Why is it that children with signs of... - The Dyslexia Comm...
Why is it that children with signs of dyslexia are not tested? I had signs of dyslexia as a child but was never asked to be tested...
Children now should under go phased assessment from Nursery up and if identified as being at risk of being on the Dyselxic Scale should then be entitles to formal assessment. Authorities do not like carrying out official assessments buy Educational Psychologists and the school in conjunction can carry out targeted assessments to identify needs of individual pupils. Problem is teachers are often not trained to identify the signs and authorities are not always as supportive as they should be. Every parent has a right under the ASN Act 2005 to request for their child to be assessed and have to receive a reply in writing explaining the reasns if the response is negative.
Hi
l can only go by personal experience with my children. Each one has been recognised by me not the school and then by me keep
ing on sometimes this taking several years and in the end to speed things up with 3 of are children we have payed privately to get them tested.
There seems to be a conveiniant ignorance in schools where dyslexia is concerned as dyslexia is not recognised by my ELA. So there is no extra funding for staffing hense supporting the children. Although l must say in the last 16 years dealing with my school things have got a little better and l keep pushing them. Unfortunately with most things in comes down to money !!!!
I gave my school every opportunity to respond and put every correspondence in writing, I have had to take it to the Head of Education for my Local Authority to force the school to comply with legislation. If more people did this the struggle would become less. A child should not be limited by the perseverance of its' parent - that is unforgiveable. 
I went to 3 different schools between the ages of 4-15 and none of the schools picked it up/ tested me. My mother would say things like "im shure your dyslexic", and asked the school to test me, they didnt, so my mum prezoomed that they disagreed with her and trusted them. I was only at college 2 months and i had been tested, seems the schools dont want to bother
I've had dyslexia since I was 4 , in first year infants I had to see another teacher for reading and when I moved schools to another infant/junior school it wasn't till year 4 when they started putting me in a special group once a week for reading and writing and then I had to move schools again due to moving house but the next junior school didn't help much either they said I was thick and needed to be kept back a year which mum refused in secondary school I was put into a special group for maths only but never got much help during gcse stage I was getting shouted at by a teacher who didn't seem to understand or care that I had trouble getting things from my head to paper even tho she told me word by word what to write , it really got me down do much I had to quit my gcse history course due to the teacher it wasn't till recently at age 30 that while at college they tested me and said I was dyslexic but they still didn't help much :(,
Teachers don't seem to understand or care much when kids show signs of dyslexia they need to be trained better at knowing the signs and helping kids who have problems instead of just ignoring it
I'm a teacher now, and a Secondary SENCO once mentioned that Primary schools are reluctant to test/diagnose their students for financial reasons. The kid will pass on to Secondary after a few years, let them take the cost of assessment.
Schools can also be reluctant to bring up the subject of specific conditions apparently because parents can latch on to the idea, pay the costs, then be angry at the school if tests come back with nothing. "You said my kid was dyslexic, we paid for tests and they're not, now you owe us".