Why some children with learning difficulties get identified – and others don’t

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A major study has revealed that where a child goes to school plays a role in whether they get diagnosed with a specific learning difficulty or not. Lead author, Dr Johny Daniel explains.

Two children sit in different schools. Both struggle to read. Both have similar low scores on national tests. But while one gets a diagnosis of specific learning difficulties and a package of support, the other is left to fall behind.

My colleagues and I have carried out new research analysing the records of around 540,000 primary school children across England. It reveals a troubling picture. Whether a child gets identified with specific learning difficulties – an umbrella term for conditions involving difficulties with reading and mathematics – depends not just on how they perform academically, but on the school they go to, their gender, their family’s income, their first language, and even the average ability of their classmates.

Read more HERE

Graduate student Abigail Cordiner navigates dyslexia in science

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While her classmates puzzled over mathematical word problems on the page, the moment the problem was read out loud, the answer clicked instantly. Noticed by her teacher, this pattern became the turning point that led to Cordiner’s dyslexia screening, and, years later, continues to shape how she navigates graduate school today.

Read her story HERE

I was told my dyslexia was a ‘superpower’ at school. Adulthood told a different story

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Britain still treats dyslexia as a school problem, not a workplace one

A few years ago, I was in a café with shared toilets as part of a larger complex. To use them, you needed a four-digit code. When I asked where they were, the staff gave me detailed directions and the code at the same time.

My brain had to hold both pieces of information, where to go and what number to remember, while my stress levels were rising. I went back to the counter four times: first to check left or right, then because I couldn’t find the toilets, then because I’d forgotten the code, and finally, repeating “7435” under my breath, I tripped and cut my knee.

This might sound like a small thing, but for me it’s a perfect example of what dyslexia can feel like in everyday life – juggling too much information all at once, often with time pressure, knowing that if you drop something it could be misunderstood as careless.

Read it all HERE

A Pilot Study of Sentence Writing Instruction for a First Grader with a Learning Disability

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Sentence writing is a critical early writing skill (Kim et al., 2014) but is often overlooked in empirical literature (McMaster et al., 2018). The current pilot study evaluated the effect of a set of explicit sentence writing lessons on a first grader’s writing and identified the types of errors made before and during instruction.

Read the findings HERE