what age to start worrying if your child constantly reverses letters

[whathaveiforgottentoday]

I'm wondering if any primary school teachers could shed some light on what age you would expect children to stop reversing letters and numbers (3 and E, b's and d's, p's and 9's).
My dd has some other issues and struggles with spelling (doesn't apply phonics knowledge) and writing in general. Her maths, reading and other subjects are above average on all her reports so far. School are not worried, but I am, so I would like to gauge when she should be growing out of the reversing letters and what age you would start to be concerned.

Maybe there is some truth in that in some places, I don't know. I don't think some people on here have any idea of the sheer numbers we are talking about though. Last year more than half of my tutor group had assessments in school. And the private assessments come flying in an massive numbers. I did decide to skim through them one year, but you are talking about several filing cabinets full, and there was just no way, really, it was not a realistic aim. many of them said little or nothing, and one girl had the comment that her problem was that she had been assessed too much.

Schools don't instruct EPs on what assessments to carry out. The EP will usually speak to the SENCO, class teach and parents. They will observe the child within the class before they (not the school) decide which assessments to carry out ( often over a period if days).

It is actually in the schools interest to have a detailed report identifying a child's needs.

I didn't mean that schools (or LAs) instruct EPs specifically with regard to any individual child, sorry, didn't make that very clear. I meant that LAs appear to direct EPs generally towards writing conclusions that commit to only minimal levels of additional support. There was a huge difference in the recomendations of LA and private EPs last time I had DS assessed, despite both having all the same information from me and the school beforehand and using standardised assessments. So of course schools with tight budgets may well prefer to use LA EP reports over private.

As a SENCO I've never experienced such a report ... However I have had many EP recommendations rejected during the statementing process.

Until recent changes to SEN policy schools received additional funding to meet the needs of children who required high levels of support so it certainly wasn't in their interest to employ Ed. psychs who minimised a child's needs.

Good idea to ask the school if they recommend anyone, I do want to keep them onside. I have managed to maintain a good relationship with them through the statementing process for DS, despite the fact that they refused to refer DS to EP and didn't support my application for SA, although his needs are way more significant than DD's. So I haven't asked for a referral this time, only if they will screen her, they haven't even agreed to that.

They have actually been very good at trying to support DS, it is access to external services that has been the problem for him (SALT and OT as well as EP). And his LA EP assessment really was very flimsy compared to my private one, although to be fair one written for tribunal will always be in very robust terms, I'm not looking for that for DD. Obviously this has coloured my view of the LA EP service.

My main reasons for getting DD assessed are to help her self esteem if there is an issue and to find out how we can best support her outside school. Also as something I will want to discuss with future secondary schools. I'm not looking to try and force her current school's hand into giving her lots of extra support as she is getting quite a bit already. The people who I was going to contact are all accredited by Dyslexia Action, I was planning to ask a lot of questions before just ploughing in with assessments.

The school has little if no control over SaLT and OT

Exactly. That's why we had to go the statement route. He has had some SALT and OT and school did their best to support him with those, but he was discharged from one and support from the other was fairly minimal.

Even with a statement SaLT and OT are outside the school control. Usually we get a "programme" to be delivered in school by someone (with no training). In my area there are huge waiting times for any external agencies (including EP-I had a total of 14hours allocated last year- less this) which can make it look like the school is doing nothing.