You and Your Child

"Dyslexia" was first used in the 19th. Century for people who lost the ability to read or write normally through some illness or accident. What was very noticeable about some of these early dyslexics was that some of them lost their ability to pronounce words but retained the visual recognition of those words so that the meaning was accessible - "king" might be read as "some kind of ruler....emperor", for example.

When, in the 1960s and 1970s, "dyslexia" began to be applied to children who did not gain literacy at the same rate as their classroom peers, attention focused on the inability of the dyslexic children to learn their letter sounds and to cope with the phonology of the oral language. At the same time, most dyslexics spell quite phonetically - "c" for "see", "hows' for 'house', "brort" for "brought" and "distruckshun" for "destruction".

Ironically, the 60s saw great changes in the approach to literacy teaching, the most notable of which was the introduction of so-called 'phonics' whereby emphasis was placed on individual letter sounds.

For some 250 years there had been great stability in the teaching methods of early literacy, focusing on the visual and kinesthetic (hand-movement) aspects of the written language, and with letter-naming. With this traditional approach, the latter part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries, with universal compulsory schooling, probably boasted the highest literacy uptake in British history.

Phonics did not appear on the horizon until well after the Second World War. The most extreme form of phonics, the ITA or Initial Teaching Alphabet, had its heyday in the 1960s but had disappeared from schools by the mid 80s, leaving, according to many recipients, a wake of illiteracy.

Those children, now called Dyslexic, who struggled to master the phonics of the ITA were required to jettison almost all of what they had painfully and painstakingly learnt at the age of 7 or 8 and had to start again with TO or Traditional Orthography. ITA was well-meant but a disaster for just those vulnerable children it was meant to help.

By the 1980s, phonics predominated as the teaching approach for Years 1 to 3 in Britain. Over 95% of the commercially-produced materials for infant and junior literacy became phonics-based. Phonics was the dominant, even exclusive, approach in teacher training and in courses for educational psychologists.

For dyslexic children, their problems in learning phonics were met with even greater emphasis on their weakness. "Overteaching", whatever that means, of phonics was required to rectify their deficiency. It was a short step from the then newly-propounded ideal of individualised tuition within the class context to individualised programmes for dyslexics outside class.

French lessons were an ideal target for curricular juggling. The relationship between orthography and phonology in French is even more bizarre than that in English! "Unimportant" subjects such as PE and Art could be jettisoned with little cause for complaint.

For a secondary age-child with an infant level of literacy, it is very difficult - and expensive - to relate what goes on in an individualised remedial lesson to what goes on in a Key Stage 3 or 4 Physics lesson, so the relationship tends not to be made.

A dyslexic who had fallen behind his peers to the extent that he - it was usually "he" rather than "she" - could not participate in the normal curriculum could clearly not be maintained in a class bent on public examination success.

A 14-year old, however intelligent, with a reading age of 7 is unlikely to be able to sit a conventional written examination paper at 16 and so has to be diverted to a non-examination group or to subjects with little literacy requirement.

With an estimated 5% of children severely underachieving, the loss to society can only be regarded as horrendous. Literacy difficulties have been noted as abundant in prisons for young offenders and have been cited as contributing to their criminality.

Of course, it is possible for a dyslexic to be granted some dispensation in written examinations. For example, the questions can be read out and the candidate can dictate the answers to an amanuensis. Tape recorders have been used instead of writing answers. There is, however, no satisfactory substitute for normal literacy.

Yet, even in the 1970s, there were rumblings of disquiet with the rote, barking-at-print implication of the phonics approach. The purpose of literacy, to put meaning to words, had been lost. The 'real books' proponents challenged the arid approach of the barkers-at-print. Their elaborate jargon of "context-cues", "contextual meaning", "psycholinguistic guessing" and "miscue-analysis" concealed their fundamental weakness. They had no notion of how words are processed by the child and no notion of how the child connects oral or written words with thinking. The fact that the barkers-at-print also have no such link hasn't stopped them becoming a very effective pressure group.

Inevitably, a casualty of the dispute was the dyslexic child's right to a full curriculum appropriate to his or her intellectual needs. The 1981 and now the 1993 Education put the onus on an "authority" to make "adequate provision". The fact is still inescapable - the dyslexic child is one who fails in mainstream schooling with conventional approaches, the flip side of which is that, just because a child is placed in a mainstream school, it does not necessarily mean that he is receiving a proper education.

