To be worrying so much about DD 9 and in year 5 having a reading age of year 1

[Helena2000]

Hello everyone,
I'm feeling lost and am looking for some advice.
My Dd is 9, starts year 5 this week, and cannot read beyond early/start of year 1 level.
She spells every word phonetically, she cannot spell any word correctly, even CVC words.
She has no diagnosis of anything but school have placed her on their SEN register.
What this means in reality is that she gets taken out of class every day in to a group of 3 children and a TA to do different work to the rest of the class. The other 2 children have severe behavioural needs, which the TA struggles to manage whilst my DD sits there not receiving any attention or input because she is well behaved and compliant. She has told me she gets given colouring in to do whilst the TA tries to manage the behaviour of the other 2 children who argue, fight and disrupt the group she gets taken in to. I have fought and fought against this but school tell me its that or she sits in the main class.
DD tells me that when she does sit in the main class, she literally does not understand a single thing the teacher is teaching, but looks around to see the rest of the class can understand and get on with their set work, whilst she thinks to herself 'why can you all understand but I can't?'.
School did a dyslexia screen which they've told me shows that she is not dyslexic.
I'm at a loss as to why she has such a significant learning delay in reading, spelling and also maths.
She is incredibly intelligent. She's bright, alert, astute, is fully engaged with the world around her, has a brilliant sense of humour, is extremely empathetic, kind, gentle, so very thoughtful, notices so much of what's going on around her and is very in tune with other people's feelings and emotions. She adores art, dance, stories - her favourite thing in the world is to be read to (I read books and stories to her daily), animals, nature, playing, swimming, crafting. She's highly imaginative, loves playing with her sibling and her friends, she has friends who love her, her older sibling literally adores her, she is the chattiest little girl ever - she chats away to me non stop and her use of vocabulary is impressive and very varied, and her comprehension of what new words mean is really impressive. She's affectionate, loving, and just a little angel.
I'm describing her character to you because I'm trying to convey how bright she is as a person.
But tonight at bedtime she spent 2 hours crying her eyes out, her little face looked like she was in so much pain. She cried and cried about not being able to read. She told me her greatest wish is to be able to read, and said "I feel so stupid", "I feel so ashamed", "I'm so embarrassed about myself" all through terrible tears. She was clinging on to me, wrapped her whole body around mine, asking me to please help her. She said every day she misses her class lessons because she is taken out of class in to this little group of 3, that she gets no benefit from. She said co.ments from peers who ask her why she can't read are making her feel stupid and worthless.
I have spoken to the SENCO at school about her not benefiting from being in tbe 'focused learning ' group at school, and I was told very starkly there are no resources to give her any other input, i.e. not enough staff to offer any alternative, due to budget cuts.
I don't know how to help or what to do.
I've noticed that I can teach her a word, go over it in repetition, she'll appear to get it, and then within 20 seconds it's gone again and she can't recognise or remember the word.
Some words that I ask her to sound out, she guesses the word based on the 1st letter, or she says words that don't even contain the letters that are in the word I'm trying to teach her to read.
She is a gifted artist for her age, and often draws what she's seen that day, and she'll draw the most incredible detail in something that I can't believe she even noticed. So if she notices and remembers this much detail, how can she not notice the detail in a short word, or remember it through repetition?
School are adament it's not dyslexia because the school screening test came back as normal. I've had this conversation with them several times over.
Another thing is she cannot pronounce her words properly. Examples are that the W in 'Weather' is pronounced with her front teeth on her bottom lip. For Never she says 'Nether'. These are just 2 examples, but she mispronounces words hundreds of times a day. No amount of non-stop, endless correcting of her pronunciation by me ever, ever teaches her to remember how to say the word properly. In fact it's counter productive as it upsets her when I correct her, even though I do it in a softly spoken, swing and encouraging way. She just gets really frustrated.
I requested a SALT assessment 2 years ago via school and theyve told me she doesn't fit the referral criteria because she can talk fluently. Ive pushed this in meetings and been told the same again.
She has very poor short term memory, but excellent long term memory.
She struggles to follow instructions that have more than 2 steps involved, or with any instruction that's too complex.
She regularly says "What?" "Pardon?" "Can you say that again please?" But it's not to do with her hearing ad she can hear a pin drop in the distance! She's had her hearing tested and it's good. It's more as though she is asking the person to repeat themselves so that she can give herself more time to process what they've said before she responds.
she has had hearing tests and eye tests - hearing is very good. Needs glasses for reading but her prescription is borderline ok, not severe, optician said not crucial that she wears her glasses as she can manage fine without.
She needs a lot of time. Extra time to do things. Rushing her if we're late sends her in to a complete meltdown and she says she can't cope with hurrying up or rushing.
School teachers and SENCO don't even seem worried. Every school year is the same; unworried teachers. Every ADPR meeting is met with a teacher gushing with enthusiasm, telling me she's a pleasure to teach and that she's wonderful at drawing and popular with peers. I get inwardly really cross. I'm not there to hear about her drawing. And the teacher doesn't teach her. A TA does. Although she doesn't teach her either due to the disruption of tbe other 2. And I happen to know the TA outside of school and she is new to the role and has no experience in education whatsoever, comes from a totally unrelated background of work.
I've been told by my local authority she doesn't qualify for an Ed psych referral.
When I relay my concerns to her teacher, she smiles brightly and says "Don't worry! She doesn't need a diagnosis! It makes no difference at all to the way we teach her!" all delivered with a megawatt smile and an abrupt end of responding to my concerns.
Maybe they're fed up with me saying the same concerns every time we meet, I don't know.
She has started constantly apoligising for things she does not need to be apilogising for, and i think this is a sign that her self esteem is being affected, which I cant bear.
I have spent every day of her life telling her and showing her how much I love her. I continuously give her positive feedback, praise, encouragement, I listen to her, I try as hard as i can to give her a happy life filled with different experiences, but its not enough.
Can anyone advise me?
I need to know whats going on.
And my DD is begging me to know what's going on.
Phew, I haven't said all this to anyone in real life, except to DH who just says "She'll catch up" and dismisses my concerns.
Thanks for listening!

