Assessing things!

Sunshine today. So the weather witch, the lady in the bread shop who predicted good weather for today (and the day after and the day after that), was right. 14 degrees at 9.30 this morning on the billboard at the end of the road. 25 on Calle Florida at 12.45 - with a name like that you would expect nothing less. 19.5 at the bottom of Gran Vía at 3.30. This is more like it. Let's hope it continues for a while. 

We were on Calle Florida because we went out to Lunch with our friend Brendan today. One of the things we talked about in our catching up was the progress his sons have been making at school. He told us about his eldest son, Rafa, coming out of school with "bad news" (the child's words). He had been given1/10 for "conocimiento". 

The Spanish assessment system gives children a mark out of 10 for each subject, grading them "sobresaliente", excellent, "bien", good, "suficiente"' acceptable, "insuficiente", unacceptable, and "deficiente", poor. 1/10 is definitely "deficiente". How does a child who is bright and lively and achieves well all round suddenly become "deficiente"? Well, it turns out that most of the class were, if not actually "deficiente" in "conocimiento", were certainly not much more than "suficiente". So what was going on? 

"Conocimiento" basically means knowledge but as a school subject apparently covers ability to express himself and also assesses his use of Galego, the regional language. Minor mistakes in his Galego take marks away. The child's father was understandably more than a little annoyed. Things like using the Castellano "y" for "and" instead of the Galego "e" took away all the marks for an otherwise correctly composed sentence. Now, this is a child who switches from Spanish to English at the drop of a hat! Not a stupid child by any means! Also, he is only seven years old! 

Regardless of the language problem, more disturbing is the fact that at seven years old he was aware that a 1/10 was bad news for Daddy. A seven year old should not even be aware of being assessed and tested, in my opinion anyway. This is a debate that has taken place regarding SATs, Standard Assessment Tests in the UK. There have been calls for more formal testing for primary age children. Surely the teacher of a class of small children should be able to assess the children's progress informally without putting pressure on! 

Anyway, there it is. 

Looking at newspapers online yesterday I came across items about another, even smaller, child: the little Prince George, who is accompanying his parents, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, on a visit to New Zealand. There was much comment about Kate's outfits, as you might expect, some of it quite negative and all of it rather unnecessary. Sartorially, my only concern was why a little chap who isn't walking under his steam - he was only born last July, after all - was pictured wearing shoes!!! This is one of my personal bugbears. Babies don't need shoes until they learn to walk. It can actually delay learning to walk.

I noted, in passing as it were, that they are also accompanied by the little fellow's nanny: María Teresa Turrión Borrallo. Yes, I checked; she is Spanish. However, it's OK. She's not just a Spanish au-pair. She was trained at Norland College, the posh place for proper nanny training, where they teach them to push proper baby carriages. 

I just wonder if she speaks to her small charge in Spanish; this would be a perfect opportunity to bring up the third in line for the British throne properly bilingual!