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This is The Guardian. Hey,

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Unlimited slows. Hi,

1:25

my name is Shewyn Carle. I'm a

1:27

feature writer at The Guardian and I'm

1:30

the author of The Battle Over Dyslexia,

1:32

published in September 2020. What

1:37

drew me into this story was

1:39

a news article I saw around

1:41

2018. And

1:44

in that news article, I saw

1:46

that two local authorities, Staffordshire and

1:48

Warwickshire, had announced that they'd

1:50

no longer be differentiating between children with

1:52

dyslexia and children without dyslexia. And

1:55

I thought that seemed kind of interesting. And then

1:57

I read through the statement.

2:00

the councils that put out and one

2:02

line really stood out to me and it

2:04

was this line that read, it

2:07

is widely accepted that the

2:09

diagnosis of dyslexia is scientifically

2:11

questionable. And I'd

2:14

grown up with friends and peers

2:16

at my school who were dyslexic.

2:18

I'd never realized or heard that

2:20

before that it was a scientifically

2:22

questionable diagnosis. And so that

2:24

was the beginning of my journey into

2:26

this piece, which is a

2:28

piece about the science of dyslexia, but more

2:30

than that, it's a piece about literacy and

2:32

how we help children learn how to read.

2:37

In 2020 when this article was

2:39

published, there was already tremendous pressure

2:42

on our special educational needs system.

2:45

Many of the families that I spoke with

2:47

for my reporting had experienced really lengthy delays

2:49

in getting their children's dyslexia diagnoses through. And

2:52

the situation since then has only worsened and

2:55

special educational needs budgets have become

2:57

much more squeezed, waiting lists are

2:59

longer and there's just tremendous pressure

3:01

on the system in general. For

3:05

me, this has always been a

3:07

story about the power and the

3:09

importance of reading and writing and

3:11

how we ensure that all children,

3:13

regardless of their background and regardless

3:15

of any diagnosis they may have

3:17

or may not have, have

3:20

access to that most

3:22

life-changing of skills, the

3:25

written word. Welcome

3:29

to the Guardian Long Read, showcasing

3:31

the best long-form journalism covering culture,

3:34

politics and new thinking. For the

3:36

text version of this and all

3:38

our long reads, go to theguardian.com/longread.

3:42

The Battle Over Dyslexia by

3:44

Sharon Kale Julian

3:50

Joe Elliott was training to be

3:52

an educational psychologist when his supervisor

3:55

invited him to lunch one day.

3:58

The year was 1984 and his father was a professional psychologist. Elliot

4:00

was 28. As

4:02

they were eating, Elliot's supervisor mentioned that

4:04

he had spent the morning testing a

4:07

child for dyslexia. He

4:09

had determined the child was dyslexic and

4:11

put her on a programme called Data

4:13

Pack, a new approach to

4:15

teaching literacy, which paired teachers with

4:17

children for individual sessions that taught

4:19

them how to sound out letter

4:21

combinations. Elliot asked

4:23

what he would have recommended if the child hadn't

4:26

been dyslexic. His

4:28

supervisor appeared sheepish. He

4:30

would have put her on Data Pack anyway, he said.

4:36

Elliot thought that was weird, but what did he

4:38

know? He qualified as an

4:40

educational psychologist in 1986 and

4:43

began practising. Over the

4:45

next decade, he was often asked to

4:47

assess children for dyslexia. At

4:50

this time, most educational psychologists believed

4:52

that dyslexia was a learning difficulty

4:54

with a neurological basis, which

4:57

affected bright children whose difficulties reading and

4:59

writing could not be explained by the

5:01

usual factors, such as low IQ,

5:03

not having attended school or

5:05

having a chaotic home life. The

5:08

method for diagnosing dyslexia, known

5:11

as the discrepancy model, was

5:13

relatively straightforward. Test a

5:15

child's IQ and their reading age and

5:17

if there was a discrepancy between the

5:19

two, average to high

5:21

IQ, low literacy, that

5:23

child was dyslexic. Elliot

5:26

felt unsure about these assessments.

