I love assessing. For me, it’s the best CPD because it starts with the child. I learn so much. I love discovering how they learn, listening to them, and making informed recommendations that can truly change their experience. It’s not about the label—it’s about the learning.
Every assessment excites me. Every child’s unique learning profile offers a new perspective and challenges me to think deeply about their situation to provide meaningful support.
But sometimes, there’s a shivering jelly angel under my skin—a feeling that gives me goosebumps. It’s the urge to make sure everyone around truly understands how incredible this learner is and how these findings could change their future.
Last week, that shivering jelly angel made an appearance when I assessed an 11-year-old boy—let’s call him Percy. He attends an outstanding specialist school and has a diagnosis of autism. And last week, I adopted a new slogan:
Let’s bring dyslexia back in the room.
I’ve been in this field long enough to witness a tragic decline in services for students with persistent specific learning difficulties. Honestly, I don’t care whether we call it dyslexia or something else. What I care about—deeply—is whether we meet the need. And this is a real, persistent need that affects how and whether a child learns to read and write. This is not a luxurious extra.
Percy’s mother has spent most of his school life fighting for support—and paying out money she can barely afford—to ensure his learning needs are recognized alongside his autism. Now, he has an excellent school placement and a dyslexia diagnosis in addition to autism. But getting here has been an exhausting, expensive battle.
Without his mother’s persistence and his school’s expertise, Percy’s exceptional visual skills (in the top 2%) might never have been identified. His ability to compensate for phonological difficulties through strong visual memory may never have been recognised. His challenges might have been attributed solely to autism, and his potential overlooked. For him, dyslexia might never have entered the room.
Did dyslexia ever leave the room?
I think it did.
Many of you will have stories of local authority services for persistent literacy and numeracy difficulties being cut. Again and again, I hear of students entering secondary school without the literacy skills they need to access learning. The justification for cutting services is often the same: schools can meet these needs at their level.
Of course, they can—to an extent. I’ve written two books about how schools can support students with these needs! But I also see, day in and day out, how persistent literacy challenges (let’s call them dyslexia) are ignored, misunderstood, or misdiagnosed (“Try a coloured overlay”).
SENCOs frequently tell me they want to engage with my literacy and dyslexia webinars because they see the same reality: students struggling with literacy, and schools struggling to meet their needs—through no fault of their own.
When was the last time you attended a SEND conference with a strong focus on dyslexia and persistent literacy difficulties (beyond those dedicated solely to dyslexia and dyscalculia)? Why do so many local authority SEND events barely mention dyslexia at all?
Reading and writing are not a luxurious extra.
If Percy’s parents hadn’t fought, sacrificed, and held firm in their convictions, he might still be in mainstream education with unidentified learning needs—or even out of school altogether. Percy’s story is a magnificent success. But what about the many children whose stories don’t have the same ending?
Let’s bring dyslexia back in the room.
You can find more of my thoughts and ambitions, as well as some very practical tips in my two new books: All About Dyslexia – A practical guide for teachers
