...imagine an evil faceless system that would just love to take a mark off him for something he understands perfectly well
i'll second this! it's brilliant.
my daughter (5) was constantly getting held up on those horrible levelled readers they use in class - she would read the beginning of the sentence, and then fill in a more complex ending, adding details and improving the vocab. comprehension-wise, she would be bang-on because she predicts so well - but the teachers would mark her down for not always reading the exact words on the page.
we literally had to tell her - hey, this is the way they mark these readers: you lose a point every time you have to go back and correct yourself. she still hates the readers with the fire of a thousand suns, but she understands that reading for the teachers is a test, and for tests, she has to ask her brain to work differently - which (bonus!) actually grows it in a new way.
