Does your child have normal vision and hearing and is he/ she receiving the same education as other learners but they are still struggling at school? Are you frustrated because you know that your child is capable of achieving more? There is hope, with the proper support your child will be able to lead a fulfilling life and get an education. Some of these learners have normal intelligence but yet have trouble learning or have difficulty applying a skill. Some of the learning areas that learners may struggle with are reading, spelling, mathematical reasoning.
The first step is determining the problem. The more delayed a person is in seeking help, the wider the gap becomes and more costly and harder it is to close the gap but it is never too late. Thus a psycho-educational assessment by an educational psychologist is of utmost importance. A psycho-educational assessment assesses a learner’s cognitive ability, scholastic ability and an emotional status.
The cognitive component measures a learner’s Intelligence Quotient (IQ). This is used as a guide rather than a definite measure. The ranges which a learners IQ levels could fall in are: above average, average, below average and borderline. A holistic approach is taken when writing a report whereby parents’ considerations, clinical observations, school reports, and teacher’s concerns are taken in consideration together with the results of the psycho-educational assessments.
The psycho-educational assessment results will indicate where the child’s weaknesses lie so for example, it will be able to determine if there are attention difficulties, auditory difficulties, visual perceptual difficulties, verbal difficulties, memory difficulties processing difficulties or if the child has an overall learning disability. With this information the educational psychologist is then able to point the parents in the correct direction on what needs to be done to remediate whatever difficulty has been found.
Often a child that is struggling at school, have low self- esteem which manifests in withdrawing or behavioural problems. The child often feels misunderstood and they usually fall through the cracks in our large classrooms whereby teachers are unable to solely help them bridge those gaps. Those gaps can only be bridged once we are certain of the causes and this where the psycho-educational assessment by the educational psychologist is of utmost importance.
If you are interested in having your child assessed to determine their strengths and weaknesses please contact me on 0837755166 or email zaakirahmohamed@gmail.com