5:29

The children he tested for dyslexia all struggled

5:31

to read and write. That much was clear,

5:34

but their literacy difficulties manifested in

5:36

different ways. Elliot

5:38

was still junior and he

5:40

chalked up this sense

5:43

of uncertainty to imposter

5:45

syndrome. In 1998, Elliot co-wrote a

5:47

guide for teachers working with children with

5:49

special needs. The book

5:51

was nominated for the Times Educational Supplements

5:53

Academic Book of the Year award, but

5:56

if Elliot was being honest with himself,

5:58

the chapter on dyslexia was a up to

6:00

much. It was a bit

6:02

of a shitty chapter really, Elliot told me. I hadn't

6:05

got a handle on it. Six

6:07

years later, when his publishers asked him to write

6:09

a second edition of the book, he

6:11

was determined to nail the chapter on

6:14

dyslexia. He was

6:16

older now, more experienced. He

6:18

collected every study on dyslexia he could

6:20

find and started reading. In

6:24

his research, Elliot came across one particularly

6:26

startling paper. In 1964, a

6:28

young researcher called

6:31

Bill Yule was sent to the Isle

6:33

of Wight to carry out fieldwork on

6:35

dozens of schoolchildren with reading difficulties. Yule

6:39

was in no doubt that many of the children

6:41

he studied suffered horrendously in trying to read and

6:43

write. He saw it first hand. But

6:46

Yule, who had become one of the

6:48

leading educational psychologists of his generation, couldn't

6:51

find a pattern of indicators common to

6:53

all the children he tested that would

6:56

coalesce into a single syndrome called

6:58

dyslexia. Each child's

7:00

literacy problems seemed to be different.

7:03

Elliot made a note of Yule's study and

7:06

continued researching. Until the

7:08

70s, dyslexia had been a way

7:10

to explain why intelligent children couldn't

7:12

read. But in the 80s,

7:14

research started coming out which suggested that

7:16

your IQ had no bearing on your

7:18

ability to read or write. One

7:21

of the first critiques of the discrepancy model

7:23

was published in 1980 and further

7:25

papers debunking the model were published throughout

7:27

the 90s. Intelligence

7:30

and reading ability weren't connected,

7:32

meaning that dyslexia could no longer be

7:35

defined as a condition that affected only

7:37

bright children who struggled to read. Anyone

7:40

with any level of intelligence

7:42

could be dyslexic. In

7:46

his study, piles of academic papers at

7:48

his feet, Elliot asked himself,

7:51

if you couldn't test dyslexia by means of

7:53

IQ, how could you test for it? If

7:56

Yule hadn't been able to find a uniform

7:59

diagnostic criteria, a pattern that fit

8:01

all the dyslexic children he'd studied, was

8:03

it even a condition at all? And

8:06

what was the point in testing for something

8:08

if, as his supervisor had acknowledged over lunch

8:10

all those years ago, the treatment

8:12

was the same, regardless of whether you had

8:15

it or not? That's

8:17

when the penny dropped, Elliot says. It

8:20

was all bollocks. Since

8:23

that day, Elliot, a professor of

8:25

education at Durham University, has made

8:27

it his mission to challenge the

8:29

orthodoxy on dyslexia. He

8:31

argues that there is essentially no difference

8:33

between a person who struggles to read

8:35

and write and a person with dyslexia,

8:38

and no difference in how you should teach them. Dyslexia

8:41

is such a broad term, he

8:43

argues, that it is effectively

8:46

meaningless. According to

8:48

Elliot, we should stop using the

8:50

word dyslexia, and with it

8:52

the need for an educational psychologist to diagnose

8:54

what is plain for all to see, that

8:57

a child is struggling to read and

8:59

write. Instead, we should

9:01

be trying to help all children

9:03

with literacy difficulties, not just those

9:05

who have been diagnosed with dyslexia.

