Dyslexia in primary school?

[DrEmilyOxley]

Hi all!
At the University of Leeds we're running a project looking at how easy/difficult dyslexia diagnosis is in primary school.

We're interested to know if you faced any barriers getting a diagnosis for your child and what you recommend to remove these barriers in future.

If you're the parent of a primary aged school child in the UK with dyslexia please consider filling in our short (10 min max) survey and help produe guidance for the future.

Thank you in advance! I'm happy to answer any questions

leedspsychology.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Y1MQTBfc5h8CHz

MONEY. It is a disgrace. HT told me there were more deserving children - I knew there was a limited input from ed psychologist and also knew there were children with more severe difficulties. Over primary years 1 - 5 I was told daughter had a problem with her eyesight, hearing, co-ordination (dyspraxia) and speech (Speech therapist could not find any problems but we attended for the course of sessions!). This involved seeing other professionals more than once who could not find any problems. The optician was furious and wrote a very strongly worded letter on the third time we were sent back. The ed psych wrote to me after assessing my daughter, (during the session he told me he didn't like my daughter) saying the parents expectations of what she could achieve were inappropriate / not attainable. Daughter was diagnosed after I insisted on a referral to a consultant who specialised in dyslexia.
I took students in and paid for tutors through her education.
It is a maze and I worked in CAMHS.

@Feenie to be honest, i habe trouble believing you. What you are doing does not correspond to any of the experiences i have heard from parents of seriously dyslectic children.
What happens to all the disruptive kids, the adhd, asd etc kids when left alone in assembly? To the kids that don’t understand enough english to follow instructions? To the ones that are told at home that education is a waste of time? They all just peacefully sit there, on their own, without any supervision ( or 1 adult to about 65 kids if 1 teacher looks after 2 classes).
Your school is very unusual with this ( as illustrated by many other comments).

he is extremely dyslectic, and i’m a psychologist so the outcome is failry sure

Just out of interest, are you a clinical or educational psychologist?

@Redlocks28 clinical, but not specialised in children. Plus I wouldn’t diagnose my own child anyway. But i. His case, it is very obvious ( question is what else is in there - i doubt its only dyslexia, but i leave that to someone not related to him, and specialized in children)

It isn't unusual to work in a school with decent behaviour - look at the latest Ofsted report ratings specifically for behaviour in schools. It's rarer to find a poor rating, tbh.

And of course you don't believe me - it doesn't fit your narrative of why you've decided to opt out and pay for your dc's education. You can't possibly imagine that there are many state schools which have both good behaviour and support for children who need it. But there are - and lack of funding is not an excuse for not providing it. It would be lovely to have more money to spend on TAs - but in our school, it wouldn't necessarily mean more intervention. It depend on who was more qualified to provide it, and more often than not that would be the class teacher.

@feenie i hope very much you are real. Because it means some kids are getting the education they deserve. Unfortunately, many don’t.

I work in this sector - I chose to work in it. I'm not sure I would have if I believed state education is as poor as you seem to think. I am imagining that you think assemblies are like feeding time at a zoo, from what you've said! It's not unreasonable to expect 210 children to sit sensibly for 20 minutes.

@feenie lets not go on details (210 kids is a tiny school - good for you!), but please be aware that you school should be an example for many others, but unfortunately not the norm. We did try a state school - it wasn’t a great experience. I did not choose private willingly.

but please be aware that you school should be an example for many others, but unfortunately not the norm.

I’ve taught in a number of schools and know a large number of teachers, SENCos and heads; it certainly is the norm in many schools.

Educational psychologists don't diagnose dyslexia in my County, which is probably a good job as we don't have any! The role is undertaken by our specialist teachers- we buy into the service and it costs a fortune. A dyslexia assessment takes about 6 hours to complete, we pay £92 per hour for the specialist teacher. I squeeze as much out of the service as possible but as with everything else there are budgets to keep within. So we put in provision , as Feenie says, where needed and not diagnosis-dependant.

Not my child but my nephew: very obviously extremely dyslexic since early KS1, but regularly changed schools due to parents’ jobs. Was routinely told he was lazy, disorganised, slow. Only diagnosed via private assessment as the wait to see someone was longer than the 12-18 months he spent at any school. I would imagine his case is replicated across military schools worldwide.

Echoing a lot of the experience on here. I saw signs in my DS in reception/yr 1 (reversing opposites, 0 interest in books but loves stories, focus problems) and told school. No acknowledgement until a very good yr 2 teacher asked him what happened when he tried to read and he said the letters jumped around. By this point he was 2 years behind his classmates and his confidence was being damaged badly.

Referred to senco who did the available tests which aren't diagnostic but were "consistent with...". Paid £450 privately for full diagnosis which confirmed dyslexia and visual stress. Paid a further £1500 for a course of visual stress therapy which fixed a massive convergence insufficiently problem and got him to the point where he could actually focus on a line of text, poor little mate. Then he caught up 18 months in 6, and now in year 4 is only about 6 months behind his classmates. He's still dyslexic but doing much better.

It totally boils my piss that there are kids in the same state who will fail school because their parents haven't got the £2000+ we've had to spend to get him diagnosed and helped.