I found myself nodding along at lots of your OP, as I knew that there was something my youngest DD was struggling with, but I couldn't put my finger on it, as she was doing really well at school, definitely wasn't dyslexic, but found reading and taking in written information nigh on impossible. I have finally managed to get a diagnosis for my now 14 year old DD, after years and years of asking, pushing and asking again. I'm another one who ended up paying for private testing (which we had to save up for months to afford), and DD has Irlens, which is a visual processing disorder.

It's great that your DD has you on the case, you're clearly doing a really great job of advocating for her and not giving up - I hope you start to get those who can help to listen soon.

It’s heartbreaking hearing about your girl. And I feel so angry that the education system has failed her.

You will need to get a loan and pay for an educational psychologist to fully assess her and make recommendations.

The sooner the better. Even if she gets help now, it will take some time for her self-esteem to recover. But she will remember that her mum had her back. Good luck xx

It sounds to me like DLD - development language disorder which a speech therapist could diagnose- we have a couple of children in our school who have this , their everyday language is brilliant but reading is poor which means they struggle in class.
Our children use a laptop for all their work as that is easier for them, we use 2 programs - Nessy and Clicker

Would def schedule a meeting with your SENCO and ask to do a STT (specialist teaching team) referral.

I would get a hearing test to be on the safe side. I used to work with a guy who was lovely sometimes and others would completely blank me when I tried to speak to him. Turned out he was deaf in one ear, so genuinely didn't know I was trying to speak to him, but would also be able to hear a pin drop on the other side.

It is clear that your daughter has some form of processing difficulty, it is just working out which one. Even if the school are still rubbish, you can access things to help her specific needs and she may find comfort in there being a community of people like her. I have dyspraxia and poor short term functioning, so was of course labeled as constantly distracted and not fulfilling my potential. Teachers thought I should just try harder and didn't understand that I was already trying harder than most in the class, but still being set up to fail.

Hi. Iv got two dyslexic children and have come to realise I probably have visual processing issues even though I did well academically.

In short term have look at the book Word Hornet or Word Wasp. You can buy in online from different stores or second hand copy and work through it with your child doing the exercises. Its by the authors of toe by toe but I find it better as it makes them spell as well as learning to read, learning rules, learning segmenting. There's a test on their website to see if word hornet or word wasp is more suitable for starting Literacy Books | The Word Wasp | Hornet Literacy Primer

If you have the money I would find a good educational psychologist for an assessment and I would make a parental application for ehcp.