9:09

Elliot is relaxed about stirring

9:12

up controversy. He sometimes

9:14

gives the impression he quite enjoys it. He

9:17

receives hate mail fairly regularly. A pantomime

9:20

baddie, the word bully, comes to

9:22

mind, is how one specialist

9:25

dyslexia teacher characterised Elliot after

9:27

seeing him talk at an event. Elliot

9:29

is like a climate change

9:31

denier. Callum Hextall-Smith, then

9:34

head of communications for the

9:36

British Dyslexia Association, BDA, told

9:38

me. He has

9:40

absolutely no backing academically, says Lord

9:43

Addington, a Liberal Democrat peer and

9:45

president of the BDA, when I

9:47

mentioned Elliot. Yet,

9:50

although not all experts agree with Elliot, the truth

9:52

is that his views have found favour among

9:55

many educational psychologists. Joe

9:58

Is Not a. Think a

10:01

maverick as Professor Simon Gibbs

10:03

if Newcastle University. His

10:05

and my view based on the

10:07

available scientific evidence. Is that

10:09

there is no hard, fast, or

10:11

easy way to diagnose dyslexia. It's

10:14

a view shared by Greg Brooks,

10:16

emeritus professor of Education at Suffield

10:19

University. Who reviewed all the available

10:21

definitions of dyslexia in two thousand and four.

10:24

Know. To definitions agreed says

10:26

Brooks. Long. Before I met

10:28

Job, I also came to the same conclusions

10:31

as him. According. To

10:33

Vivian Hill professor of Educational Psychology

10:35

at University College London. All.

10:37

Joe is doing is telling people what

10:39

the scientific research is saying. In

10:42

January and it was given an

10:45

Outstanding achievement award by the British

10:47

Psychological Society in recognition of his

10:49

work and dyslexia. For.

10:53

Elliott. This is not just a matter

10:55

of scientific accuracy. He also

10:57

believes that the current system in trenches

10:59

inequality because children from poorer backgrounds tend

11:02

to be less likely to be diagnosed

11:04

with the six. Reading

11:06

difficulties are real. Have seen

11:09

thousands of kids with meeting difficulties. You

11:12

know what? very few of the ones

11:14

I saw in the inner cities in

11:17

the Council Estates get diagnosed with dyslexia.

11:25

In recent years, the work of

11:27

Elliott and like minded scientists has

11:29

proved increasingly influential in the U

11:31

Ten. And twenty eighteen

11:34

to Local Authorities Staffordshire and

11:36

weren't Seth announced that they

11:38

would no longer differentiate between

11:40

children with dyslexia and children

11:42

with literacy difficulties. And.

11:44

Is widely accepted that the

11:46

diagnosis of dyslexia is scientifically

11:49

questionable. The. Guidance. Which. Outlined

11:51

both local authorities provision for

11:53

children with literacy difficulties explain.

11:57

Instead, they would teach all children.

12:00

equally, partly making use of

12:02

a pioneering approach that focuses on

12:04

teaching children to read and write

12:06

the 100 most commonly used words

12:08

in the English language, which

12:11

cumulatively account for 53% of

12:13

all written English. The

12:16

approach was piloted in 14 Staffordshire

12:18

Primary Schools during a year-long study

12:20

in 2011. In

12:22

one school, within eight months, the number

12:25

of students who had fallen behind with

12:27

their reading halved, dropping from 60%

12:29

of the children surveyed

12:31

to just 32%. Larger

12:34

studies using this approach showed that the incidence

12:37

of reading difficulties was reduced from 20 to

12:39

25% to between 3 to 5%. Despite the

12:41

success of

12:47

the earlier pilot scheme, there was

12:49

strong opposition to Staffordshire and

12:51

Warwickshire's announcement in 2018. In

12:54

October, the BDA president, Lord Addington,

12:56

raised the issue in the House

12:58

of Lords. Addington

13:00

is a hereditary peer and,

13:02

since 2011, chair of Microlink, a

13:06

company that has received £132.3 million in government contracts since 2003

13:08

to supply assistive

13:14

technology to students with

13:17

disabilities, including dyslexia. During

13:20

the ensuing debate, one peer

13:22

wondered whether Warwickshire and Staffordshire had

13:25

also advised their residents that the earth

13:27

is actually flat and that there is

13:29

no such thing as global warming. Anxious

13:33

parents besieged the phone lines of

13:35

at least one local dyslexia charity,

13:38

asking whether their dyslexic children would no

13:40

longer receive help. The

13:42

BDA gave statements to the specialist

13:44

education press and the telegraph, alleging

13:47

that both local authorities were simply

13:49

looking to cut costs. When

13:53

we met in his narrow House of Lords

13:55

office late last year, Addington told

13:57

me that he became concerned about what was happening

13:59

in Staffordshire. and Warwickshire the minute

14:01

he read the paper outlining the new

14:03

guidance, which was brought to him

14:05

by the BDN. I thought,

14:07

right, this contradicts the law

14:09

in numerous places, said Addington.

