Lovely

Last Friday night I got a disclosure of the sort of abuse that you don't even read about in the papers - horrible things that nobody wants to know about it.

 

One kid, Lovely, in bottom set, is really bad at maths. She did 20 - 9, got 29 and was happy with it. She doesn't really understand any of the operations. I drew her rectangles on squared paper for times tables, 2 the same size, and we counted the squares in each, but different ways. She was surprised that we got the same answer, even though she knew they were both 5 squares by 8 squares. I'm helping her a little extra, because she wants to understand so badly and the funny thing is, she's doing well in most of her other subjects, and she just doesn't seem like a bottom-set kid. No diagnosed difficulties, very articulate and hardworking - why wan't she getting it?

 

After a few weeks of one-on-one, I worked out that she had somehow missed place value. She's never grasped it, and it had messed up every subsequent maths concept for her. But why? Surely they do that a lot at primary, how had she missed something so central? So I asked her. I said: it seems like you're missing a piece of the puzzle, from when you were very little. Does that sound right to you?

Yes, she said. Yes, because I didn't go to school much then.

Oh? How come?

Well miss, I wasn't allowed to go, because ...

 

You occasionally read about these things. Kids kept home from school to disguise abuse. It's even used (unfairly) as an argument against home education. But in the flesh it's completely heart-rending and incomprehensible. I have goosebumps and pricking tears even now from writing this, and the thought that she's lived with this in silence for so long, just getting on with it, never acting out, never having a clue what's going on in class because when those crucial concepts were covered, she was hardly there, and when she was present 'I didn't seem to concentrate all that well, Miss'. Her literacy has mostly recovered, but perhaps because of it's linear nature, her maths hasn't. And I am so angry.