Dyslexia support in state primary

[Glasgowgin]

I'd be grateful for any advice about what we should be looking for from the school.
Our son is 10 and starts p7 (last primary year) next week - we're in Scotland. For the last couple of years we have been asking about dyslexia (as has he) but have been told that as he meets his age targets etc it was unlikely. Eventually as he was getting so miserable about school, especially writing and reading, we arranged a private EP assessment who confirmed definite dyslexia and probable visual stress- he's awaiting optometry for that.

The school have a copy of the assessment but this all happened fairly late last school year we haven't had a meeting yet- we were told we should get a meeting with the SEN teacher at some point, so I'll be chasing that next week.

I have no experience of this (although I have a medical background) and I really don't know what we should be asking / pushing for from the school. My worry is that as he is 'keeping up' at present there won't be much offered and he is going to sink when he goes up to high school next year.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated, thank you.

In my experience (England), primary schools want to ignore signs of dyslexia because they have no funding to do anything about it. However, visual stress is different because it costs very little to provide coloured overlays and takes very little effort to change the colour of text on an interactive board and on hand-outs. Does he have processing delay as part of dyslexia? If so, the teacher needs to be aware and to give him more time to answer questions and to complete work. In England, you'd be more likely to get additional support in secondary school than primary.

Thank you, that's good to know about secondary schools. I think the main things we'll be asking for are using a laptop for written exercises (the school have these and some of his class mates use them already) and extra time if appropriate. He already has a writing slope/uses overlays - these were encouraged despite the school insisting he didn't have dyslexia

I'm glad we got him assessed; even if the school don't offer much his confidence has really improved now he has an 'answer'. Thanks again

Op - that's really interesting that your DS seems to relieved about his diagnosis- we are the same with our DD 9yo and I paid for private EP diagnosis and report last year- school haven't really done anything extra , apart for an hour of additional support that is proved in small groups with those struggling and SEN children
My DD was also "keeping up" but gosh was it a struggle- and I debated about telling her she has a "thing" and giving it a label as i am so aware of the labels placed on kids but on the end did tell her to be totally honest and since then she seems to have sort of given up- she hasn't read a page of any book over the summer - I have kept her at her tutor for 5/8 weeks of her holidays - only one hour a week- but to prevent the dreaded summer slump - we are entering a really important year for her and I am at my wits end with trying to encourage her!!!

Mine is just back at school and I think has realised that there isn't a magic answer and he is going to have to work harder than average to achieve the same results so is a bit grumpy. Need to phone the school tomorrow and arrange a meeting with his teacher +/- SEN teacher.

We have some resources we're trying but anything that involves time off the PS4 is 'wasting time' at the moment
The Stride Ahead book by Keda Cowling was recommended to us by a colleague whose son was diagnosed at a similar age- helps with reading polysyllabic words- but we've only managed a few of the exercises. I was quite shocked by how slow he was doing them though- and feel a bit guilty that I'd not taken him a bit more seriously before.