14:12

He felt the guidance stated that dyslexia

14:14

didn't exist. If you're telling

14:16

me that dyslexia doesn't really exist, I'm

14:19

afraid my everyday experience of life says

14:21

you're wrong. Addington is

14:23

dyslexic. I said, I'm

14:25

not having this. During the course

14:27

of our conversation, Addington said that he

14:29

didn't speak to the local authorities involved

14:32

or the researchers behind the school's pilot

14:34

before publicly lobbying to have their policy

14:36

spanked. I criticised them publicly because I

14:38

suspected what they were doing was wrong, he

14:41

explained. If I'm sitting down there

14:43

and I'm any use in Parliament at all, I'll

14:45

follow my own judgement. The

14:48

debate in the House of Lords, and the

14:50

flat earth comments in particular, sent

14:53

shockwaves through the British educational psychology

14:55

community. Neither authority was denying

14:57

the existence of children with difficulties in

14:59

reading, or saying that they don't

15:01

believe children that others label as dyslexic are

15:04

not worthy of attention or note. They were

15:06

trying to help everyone. Jonathan

15:08

Solity, an honorary lecturer at UCL,

15:10

whose research underpinned the Warwickshire and

15:12

Staffordshire guidance, told me with exasperation.

15:14

A follow-up event

15:17

held at UCL in January 2019, at

15:20

which the Staffordshire and Warwickshire team argued their

15:22

case was attended by nearly 200 educational

15:25

psychologists and watched online by

15:27

thousands more, a major

15:30

event in the small world of educational

15:32

psychology. Yet

15:34

by the end of 2019,

15:37

Staffordshire had dropped the guidance, and

15:39

Warwickshire had also pulled it, pending review.

15:42

Both authorities declined to speak with me for

15:44

this article. It was

15:47

the first ever attempt by a British

15:49

local authority to ditch dyslexia, and

15:51

it had failed. But it

15:53

was also a rare public skirmish in

15:55

a conflict that has been quietly fought

15:57

over the past two decades in class

15:59

20. classrooms, lecture theatres, select

16:02

committee hearings and special educational

16:04

needs tribunals across Britain. On

16:07

one side, an emerging collective

16:09

of academic and local authority

16:12

educational psychologists pushing for

16:14

educators to drop a definition of

16:16

dyslexia they view as scientifically vague

16:18

and socially exclusionary. On

16:21

the other, dyslexia advocates, some

16:23

academics and the parents of

16:25

dyslexic children who vigorously

16:27

defend dyslexia as a meaningful concept

16:29

that has helped millions of children

16:32

access support and understanding for their

16:34

literacy difficulties. Both

16:37

sides tend to proceed with

16:39

implacable certainty, often caricaturing

16:42

their opponents as unfeeling bureaucrats

16:44

determined to deny dyslexic children

16:46

the support they desperately need,

16:48

or pushy parents determined to secure

16:51

advantage for their offspring through what

16:53

may. If

16:55

you want to cause an academic riot,

16:57

writes Janice Edwards in The Spars of

16:59

Dyslexia, just shout, let's

17:02

discuss dyslexia, to a

17:04

hall randomly filled with educational psychologists,

17:07

assorted educational experts, politicians,

17:09

teachers and parents, then

17:12

retired gracefully and watched the mayhem

17:14

commence. When I

17:17

told Greg Brooks about the piece I was writing, he

17:19

let out a long, delighted laugh.