Do the school have Lexia programme? Some schools seem to favour it but has mixed reviews. For home you can also look at Nessy, which comes in an app. Reading eggs proved popular in out house too.

for maths check out the book 'the power of 2' you can work through it page by page together

in meantime one of my dc loves audiobooks as he can do accelerated reder test with the read to optioon

PPs have already mentioned it, but the first thing that came to mind when reading your post was Auditory Processing Disorder. Have a google and see what you think. I’m not saying it explains everything, but might explain some of what you’re noticing.

Dyslexic or not (sounds likely), the school provision at the moment is unsuitable.

I am a teacher and a SENCO. This child would ideally be having a small amount of 1:1 or group work focused on dyslexic needs. This is hard though, and there just isn't the funding in many schools. But even without it, there are things that could help. I wouldn't be happy that all of her learning is with a teaching assistant and would be asking for her to be in class. At my school, we have several children with similar difficulties to what you describe. Unless she would rather be out with this TA, she is more likely to learn with her peers in class.

If she has a book or page read to her, does she understand it? If so, then she should be able to access classwork with a supportive partner. For more independence, then there are "reader pens" or even speech-to-text on Google lens is brilliant now. She could use this to read text aloud independently.

Writing can be harder, but typing her work would allow her to hear it read back to her. In most lessons, the teacher should be adapting so that there are different ways of recording. Your daughter should have word banks provided to give her a starting point when she does need to write key words. In some lessons, group or paired work could allow her to speak rather than write her answers. There are even speech recording devices that allow work to be completely recorded and handed in that way. At other times, drawings can show her understanding.

As a teacher, this absolutely breaks my heart. I can’t believe that her lessons are not appropriately differentiated to allow her to access the lesson and segregating her from the main class goes against the SEND Code of Practice (particularly ref points 6.2, 6.12, 6.19). From what you describe, it sounds as though her needs fall under speech, language and communication needs (ref point 6.28) or possibly under cognition and learning with a specific learning difficulty (6.31). Look particularly at point 6.37 as it says that intervention with teaching assistants should not replace high quality teaching from a qualified teacher. There are lots of other points in the document that I would brush up on as her school are clearly not following legislation that they are bound by law to comply with.

I would then recommend making a formal complaint to the chair of governors, detailing everything that you have said here and referencing the SEND Code of Practice. You can also reference the Teacher standards (particularly standards 1, 5 and 6) in your letter to support how your child is not receiving the education to which she is entitled. Check your school’s complaints procedure which should be on their website. If it is not, ask for a copy as it will detail the time frame which the chair of governors has to respond to you within.
Schools take complaints to the chair of governors very seriously. If they are escalated further, they can sometimes trigger an ofsted inspection, which schools often do not want.
Sorry if this is really waffley but I wanted to try and give you some practical advice as you’re clearly getting no where with the SENCO.

I agree with everyone on this thread . I have been where you are unfortunately. Make sure you start a paper trail at school and with the council . Any conversation back it up with an email every time . This way they have to acknowledge that you are asking for help and can’t pretend they didn’t know there was a problem . My eldest finally got all the help he needed at university!!! He has a Mensa iq so managed to get into uni . The help that was then available as he was an adult was incredible. His youngest brother again is severely dyslexic and hasn’t found it so easy he still struggles but has found away to work with his hands and is now settled .
it will get better but you have to be forcefully and constantly on the schools back

Thank you everyone, really, I can't actually thank you enough.
I've received so much help, advice and information on this thread. I have learnt about things I didn't even know about, and have gained a better understanding of things I knew a littleabout. .
I'm sorry I can't reply individually to your posts, but I just want to say to you all - please know I've read through all of these posts and I am beyond grateful to each and every one of you.💙

My ASD child couldn't even speak properly at 9 and he passed his English GCSE. I didn't think he would even be able to speak. She will get there op.

She sounds like my DD. I agree with everyone suggesting the private Ed Psych, best money we ever spent. She spent a long time with DD, really understood her strengths and weaknesses, outlined what support she needed. Some the school could put in place, some we had to find. She also suggested a behavioural optometrist which was also really helpful and pointed some vision issues which were hindering reading and we had vision therapy with them which made a huge difference.

DD is now doing GCSEs, she can read, she’s doing really well. But it took a lot of work for a few years.

the other thing that was invaluable was audio books, so when her friends were starting to read books independently DD could listen to the same books and be able to discuss them with friends in the same way.