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Jonathan Saunders is Region Four’s top special needs NGSA performer

Jul 17, 2018 News

Ten year- old, Jonathan Saunders was among some 14,500 students to sit the National Grade Six Assessment, (NGSA) examination, last March. He emerged the top performing student among those with special needs, last month. The St Paul’s Primary School student earned 400 marks and a spot at Plaisance Secondary, where he is likely to attend in September.
The lad’s mother, Annesia Woolford-Saunders recently told Regional officials that she is proud of her son’s achievement. The beaming mother, however, talked about some of the difficulties Jonathan faced in school.
According to Woolford-Saunders, Jonathan was denied oxygen at birth.
As a result, he faced many long –term health challenges which affected his ability to learn. Consequently, Jonathan struggled to speak and walk. She noted too that he was unable to write as fast as other learners, or pronounce some words properly.
However, the mother remained confident in her son’s ability to retain what he had been taught.
“I know that he has a great memory, because as long as he is taught something, he remembers it,” she said. Woolford-Saunders, who is also a teacher at Plaisance Secondary, revealed that when her son started his educational pursuits at the Green Acres School he faced a number of challenges. As a result, she and her husband were forced to move him to another private school. “We eventually moved him to the public school as most of the work that they taught him at the private school was colouring. It was as though he was specialising in colouring and therefore, we recognised that we had to move him, and we did, but to a public school,” she said. Woolford–Saunders said that had the school provided her son with a scribe and a reader he would have done better at the exams.
“Jonathan is a very alert, intelligent and focused child. However, because of how his brain works and the fact that he is slow in communicating, he certainly would have been at a disadvantage,” she said.
Woolford–Saunders added nonetheless, that the most critical challenge relates to the stigma and discrimination. She recalled that while the other students didn’t care about her son’s disability, a teacher at the Grade Six level refused to have Jonathan in the class because she claimed that she was not comfortable working with him.
But, after one teacher refused to work with her son, another teacher volunteered, which gave him an opportunity to write the Grade Six examinations. The mother therefore called for more training for teachers in Special Education Needs (SEN).
“While the SEN department at the National Centre for Educational Research Development (NCERD) does a number of short programmes, I firmly believe that the training should be longer so as to ensure that the teachers working with special needs children better understand their roles,” she opined.
The woman added that her husband also deserves the credit for her son’s work. “Jonathan’s father is self-employed and continues to spend significant (study time) with him. He has been the major backbone in our daily struggles to cope with the difficulties and challenges.”
Meanwhile, Special Needs Officer within the Department of Education at Region Four, Simone Abrams said that the region has a lot to celebrate over Jonathan’s performance.
She expressed similar sentiments that a scribe and reader would have assisted Jonathan, adding that he is evidently bright.
“At the Special Needs Office, we are very proud of him and would like to continue supporting him and other students as well.” The sky is the limit,” Abrams said.
Abrams noted the Department of Education Region Four will continue providing relevant and timely support so as to ensure that those special needs children can pursue a normal educational life.

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