17:23

You don't know what you're getting

17:25

into, he said. It's horribly contentious

17:27

and horribly messy. Later

17:30

he emailed, good luck, prepare

17:32

for order to be hurled. and

18:00

about half of these people are believed to

18:02

be dyslexic, although not all of

18:04

these people will be diagnosed. Dyslexic

18:07

people may look at a piece of

18:09

text and skip words, or switch letters

18:11

around. When writing, they sometimes

18:13

grope for the word they want to

18:15

use but can't spell it, so opt

18:18

for a shorter, imprecise alternative. To

18:20

the dyslexic student learning to read, books

18:23

aren't a portal into another world, but

18:26

a door that keeps slamming in their

18:28

face. The

18:31

term dyslexia, meaning difficulty with

18:33

words, was coined by

18:35

a German ophthalmologist, Rudolf Berlin, in

18:37

1887, after

18:40

Berlin noticed that some of his patients

18:42

struggled to read the printed word during

18:44

eye tests, leading him to

18:46

speculate that there may be some neurological

18:48

reason for their difficulties. In

18:50

the late 19th century, researchers

18:52

characterised dyslexia as a disorder

18:54

that only affects intelligent children

18:56

with literacy difficulties, a

18:59

myth that persists to this day. By

19:03

the time Bill Yule turned up on the Isle

19:05

of Wight, fresh out of graduate school, academics

19:07

knew there were a cohort of

19:10

children who experienced persistent and unexplained

19:12

reading difficulties. 3.7%

19:15

of the children Yule surveyed on the Isle of

19:17

Wight met this criteria. But none

19:19

of these children had the same pattern of symptoms.

19:22

The elasticity of dyslexia as a

19:25

diagnostic category has confounded with some

20:00

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we

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like to do the opposite of what big

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wireless does. They charge you a lot, we

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for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes

20:28

per month, slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. Durches

20:32

ever since. The

20:34

nub of the problem for the

20:36

concept of dyslexia is that, unlike

20:38

measles or chicken pox, writes Margaret

20:41

Snoling of Oxford University in Dyslexia,

20:43

a very short introduction, it is

20:45

not a disorder with a clear

20:47

diagnostic profile. She

20:49

suggests that it might be more helpful

20:51

to think of dyslexia as something akin

20:53

to high blood pressure, for which there

20:55

is no precise cutoff point, only a

20:57

range at which doctors become concerned. Throughout

21:02

the second half of the 20th

21:04

century, awareness of dyslexia percolated out

21:06

of academic journals and into the

21:09

public consciousness. In 1963, the

21:11

Word Blind Center opened in

21:13

Bloomsbury, bringing together a

21:15

team of speech therapists and psychologists

21:17

in the first attempt to systemise

21:19

dyslexia provision in the UK. Analysis

21:22

of the children who attended the

21:25

center, published in 1972 by researcher

21:27

Sandy and Ido, found that

21:29

they overwhelmingly came from higher socioeconomic

21:32

backgrounds. Dyslexia, then as

21:34

now, was being diagnosed in

21:36

higher proportions in children from

21:38

wealthier socioeconomic groups, writes

21:41

the researcher Philip Kirby, formerly

21:43

of Oxford University's UK Dyslexia

21:45

Archive. children

22:00

to private schools that specifically

22:02

catered to dyslexic students. First-tier

22:05

tribunals, overseen by judges specialising

22:07

in education and social care issues,

22:09

would resolve these cases. These

22:13

legal rights were easier to access with

22:16

a diagnosis, and so more

22:18

and more professionals began offering to meet

22:20

the needs of the growing numbers of

22:22

parents seeking dyslexia diagnoses for their children.

