless of how bright they are.

Does anybody else wonder when our education system will start recognising that real intelligence should not just be measured by reading and writing alone? The challenge for those who go on to university is that an even higher proportion of their learning will come from reading and individual study. This is why so many of the world’s geniuses drop out of university but go on to have enormous success afterwards.

So to all those out there who don’t find reading easy, don’t let anyone persuade you that your exam results are a true reflection of how clever you really are.

Bringing up the national average

Yesterday’s 10 o’clock news showed that 40 percent of 14 year olds in England aren’t reaching the required national standard in English, Maths and Science. This raised concern within the education system and with us at Dore.

It’s always really tough getting the phone calls we do from parents whose child has just had poor SATs results. It is agony. To all those who have recently started the programme - I am looking forward to hearing from you in a year’s time and I'm sure then it will be a very different story.

Is there a perfect single sentence for DORE?

When I travel I am often asked “What do you do?” I never seem to give the same answer twice, it is always worded differently because I never feel that I have a perfect single sentence answer (the Americans call this the “elevator speech”).

Does anybody have any ideas on how I can describe what DORE does and what we achieve in a perfect single sentence answer?

Summer Holidays

Every summer we see similar challenges - those mums with a child with attention and hyperactivity symptoms face the nightmare of finding things for their child to do for the seven weeks they are away from school. Bliss for the teacher of course (unless they have their own ADD symptoms at home!).

Often, of course, it is the very time that parents who have put their child through the programme suddenly realise that this summer holiday is nothing like last summer's daunting holiday. Of course, having dealt with hyperactivity and poor attention some discover that the level of creativity that comes to the fore creates the odd issue, albeit in a more positive vein. Chatting with Alex’s mum the other day reminded me of why some mums go grey a little earlier than they would like to!

My recent trip to Barbados

Barbados was a real eye opener, the attitude to education there is very dynamic indeed. Having been asked to do a talk there last week I decided to go and meet a number of educational professionals, I learnt a lot!

One family had been travelling to the UK every six weeks for a year to bring their son on the programme, during the talk he told his amazing story and, of course, stole the show. The bottom line is that we expect to be opening a centre in Barbados before the end of this year driven by the amazing Julia Hanschell.

What a wondferful, hospitable country.

It's time for a quality education...

We should be able to compare apples with apples. It amazes me that everything in our lives today has to satisfy a standard or benchmark. So why is it the education of our children – especially to do with reading, comprehension and behaviour has very little benchmarking? Every product or service that is designed to help with such issues should have a National standard that is satisfied before organisations market it.

All the arguments and debates that occur in the Dyslexia industry would be stopped if they were proper National standards. Perhaps some organisations are scared about what would happen if their products were independently evaluated.

We’ve always pursued the policy of going public with all of our research so that teachers and parents can decide whether or not it’s likely to help in the way that they want. The trouble is – very few others (if any) seem to be as open. We don't insist on having the same tests applied to every product or service so that everyone can compare apples with apples.

Keep them coming

A big thank you to all the contributors to the Dore Talk Forum – those who give fair criticism, those with ideas and those who just want to say what their experiences. We are listening and learning a lot from all your views so please keep them coming.