Dyslexia Debate 2019

By Patrick Langford

On Thursday 31st of January, roughly a quarter of Educational Psychologists (EPs) gathered at the Institute of Education University College London to witness a debate about one of the most contentious concepts in educational psychology and special education: dyslexia. Vivian Hill, Director of EP training at the Institute of Education described the backdrop to the debate. This was the recent criticism in the House of Lords of Warwick’s Educational Psychology Service’s (EPS) guidance for ‘Teaching children and young people with literacy difficulties, practice guidance’. The debate led Lord Addington, President of the British Dyslexia Association (BDA), concluded that the guidance implied “that dyslexia effectively is not something to worry about”. He was seeking “an assurance that the Government will make sure that accurate diagnosis, which can be life-changing, is maintained for this group”. Lord Watson added that the “Warwick County Council’s guidance to parents ignores the science and refuses to recognise that dyslexia is a medical condition. One wonders if, perhaps, it has also advised their residents that the earth is actually flat and that there is no such thing as global warming”. The purpose of the current debate, therefore, was to bring the two sides of the argument together to enable EPs to reflect on the evidence and allow the profession and dyslexia lobby groups to develop a shared perspective.

Dyslexia is defined as “one of a family of Specific Learning Difficulties”, with many who have dyslexia experiencing “difficulty processing and remembering information”, according to the website of the largest pro-dyslexia charity The Dyslexia Association. The debate centred around whether the diagnosis of dyslexia had any additional value beyond diagnosing a child or young person as having reading difficulties, which is the broad category to which dyslexia belongs.

Arguing in favour of the utility of the dyslexia diagnosis was Jules Daulby, a SEN consultant and former Director of Education at the Driver Youth Trust (a charity for young people who struggle with literacy). The British Dyslexia Association declined to participate. The main crux of her argument was the value in the label for children to understand their difficulties. Those who have been diagnosed with dyslexia do not need to bear the yoke of being called “stupid”; they have an additional educational need. She presented a series of case studies where the label greatly helped the children who received the diagnosis. She stated she wished we lived in a utopia where a child did not need a diagnosis to access the provisions they need. But we are not there yet, so she concluded dyslexia has enough utility to still be used.

Arguing passionately against the motion was Professor Joe Elliot, a chartered EP and Professor of Education at Durham University. He explained the conceptual issues with dyslexia and the lack of evidence for its existence as a distinct diagnosis. There is the assumption that dyslexia is a subset of poor reading, but there is a lack of evidence showing they are a distinct population. The potential symptoms of dyslexia are so broad it is practically meaningless. There are no valid treatments for dyslexia either, except for phonological awareness interventions (which works for all children who struggle to read). He argued practitioners should stop wasting time and money searching for a poorly understood subset of poor readers and support all those who struggle with reading to develop the actual skills used.

Johnathan Solity presented findings from the Optima Reading Programme. It aims to help children who have persistent difficulties with reading. This is based upon teaching children to read the most frequently occurring words, using synthetic phonics in real books. This programme has been implemented in 300 schools and has helped reduce the incidence of reading difficulties from 20-25% to <3%. The final talk came from Sarah Crawford, Specialist Senior Educational Psychologist at Warwickshire EPS, and Jo Ward, District Senior Educational Psychologist with Staffordshire County Council. Their work brought this debate to life with a paper on a framework they devised for helping children with long-term reading difficulties. They presented evidence for assessment for teaching which focused around accuracy of fluency of reading skills. They used case studies to demonstrate the efficacy of the framework, with children making on average 9.3 months progress in 10 months. Their position is that through effective early intervention the majority of literacy needs can be met, allowing for those with the most intractable needs to be identified through intervention.

The full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSc5Z64B98&feature=youtu.be