22:25

Private educational psychologists to test

22:27

for dyslexia tutors, lawyers who

22:30

specialise in dyslexia cases, all

22:32

willing to diagnose your child with dyslexia

22:34

and fight their corner, providing you can

22:37

afford to pay for their services. Over

22:41

time, a gap opened up between children

22:43

who struggled to read and write but

22:45

had not been diagnosed as dyslexic and

22:48

their dyslexic classmates. A

22:50

2019 report from the All-Party Parliamentary

22:52

Group for Dyslexia found that children

22:54

from lower-income backgrounds were less likely

22:56

to be diagnosed with dyslexia. About

22:59

50% of the UK prison

23:01

population have literacy difficulties, yet almost

23:03

none of these prisoners will have a

23:06

dyslexia diagnosis. According

23:08

to the 2019 report, for the

23:10

children who did receive a diagnosis, nearly

23:12

half of the families surveyed spent on

23:14

average £1,000 a year

23:16

to help their child with their

23:18

dyslexia. Exacerbating this

23:20

inequality, private dyslexia schools tend

23:22

to be situated in wealthier

23:24

areas. More than half of the 13 specialist

23:27

dyslexia schools listed on the Helen

23:29

R. Kell dyslexia charities website are

23:32

based in London or Surrey, the

23:34

two wealthiest counties in the UK. None

23:37

of them are based in the 10

23:39

most impoverished counties in the UK. Both

23:43

dyslexia advocates and those who want to do

23:46

away with the term agree that this inequality

23:48

is a major problem. To resolve

23:50

this, Helen Boden, chair of the

23:52

BDA, argues for the provision of

23:55

specialist dyslexia teachers in all UK

23:57

schools and screening all children

23:59

for dyslexia. But

24:01

present, those that can't fight

24:03

are left to drown," Boden told me.

24:06

That can't be right. Thanks

24:14

for listening to the Guardian Longread. The

24:17

story continues right after this. Welcome

24:24

back to the Guardian Longread. Even

24:31

for parents who can afford to fight,

24:33

the process can be brutal. Chryssla

24:36

Davis, a nurse consultant, the highest

24:38

level of NHS nurse, and

24:40

her husband Mark, the security guard, live

24:43

in Willenhall, a town in the West

24:45

Midlands. Their two-year

24:47

battle to get their 12-year-old daughter,

24:49

Shaley, into a specialist dyslexia school,

24:51

Maple Hays, put an enormous strain

24:53

on their family life, cost them

24:55

about £10,000 and

24:58

almost broke Chryssla emotionally. She

25:01

would sometimes cry from the stress when dropping

25:03

Shaley off at school. It

25:05

completely sort of ripped off apart as a

25:07

family, says Chryssla, who radiates

25:09

iron determination. It

25:13

all started in 2016, when a

25:15

private tutor hired by Chryssla and

25:17

Mark to help their daughter, who

25:19

was having academic difficulties at school,

25:21

suggested testing Shaley for dyslexia. In

25:23

October 2017, Shaley was

25:26

diagnosed with dyslexia by a private

25:28

educational psychologist. The test cost £400.

25:32

To Chryssla, the result seemed plausible. Chryssla

25:35

often told her mum how much she hated going

25:37

to school, and she would pretend to be ill

25:39

to get out of class. The

25:41

educational psychologist appointed by

25:43

Warsaw Council disagreed, telling

25:46

Chryssla in March 2018 that

25:48

Shaley was not dyslexic, but that she

25:51

needed speech and language therapy. I

25:53

told the local authorities' educational psychologists that

25:56

she was wrong, said Chryssla. She

25:58

threw her doctorate in my face. And

26:00

I said, I don't give a shit what

26:02

you've got. I know my child. There

26:07

followed a three-way tussle involving

26:09

the school, which initially

26:11

told Chrystla it couldn't accommodate Shaley's

26:13

needs before backtracking and saying it

26:15

could, a move which did not fill

26:17

Chrystla with confidence, the local

26:20

authority, which disputed Shaley's dyslexia

26:22

diagnosis, and the Davis family, who

26:24

fought tooth and nail to get Shaley into

26:26

Maple Hays. For Chrystla, it

26:28

wasn't just about the teaching Maple Hays

26:31

offered, she wanted Shaley to be

26:33

in a classroom full of children who, like

26:35

her, had struggled to read and write. At

26:39

Maple Hays, Chrystla hoped her daughter would feel

26:41

normal, rather than the close dunce,

26:43

who hated going to school so much, she

26:46

threatened to break her own legs. In

26:50

November 2018, Chrystla and

26:52

Mark took Walfool to a special

26:54

educational needs tribunal. They

26:56

sold their Range Rover to help cover their costs.

26:59

During our conversation, Chrystla slammed an enormous

27:02

binder of supporting materials she used in

27:04

Shaley's case down in front of me.

