Dyslexia ed psych assessment - school is not keen to arrange this for my dd

[Podrick]

I have been asking for 2 years for my dd's school to send her for a full dyslexia assessment with an ed psych - they keep saying she is not a high enough priority for their ed psych allocation of hours.

My dd is 9 and she is on school action. Should I be pushing for an ed psych assessment - and if so how do I do this as I have yet to get there in 2 years of trying!

Or, is there no real advantage to getting it done anyhow?

Also the SENCO advosed me to get a diagnosis via my GP...does anyone have any experience of this?

It depends what you are hoping to gain from it?
Do you feel the school is not meeting her needs adequately? Are they treating her difficulties as dyslexia? If they are then IMHO there is no need for the assessment. If not, perhaps you need to discuss this with the SENCo.

You can get assessments done privately see here fordetails, although they are expensive.

You can certainly go via GP for a Paediatric Assessement or presumably pay privately for an Ed Psych assessment. Any external intervention puts her onto School Action plus. Does she have an IEP and has she made progress on it ?

The following webpage will answer your questions:

Should I have my child assessed?
www.aowm73.dsl.pipex.com/dyslexics/should_I_have.htm

Thanks for all the replies.

She has an IEP and has made some progress - the school give her a small amount of extra support & I am paying for an extra hour a week of tuition for her. She still finds things hard and is in bottom sets for everything despite being bright & concentrating well in class.

Is there anything to be gained by a GP referral for assessment on her dyslexia / specific learning difficulties?

In my experience, the only thing to be gained is an official 'label' as to why she's having the difficulties she is. You may find that reassuring/helpful, but it won't get you any extra support or statementing. If she is at the level of needing a statement she will be able to get it without the diagnosis.

I would discuss with the school the reasons why she is in the bottom set for everything. Generally (although I obviously don't know your DD) there are areas that children with dyslexia can do very well in, particularly if given alternative methods for recording. I can think of one child I've taught who couldn't write his own name (3 letter one at that) but was an absolute whizz at anything scientific and ended up with a Level 5 in Year 6. Just because they have issues with reading and writing (and sometimes maths) does not mean they should not be stretched in other areas.

Does the school recognise that she has dyslexia/specific learning difficulties? Or is that what you feel is the problem?

The other thing I meant to add - you may find a diagnosis helpful when moving to secondary school. It won't help you get into a particular school but it will flag her difficulties up to all the different teachers.

Hope all my waffle has helped!

If you want a referral any time soon , I'd suggest going via the gp if school uncooperative. Once you are in the system a whole load of time frames for assessment and referrals can come about but there may be quite long delays between appointments.

Hi Podrick, I agree withe JLo2 that having an official DX may not get you extra help in school. It didn't help us with DS1 as they said they were doing what they could already.
However, it did help us to decide what we wanted to do to help him, we had already started having extra private tuition and we felt that we needed to do more.
Without the DX we would have been unsure if we really needed to have more input or not. It also defined what his strengths and weaknesses were which was really helpful.

Hi everyone and thanks very much for all the information & taking the trouble to reply to my posts!

I spoke to the British Dyslexia Association helpline today. They said that going to the GP was absolutely wrong and that the ed psych should not have suggested it! They also advised me to pay for an assessment in order to show exactly where the problems are for my dd and how severe they are - and advised me to get specialist dyslexia tuition which I am going to investigate. At the moment my dd goes for an hour a week of computer based tuition which is not specifically for dyslexic children.

isgrassgreener, I am interested to know, is the extra tuition you have opted for specialist dyslexia tuition?

JLo2 I never thought to question why my dd is in the bottom sets for everything - she is the kind of kid who spontaneously questioned the taxation system and proposed and evaluated alternative models with our dentist at the age of 7 - and yet has only recently managed to master spelling her own surname - and it's an easy one! She has an exceptional vocabulary and at the age of 2 she asked to be taken to "the installation" at the local gallery(!) - bf & I fell about laughing at that one!

Hi Podrick - just seen this thread. Dyslexia action are very good. I had my ds assessed and they really flagged up his high cognitive ability in the report, which I was pleased about. For us, getting the assessment was more than just a label. It was reassurance to ds that he wasn't 'thick' and also identified his areas of weakness and just how they were affecting his learning. I think it was about £400 to go with dyslexia action.

We paid 600 pounds (sorry, keyboard only has $ signs!) and I found it very useful to understand exactly what DS2s issues were, but the (UK) school wasn't really interested in it tbh. They certainly weren't prepared to give him more than the half hour a week learning support he was already getting.

When we moved to Australia it was very helpful though. When his new teacher clearly had him in the "middle class parents can't accept their child is thick" category I was able to highlight some of the things I knew she was finding difficult like the fact that when he is overloaded he switches off so looks like he's not paying attention. Once I got her to read some of the specific bits of the report everything changed and she's been incredibly supportive. He was also fast tracked onto the specific literacy support scheme the school offers which has a long waiting list.

I guess I would suggest talking to your school to see if paying for a private report would actually be of any benefit. Unfortunately it's pretty much impossible to get a statement for "only" dyslexia any more so you might be better off focusing on getting your DD specialist help via dyslexia action instead. (You can approach your LEA yourself and request a "parent led assessment" though if the school isn't co-operative and you do want to pursue it through the school).

I can't add anything here that has not already been said, just that situations like this make my blood boil. We are told by central government that they want to make sure that every child has the chance to reach their full potential at school. The parents of children who have dyslexia face an uphill struggle to find out what their child's potential is because without the support these children need, we will never know!

In our case, we already know that the secondary school that our daughter will attend from next year, will give her extra support. She is mildly dyslexic, but because she exceeds the "national average" in all subjects, then she does not get any extra support despite the fact that she has a problem with spellings. Spellings only count for approx 7% of the marks in her SATS - the school already knows that even with her spelling problems, she will get at least the average required, so there is no incentive for them to give her any extra help.

This may be why Podrick's daughter's school is ignoring requests for an assessment.