Publish and be dammned

I’ve been working in Birmingham educational system for a year now. At first with children that have special needs, then in a pupil referral unit. Admittedly I haven’t mentioned this much here for three main reasons.

1. Its good material and that’s being saved for the inevitable autobiography titled “this might have happened; but I have taken a lot of drugs”
2. its not fair on the kids who have a hard enough time as it is without a closet drunk on the internet being sarcastic about it.
3. I didn’t want this blog to be about my job, there are far better blogs out there (recommend slow children at play – hasn’t updated in about two years but go back and read the archives.

But there is something I need to get off my chest, I’m still quite new at my job and am still learning, but this seems wrong to me. recently we received a new pupil to the centre, who, after testing had been put in the extra support class for literacy. During extra testing and by observing this guy it became apparent to both me and the teacher that he’s dyslexic. Great, I say, now we can get him tested properly and get him the support he needs. No says the teacher. It turns out that the Birmingham LEA does not provide dyslexia testing for young adults, ever, until they get to university age and the cost is shared by the uni.

Their reasoning is that, because the support you would give a child with really low literacy levels is the same as the support you would give a child with the same problem because of dyslexia, apparently it’s not worth paying for the test.

I’m going to leave the issue of whether the kids that need that need extra support are getting it (hint: I don’t think so) and focus on the issues that I, personally have experience of, because I, dear reader, I am a dyslexic – if you don’t believe me I’ve gone to the trouble of tagging the posts that were written during the period of my life where I discovered this.

Reading back those old posts I am struck at how relieving it was. Finding out I was dyslexic meant that all those teachers that told me I was lazy or unmotivated were wrong, it explained why I sometimes pronounce words strangely or why, in my twenties, I still didn’t understand what a syllable was. But the children not being tested are being denied this relief, the explanation as to why the things that other people find easy are so tough, denied the opportunity to feel proud of achieving as much as they have despite the handicap rather than the shame of competing and comparing themselves in a game rigged in someone else’s favour.

Secondly when I was diagnosed I was told exactly what my weakness are, making it much easier to target them and discover strategies around them. Also the diagnosis enabled me at secondary education to access the extra support, marking and testing allowances, and project time extensions. The attitude that the stratagems for dyslexics and people with less than average literacy skills, for example if English is a second or third language, is based on the false presumption that all dyslexics needs are similar and met by the established stratagems.

Also what about kids like me? I was in higher education before I was diagnosed, struggling through both school and college. If a young person isn’t doing really badly but just muddling along they will never offered for special learning support and always aspiring to average, and never realising their potential. If we are not looking for dyslexia we will never find it.

So what am I to do? Well , mostly support the literacy teacher who spends huge chunks of free time lesson planning, so we can give the tests that are deemed inconsequential by the LEA, try to build up our kids confidence by talking to them like equals and letting them know the problems I have, and wait for public opinions to change so dyslexia is seen as a real condition instead of a lack of concentration and effort from the person in question.