On the bright side, the government will inspect and approve independent schools for their expertise and effectiveness in dealing with dyslexics. A list of those which are good enough to gain approval can be obtained from the Department for Education in London.

In the state sector, however, the 1990s will not be seen as a time for initiatives in teaching and learning. What one researcher calls "the now pervasive managerialist view of the curriculum" has squeezed out any thought of exploiting the significant developments in research into learning strategies that have been available over recent years.

The frustration endured by dyslexics in trying to keep up with their school peers can understandably lead to behavioural and emotional difficulties. These difficulties are thought to be consequential if they stem from the learning difficulty rather than from other causes, such as social environment, bullying, mental illness etc. It is not until the child's difficulties are conquered that we can be sure, however and it is not surprising that dyslexia features so frequently in the profiles of those who "go wrong" and are sent to prison.

The effect on families of having a physically or mentally handicapped child is well known. Children with SpLD (Specific learning Difficulties) are not obviously handicapped and it is not usually realised that this kind of problem in the family can have serious, sometimes disastrous results. In compensating for a child's inadequacy at school, the relationship between the parents may suffer. The child, being bright, may manipulate the situation. Difficulties in getting the child off to school or in completing homework cause greater stress to Mum, whereas Dad is out at work and needs some peace when he comes home. There are six boy dyslexics to every girl; Dad himself may have had great difficulties when he was at school and this may affect the support he gives to any action.

Sometimes there emerges great confrontation between parents and school and this is not only quite counterproductive to finding a solution but can set the child against authority, leading to more trouble. It is not surprising that when matters have reached such a pitch, a local education authority has to consider sending a child to an EBD school, one for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. In such schools, the child is with others with behavioural problems and attention is diverted from the cause of the problem, literacy underachievement.

Despite all attempts to do something about the problem, the incidence of really serious dyslexic problems is now thought to have risen to about 4% of the school population, resulting in negligible performance in the General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSEs) at 16. Given average or above intelligence in those youngsters, what a waste of resources this is for the nation!

For parents, their first intuition that something is wrong with their child's schooling should not be lightly set aside. Mum is usually, almost invariably the first to notice that there is a mismatch between the child's spoken language, intelligent curiosity and enquiry on the one hand and, on the other, progress in reading and writing. Even if they had the time, teachers are not allowed to obtain and administer proper tests of intelligence, so the extent of any mismatch will not be explored. National Curriculum assessments relate to attainment and whether it reaches national standards or not: The results now have to be given to parents but they are of no use in revealing the extent of the kind of problem that afflicts a dyslexic or other child with learning difficulties in a specific area.

An assessment of the nature and extent of a child's learning difficulties is the first step and this should be done by a qualified psychologist. A register of Chartered Psychologists should be available in your public library.

The assessment will reveal any discrepancy between intelligence, especially verbal or language intelligence, and (lower) reading and writing attainment. This may be in the form of "ages", centile (%ile) levels or quotients (with 100 as the average).

When looking at specialist provision for your child, send the report on ahead of the interview so that you can expect discussion to be informed and specific to your child's difficulties.

Ask for a demonstration of the teaching approach so that you can judge how it might benefit your child.

Derek, aged 11	severe degree of difficulty
Reading age 8, Spelling age 7	= 5%ile literacy level
IQ 115	= 84 %ile level
Verbal Comprehension Index from WISCIII 125	= 95%ile level.

Anna, aged 12	moderate degree of difficulty
Reading age 11 Spelling age 10	= 20%ile literacy level
IQ 101	= 50%ile
Verbal Comprehension Index from WISCIII 110	= 75%ile level.

If their attainment were near commensurate with their Intelligence levels or Verbal Comprehension levels, one would expect Derek to obtain 5 or more A-C grades in GCSE and Anna to obtain 4 or more grades C to E. From their literacy levels after 6 or 7 years of schooling and without specialist and effective help, significant GCSE engagement is most unlikely for either Derek or Anna.

"If a country invests in its children, it invests in its future." From The Charter for Childhood, OMEP UK 1993.