The Editor, Sir:

This letter is in response to Sajoune Rose's 'Call for assistance to 'slow' learners' (Gleaner, June 26.

The Grade One Readiness Inventory is an assessment admin-istered annually to six-year-olds entering the primary school system. It is the Ministry of Education's attempt to identify the students who possess the necessary skills (or lack thereof) to start receiving instruction at the grade-one level.

After the assessment, the ministry is able to report the number of students ready to receive instruction at the primary level and those who are not.

This is commendable,but what is done with these numbers? What intervention is put in place for those students who are not ready?

Correct from grade one

The students who failed the 'readiness test' at grade one are the same students who are labelled as 'slow'. They are placed in the same classes with the students who have passed, instructed in the same way, given the same content and given the same exams. So, no wonder they are always behind.

These are the same students who fail the grade-three diagnostic test and the grade-four literacy test.

After these students have failed all three major assessments done in the most impressionable years of their lives, the Ministry of Education then requires these students to do three weeks of reading lessons during their grade -our year.

Have we as educators ever wondered at the logic of this practice? Why wait until 'slow' students get to grade four to implement remediation when research has shown that a child who leaves grade one as a poor reader will leave grade four as a poor reader? Why not focus on 'slow' learners as early as grade one?

All the research I have come across has explicitly stated that the best place to start remediation is grade one before the problem gets worse. The worse the problem becomes, the harder it will be to correct it.

I am, etc.,

Tennisha Morris

neisha_21@yahoo.com

Kingston