On October 14th Robbie Meredith, BBC News NI Education Correspondent, reported on problems with the support for pupils with dyslexia in Northern Ireland schools, with the EA revealing that almost 200 children are currently on a waiting list for "direct intervention". This mirrors the current situation in England and Wales with pupils waiting years for support there. He quoted Kate McKeown, the mother of a dyslexic child who has told Stormont’s Education Committee;

“…that seeking support and help for her son left her stressed out of her mind. She said that it took years to get her son literacy support from the Education Authority (EA) and that he is in P7 now and still can't spell more than three-letter words.”

Clearly by the time official diagnosis and subsequent support are in place, much valuable learning time has been lost and children in this position may never catch up with classmates.

Una Turbitt, from the EA, subsequently told the committee that around a quarter of all school pupils in Northern Ireland will experience "some dyslexic-type difficulties". She estimated that around 10% will present difficulties that require additional supports to be provided, but that support services for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) were "under considerable strain and not delivering as they need to be.” She confirmed that the EA literacy service is currently supporting over 2,300 pupils through direct interventions with pupils in schools.

Dyslexia is best described as a continuum of difficulties in learning to read, spell or write, which persist despite appropriate learning opportunities. There may be associated difficulties for learners with dyslexia in such areas as information processing, short-term memory; sequencing; number skills and organisational ability.

Kate Griggs the founder and CEO of the charity Made by Dyslexia, has been on the TV morning shows in recent weeks highlighting the need for a greater awareness of dyslexia and educating people on its strengths. She has been campaigning for a change in approach to dyslexia in schools and workplaces since 2004. She argues that with up to 20% of pupils in schools affected to some degree by dyslexia, teachers need to be trained to spot and deal with the condition themselves. She is the author of two best-selling Penguin books on Dyslexic Thinking; This Is Dyslexia and Xtraordinary People. She has also shared her wealth of Dyslexic Thinking expertise in Made By Dyslexia’s free training courses for schools and workplaces on Microsoft Learn and LinkedIn Learning – and now on the DyslexicU, the University of Dyslexic Thinking.

Her view is that with Artificial Intelligence coming into our workplaces there is now an opportunity for the alternative thinking skills which dyslexic people have, to be valued and promoted. She argues that AI cannot replace the soft skills like imagination, innovation, lateral thinking and complex problem solving and that we should be empowering dyslexic thinking in schools. On her website (see link below) she offers a free, two- hour online training course for teachers to help them better provide for the pupils in their classroom who are affected. One hundred thousand teachers in New York have recently been trained in this way.

Made By Dyslexia – Redefining Dyslexia

Many of us working in education are probably not clear about exactly what dyslexia is and how it can impact on children in schools. Rather than try to find strategies to deal with pupils with challenging learning difficulties in the classroom ourselves, we have come to depend on referrals to learning support services to help children “diagnosed as dyslexic”.  The training offered by Made by Dyslexia may therefore be an affordable and speedy alternative way forward for schools to address the issue in some cases given the critical lack of funding for schools and health related services. Kate Griggs suggests that dyslexic thinkers are often perceived as “slow” or “unable to keep up”. Her training offers teachers strategies to help develop resilience in these pupils and help their learning through computer aided tasks, multi-sensory learning approaches and group work with others.

In 2002, the Department of Education published a report by a Task Group on Dyslexia which highlighted concerns that support for dyslexia was underdeveloped in the majority of schools and other educational settings. The report also identified the need for training and support for classroom teachers and lecturers in identifying and providing additional help. Twenty- two years later it is clear that Kate Griggs is right and we are not really doing as well as we should to both understand and support the one in five children who leading dyslexia experts estimate are in our classrooms.

One of the difficulties for schools up to now has been getting an accurate diagnosis for a pupil with learning difficulties. As already mentioned, there is the long wait for an appointment with a qualified psychologist to get a definitive assessment and official statement of needs to enable extra support to be drawn down.  Three conditions or “hard signs” have to be present for a referral. Firstly, that there is evidence of significant difficulties in reading, writing or spelling using standardised tests. Secondly that there is evidence that these difficulties are not typical of the child’s performance in other areas or are unexpected given the teacher’s or parents’ knowledge of the child’s ability.  Thirdly that there is evidence that the difficulties are persistent despite appropriate strategies by the teachers. The Department of Education guidance also talks about “soft signs”, which are often typical of children with dyslexia. Some individuals with dyslexia however show very few, or sometimes none, of these signs. These soft signs cannot therefore be used alone for diagnosis purposes. For classroom teachers they are signs which indicate that the child may be “at risk”.

Helping learners with dyslexia | Department of Education (education-ni.gov.uk)

Given that it is now accepted that we are not coping with the scale of the problem posed by pupils with these learning difficulties and we do not have the money to expand existing approaches, perhaps it is time to look at alternatives like those suggested by Kate Griggs and Made by Dyslexia.