Some thing that bugs me massively visual stress where letters jump about and dyslexia aren't necessarily the same thing.

I'm think schools possibly look for visual stress it's a fairly easy fix with colour overlays and ignore neurological dyslexia.

I assess for dyslexia- many schools in my county tell parents that they need to get a private assessment and refer them to me (or someone similar). This is an increasing percentage of my business. The LA Ed Psychs in this County do not mention dyslexia in their reports. Provision in schools, with or without a diagnosis, is variable; whilst some schools provide high quality provision mirroring Feenie’s school, others merely pay lip service and provide interventions that are not evidenced-based led by poorly trained staff. As undiagnosed dyslexia impacts not only academic outcomes, but is also linked to poor mental health and to disruptive behaviour, this seems to be very short term thinking. IME provision in private schools is just as variable, although children are more likely to have a diagnosis.

I'm think schools possibly look for visual stress it's a fairly easy fix with colour overlays and ignore neurological dyslexia.

Schools should not be diagnosing visual stress and should be referring children who experience letters moving around to an optometrist as this can be linked to more serious visual difficulties.

Schools in my area certainly don't diagnose anything, it's not our job! If the specialist teacher who is conducting the dyslexia assessment considers that visual stress might be a factor, I refer the child to the visual stress clinic run by the health authority. They conduct visual stress tests and, if felt necessary, provide therapy sessions at clinic and activities for the parents and the school to carry out in school and at home.

I never said they diagnose I said 'look for'.

"Tommy do words/letters move about? Does it help if we use this overlay?"

"Yes Miss that helps makes it easier"

"Parent we think Tommy has dyslexia and words move about. Can you take him to get checked ?"

Schools forget not all dyslexia is caused by visual stress. And take it as if they don't have signs of visual stress then children can't be / aren't dyslexic.

Schools forget not all dyslexia is caused by visual stress. And take it as if they don't have signs of visual stress then children can't be / aren't dyslexic.

Dyslexia and visual difficulties are completely separate conditions ; however, they sometimes co occur. Visual difficulties, such as visual stress, have to be ruled out before a diagnosis of dyslexia can be given. Improved teacher training regarding specific learning difficulties would help many children get the appropriate support.

I got all the way through school, a degree, a PGCE and about 20 years in the classroom with undiagnosed dyslexia! Only reason I have a diagnosis now (I just assumed not taking in what you were reading was normal) is because DD2 had a dyspraxia diagnosis, and I strongly suspect I have the same issues, so when I went back to uni to career change, I went for their SPLD screener and was picked up as a high-probability so they referred me onto an Ed Psych (obviously not totally altruistic as it brings money in for the uni).

I have a dyslexia diagnosis, also a fair probability with dyspraxia but they weren't specifically screening for that and holy hell thank God for screen reading software - it's amazing not to have to do my course readings six times over to be able to make sense of it!

Fairly sure DD2 has dyslexia as well - school are happy to proceed based on that, and lots of the adaptations for her dyspraxia are also what would be beneficial for dyslexia anyway so we get round it that way - she uses an iPad or laptop to type the bulk of her work as handwriting is such a big hurdle for her in terms of motor planning (she still does handwriting sessions in school but the school split the cognitive load of generating content from motor planning to write) and we use things like reading rulers to help her with text tracking anyway. If we need to we'll have to pay for a private diagnosis if, when we move schools, the school are less cooperative - but at the moment things go well enough riding on her dyspraxia diagnosis only.

The difference in my own personal grades since I've been diagnosed and finally figured out how retaining information from written text was so bloody hard for me is bonkers by the way - even as someone with a ridiculously high IQ, I must have been fighting it so bloody hard to stay on an even playing field before.

I've written before about my frustrations of having a higher ability kid whose dyslexia became very apparent from year 3, but where primary school dismissed this because child was at age related expectations. Grrrrr. Even after a private diagnosis, his slower processing and poor handwriting was put down to him being lazy, and boys not wanting to take as much care over his work. He's thriving now at secondary because he doesn't have to join up handwriting, (thank you Mr Gove, what's your handwriting like?)and they recognise quality not quantity in written work. Sadly, we are now facing the same battles with younger sibling having the same diagnosis whilst at primary age, and teachers not believing us for a second time.

My DD6 has the SENDCO as her teacher this year - thankfully.
We thought she might have been dyslexic since she was quite young, last year her teacher labelled her as slow & lazy.
This year she has come on massively with her reading thanks to brilliant teacher & TA, she has also scored as 'high risk' so should get extra time or support with the KS1 tests in May.
Her teachers this year are being brilliantly supportive & helpful but I do worry about other teachers further up the school, but we will deal with that when we get to it.
Any help with ideas for resources to help me to help her would be very gratefully received!!

There's no such thing as extra time for KS1 tests, since they aren't timed or reported to anyone - only the teacher assessment is reported.

Any child can have questions read to them, apart from the reading paper.

I recommend this website:

dyslexics.org.uk

her teacher labelled her as slow & lazy

This is why teachers need training

I live in Wales and I had to pay for a private dyslexia assessment. We waited over 6 months to see the Local Authority Educational psychologist and she said rhey don't diagnose dyslexia in my County any more. We pay for a private tutor and he gets some extra spelling and reading help in school.