My experience of administering the WASI to large numbers of FE
students studying on as variety of A Level courses is that the
results, although standardised and used widely, do not always
accurately reflect a student's levels of ability.
If the issue is one of whether the student will benefit from HE then
the same can be said of students entering FE to study A Levels or
AVCEs, etc. If the learning environment is 'Inclusive' then more
students will 'learn how to learn' and thus will begin to believe in
themselves sufficiently to be able to tackle the demands of an
Educational Psychology assessment.
The student who has met the criteria for being accepted onto a
course at HE level has obviously got abilities that have not
demonstrated by his/her performance in the EP assessment. One
of our students, now in her 2nd year of A Levels, started with us to
resit her GCSEs. Our assessment of her at the time (using the
WASI) seemed to reveal general learning difficulties (as well as
specific learning difficulties.) Never the less, she passed her
GCSE resits and moved onto two years of A Levels. We have
supported her learning, she has become more confident and has
had success with her AS results last Summer. Recently we had
her assessed by an EP (using the WAIS) for the purposes of
applying for the DSA and found that she performed significantly
better, i.e. at the 50th centile for Block Design instead of the 21st
centile and at the 63rd centile for Vocabulary instead of the
21centile. Our experience with this student is not unusual.
There would seem to be too many variables involved in cognitive
assessments for the process to be treated as an exact science.
Sue Jepson
Skills Development Coordinator
Brockenhurst College
On 3 Apr 2003, at 15:00, Liz Thompson wrote:
> Does anyone have experience of an assessment for dyslexia concluding
> that a student has a general learning difficulty rather than a
> specific one? (The consequence being that the student stands very
> little chance of completing a degree course successfully.)
>
> Regards
>
> Liz
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