help - DD in middle of GCSE s - Yr 10 and school just found she has dyslexia

[ThatVikRinA22]

for a while all has not been quite right with DD who is almost 15, and i have had countless meetings with school who kept reassuring me that she was not the brightest pupil but expected to get quite respectable grades yadda yadda yadda....

She has gone from being in the top set for everything to the bottom or second from bottom and its absolutely knocked her confidence for six.

anyway, she came home a few weeks ago saying she had discovered she could read much better from blue paper.....cue massive alarm bells as my son went through the same school without them picking up he had dyslexia - he was dx 6 weeks into college....

anyway - i phoned up and told them what she had said

so they tested her last day of term and she showed a positive result for dyslexia - ive phone school back today and asked to speak with the person who tested her and also enquired who the SENCO is.

given that she is in yr 10 now, in the midst already of GCSE, i am thinking a meeting is not out of order to ask for....??

yesterday she told me that she felt that because she started in Yr 8 in the top sets for everything, and now, in Yr 10 she has fallen through set after set, she said she has felt "thick" for a long time and has just about given up of any hope of getting to college....

im so sad that this has happened and i want to make sure that she is adequately supported - one to the things ive noticed during her GCSE revision is that she has all the information in her head but she cant get it out and on paper in any logical order.....

what should i do now? please help! i am anxious to start getting her adequately supported given that i am sure this is the reason for her grades falling so dramatically year on year....plus there is the confidence issue to deal with - she has just about written herself off.

help!

VicarInATutu, I work in a good comprehensive school as a support assistant for SEN children, so i know exactly where you are coming from.
If your dc' s school SENCO is not actively involved, this is not surprising if your dc's only issue is dyslexia, because this would probably not be enough for dc to be "statemented", i.e. entitled to one-to-one support; although probably she is in category SA(school action) or SAplus , so at least would be on the school radar.Some schools have reading programmes especially targeted at dyslexic children, and the dyslexic children I know at this school (especially one Y10 girl I am thinking of) feel happy and well supported even without a Support Assistant working alongside them. Also, your dc might be entitled to a reader and/or 25% extra time in GCSE exams etc. This is quite common for SA and SAplus children, and would be organized by the SENCO.
Good secondary schools will also be concerned to get high levels (5 subjects including English and Maths GCSE) of A * to C passes across Y11 , and that dyslexic (and dyscalculic, i.e.Maths dyslexia)pupils don't slip through the net due to difficulties in an exam situation.
Good luck anyway. I can see it must be a real worry especially if the LA is not generous about allowing entilement to 1 to 1 help.

mynack - thanks and yes i realise that accessing 1 - 1 is not an option - DS had triple the problems she has and still wasnt statemented.

DD is not entitled to extra time or a reader/scribe - they have specific criteria and she does not meet it, she reads, writes and processes too quickly to qualify.

Even with a full dyslexia screening i have been told she will not access support, so i have found her a tutor, starting next week.

she has slipped through the net. She is 15 in 3 weeks. At the moment she is set to get a D in maths, and they have thrown the ball firmly back into my court and suggested a tutor to get her through it with a C.

Fwiw, DS did not get his dyslexia spotted until he started college. This is a secondary school, with around 400 pupils.

My understanding is that extra time is not just for those who are slow, it is to allow them time to reread the exam paper, plan and check their work at the end etc. because, as you describe your daughter's difficulties, those with Dyslexia and related Specific Learning Difficulties often misread the question, need time to plan their answers to overcome the problems they have with processing and sequencing and ordering their thoughts and to check for silly errors at the end.

It may be that her teachers are right but I have come across a lot of inconsistency in the interpretation of exam board rules etc. and even understanding of SLDs (DD2 had a Dyslexia diagnosis at 10 but because of some early and very effective intervention her spelling and reading are above average. Dyslexia is now tightly defined as encompassing difficulties with spelling and reading so she is now diagnosed as having Specific Learning Difficulties rather than Dyslexia) All the girls diagnosed Dyslexic in my daughter's school marched in on the Head of Year because they were upset that at other schools they pretty much go on the Ed Psychs recommendation when it comes to extra time whereas they were basing it on their mark, if they had managed to achieve a good mark in the time given they didn't get the extra time regardless of whether they had finished, had time to check etc. They didn't exactly capitulate but in the mocks they allowed them all extra time and asked them to switch to green ink during it so they could evaluate what use they were making of it, they pretty much all got the extra time in the subjects they felt they needed it in.

We have found Edpsych reports worth every penny of the scary amount they cost (£400 around here ) because you then have an independent measure of ability versus achievement ie what her potential actually is and to what extent she is achieving it, and also in which exact areas her dyslexia is affecting her ability to achieve her potential. They will also make a recommendation as to what support she needs (as opposed to what the school is willing and able to or not to give) and whether she should get extra time in order to achieve her potential. It is also very useful to have that measure of ability, to know what they should be able to achieve . We were late diagnosing DD2s SLDs because she was bright enough to find ways around it and got A*s at GCSE but alarm bells began to go off during A2s. When we got her tested it turned out she was brighter than anyone realised and had a photographic memory and had succeeded in covering up moderately severe SLDs. Now studying Science at uni no one is disputing she is entitled to extra time to be able to do justice to her ability in exams, because they know what she is capable of contributing .

It was DD1 who was diagnosed late not DD2, amazingly I spotted that one as I reread my post!

thats interesting - it may well be then that it would be worth getting her formally and properly assessed.

i will discuss it with her, at the moment she is swinging between acceptance and anger.

DD1 was very angry and resistent. As far as she was concerned she was clever and hard working and wasn't going to be given the same label as the disorganised and chaotic rest of her maternal family! She has come around to it though now she has seen how it has put her at a disadvantage in higher education.Perhaps you could emphasise that Dyslexics have strengths as well as difficulties, that they often do well in their careers, a disproportionate number of CEOs are dyslexic because of their ability to see the whole picture and to have innovative ideas.This is just one link I got when I googled Dyslexic strengths There are plenty more! It's just that the school system doesn't play to those strengths and focuses on what we find hardest, teachers tend to be just the sort of organised detail focused types who find it hardest to understand us and find our lack of organisation and inability to focus on detail very very annoying. My Dad remembers a Geography teacher going on for half a hour about how I never remembered to rule margins in my exercise books, even though I had just come top in the Physical Geography exam.

DD2 welcomed it because it explained why and how she was different and what she could do about it. I certainly wish I had had a diagnosis. I never understood why I could be recognised for my ideas and insight but could never come up with them in time pressured situations and could never remember things or organise myself in the way other people seem to have no problems with. DD2s Edpsyche report could have been written about me as well and had I known I could have done things better, although I did gravitate to a job where creativity and ideas were more important than organisational skills. Since I did read,voraciously once I cracked it, and pass exams it just never occurred to me I was Dyslexic even though, or perhaps because, my brother was so severely affected, unable to learn to read without a specialist tutor, it was picked up even in the Seventies. He still left school with one CSE and no confidence (he now runs a big engineering department for a manufacturing company).

Good luck with it all

Trinity: Read this Page 12 (numbered as x in the document) outlines the parts that may be relevant to your daughter. Also, there is no need for your daughter to put on her best performance for the psychologist or specialized teacher.

cheers for that link blue - thats helpful.