27:07

In it was a diary of every interaction

27:09

Chrystla had with her local authority and the

27:11

school, from the period when

27:14

the family first decided to go to tribunal

27:16

around March 2018. Chrystla

27:18

had transcribed hours of conversations with

27:21

school and local authority officials. In

27:25

December 2018, the tribunal ruled in

27:27

Walfool's favour. Shaley's needs could

27:29

be met in a mainstream school. Chrystla

27:32

didn't give up. The previous

27:34

summer, Maple Hays had taken Shaley in for a

27:36

free trial to see if she would be a

27:38

good fit for the school. She

27:41

absolutely flourished, says Chrystla. So,

27:44

in February 2019, Chrystla gave an interview

27:46

with the Birmingham Mail to put pressure

27:49

on Walfool to fund Shaley's placement at

27:51

Maple Hays. Finally,

27:54

in April 2019, Chrystla

27:56

emerged victorious. Walfool

27:58

agreed to cover Shaley's placement at

28:00

Maple Hays. They would pay her fees of

28:02

£14,855 a year, rising to £20,115 when she turns

28:09

13. On

28:12

a sunny afternoon in December 2019,

28:14

I met Christla, Mark and Shaley

28:16

at Maple Hays, which is set

28:19

in Verdant Countryside near Litchfield. Students

28:21

go horse riding and attend lessons on

28:24

Saturdays. Class sizes are small.

28:26

Children are taught to read using a

28:28

morphological system that was devised by the

28:30

school's founder, Dr Neville Brown, in

28:33

which letters are paired with individual symbols. It

28:36

is an unconventional approach. Most

28:38

educators favour phonics, which teaches children

28:40

to sound out words. But

28:42

it appears to be working. The

28:45

school has an outstanding offstead

28:47

rating. Earlier

28:50

in the day, I'd eaten lunch with Shaley in

28:52

the school's airy canteen. Over forkfuls

28:55

of spaghetti, Shaley smiled as she told me

28:57

that she was doing much better with her

28:59

reading and writing. All

29:01

of Maple Hays' 97 students had

29:03

been funded by 16 different local

29:05

authorities to attend the school, after

29:07

their parents challenged their local authorities in

29:10

the tribunal courts. In

29:12

total, local authorities are paying at least £1.7 million

29:14

a year to the

29:17

school, which is not a charity. After

29:21

giving me a tour and introducing me to the

29:23

school dog and pet chinchilla, Brown

29:25

showed me the assessment protocol the school

29:27

uses to identify children with dyslexia. It

29:30

was the same IQ-based model that has

29:33

been debunked by scientists. Maple

29:35

Hays' prospectus even makes explicit reference

29:37

to the school's aim, helping

29:40

children of average to high IQ learn

29:42

to read and write. I

29:44

sent a copy of the Maple Hays'

29:46

assessment protocol to Vivian Hill at UCL

29:48

and Simon Gibbs of Newcastle University. Both

29:51

raised concerns about its approach, pointing

29:54

out that you can't test for dyslexia

29:56

using IQ. private

30:00

dyslexia schools such as Maple Hays

30:02

were truly struggling in mainstream schools

30:04

and are now thriving. In

30:07

itself that is something to celebrate. But

30:10

when local authorities fund students to

30:12

attend private dyslexia schools that

30:14

involves taking large sums of money from budgets

30:16

that are already far too small to meet

30:19

every child's needs. As

30:21

of last year 14.9% of English schoolchildren had special

30:26

educational needs, the third

30:28

consecutive yearly increase. As

30:33

demand for special education provision has grown

30:35

budgets have shrink. Since

30:38

2010 when the coalition government

30:40

came to power, Warsaw's budget has

30:42

been cut by 193

30:45

million pounds. Staffordshire

30:47

County Council where Maple Hays is

30:49

based has cut 260 million

30:52

pounds from its budget over the same period.

30:55

If parents want to send their children to a

30:57

school like Maple Hays, argues Gibbs,

31:00

that is their right. But it

31:02

is not one a local authority should

31:04

support financially. Every

31:10

parent wants to do the best for their

31:12

children but some are better placed

31:14

to do so than others. It

31:17

is easier to win that tribunal if you

31:19

have money. Legal fees range

31:21

from 10,000 pounds to 30,000

31:24

pounds. Middle-class parents

31:26

with sharp elbows is how someone described

31:28

it to me once, says

31:31

one solicitor who specializes in

31:33

dyslexia cases. The parents understand

31:35

the system. They aren't playing

31:37

the system but they have enough information

31:39

to understand their child is entitled to

31:42

the support. They're on it and

31:44

they're clued up. The

31:47

solicitor told me that his practice is expanding around

31:49

25% each year

31:51

and that his team takes on about 100

31:53

dyslexia cases each year, losing

31:56

just two or three. A freedom

31:58

of information requests to Derbyshire Council,

32:01

published in 2018, indicates that he

32:03

might not be exaggerating. Of

32:06

the 119 appeals registered to

32:08

date with the Special Educational Needs

32:10

Tribunals, the local authority won only

32:12

one case. "'More

32:15

parents are appealing than ever before,'

32:17

says the solicitor. "'The tribunals

32:19

are overrun with cases.'" Lined

32:23

up against these solicitors in Special

32:25

Educational Needs Tribunals are local authority

32:28

educational psychologists, responsible for assessing

32:30

the needs of the children in their borough.

32:33

On Facebook groups for the parents of

32:35

dyslexic children, they tend to

32:37

be characterised as penny-pinching bean counters,

32:40

there to deny dyslexic children help,

32:43

whereas independent educational psychologists, who are

32:45

paid directly by the parents, are

32:47

more attentive to the child's needs.

32:50

"'I just don't want to be fobbed off and want to

32:53

be ready to fight my son's corner,' reads

32:55

one typical Facebook post from a

32:57

parent concerned that a local authority

32:59

educational psychologist is underestimating her child's

33:01

difficulties with literacy. The

33:04

response from the group is unanimous, "'Go

33:06

private and be prepared to fight.'"

33:10

But these local authority psychologists have oversight

33:12

of all the children's needs in their

33:15

borough, meaning that they may

33:17

have to make hard decisions about which children

33:19

are most deserving of additional resources. Hill

33:22

told me about two cases she worked on

33:24

that came before a Special Educational Needs Tribunal

33:26

at the same time. One

33:28

involved a single mother, living in council

33:31

housing, who did not have a solicitor

33:33

representing her case. "'The child

33:35

was pre-verbal, with severe and

33:37

profound multiple learning difficulties, requiring

33:39

care around the clock and

33:41

support for toileting,' Hill says.

33:45

The other child was dyslexic. With

33:49

extreme horror, I saw that the child

33:51

with dyslexia got the resourcing, and the

33:53

mum who was managing her child with

33:55

enormous difficulties didn't get anywhere near the

33:57

same level of resource or funding." I

34:02

find it difficult to see local authorities

34:04

placing children with reading difficulties in expensive

34:06

placements when there are children who have

34:08

the needs I just described being left on

34:11

the thirteenth floor of a tower block with

34:13

a single parent. I

34:16

spoke with multiple local authority educational

34:18

psychologists who expressed similar concerns, but

34:21

despite their unease, most would not agree

34:23

to be quoted, even anonymously, for

34:26

fear of being identified. They

34:29

saw what happened in Warwickshire and Staffordshire and

34:31

were wary of the fallout. One

34:34

psychologist was willing to talk until his wife

34:36

caught the gist of our conversation, wrestled the

34:38

phone off him and hung up. Eventually

34:42

I found Katie, a local authority educational

34:45

psychologist working for a London borough, who

34:47

agreed to speak under a pseudonym. There's

34:50

a terrible injustice in this borough because

34:52

we have a very wealthy half and

34:54

a very underprivileged half, she said. Wealthier

34:58

parents are paying private educational

35:00

psychologists and the Dyslexia Association

35:04

£900 to get their child diagnosis of

35:06

severe dyslexia, even though that

35:08

child might be scoring at age-appropriate levels,

35:10

because that's just not good enough for these parents. There

35:14

was anger in her voice. So

35:16

they get this professional diagnosis of dyslexia quite

35:19

easily, you only have to pay for it,

35:21

she said. And then

35:23

they use that at tribunal, which they

35:25

can afford barristers and lawyers for, to

35:27

get private educational placements in special schools.

35:30

It's not uncommon for the local authority to spend £80,000 a year

35:32

on a single child's placement.

35:39

Independent educational psychologists charge between £300 and

35:41

£900 for an hour-long assessment. They

35:47

may also be sent prospective clients by

35:49

private dyslexia schools, which can

35:51

also provide parents with recommendations

35:53

of solicitors specialising in SEN

35:55

tribunal cases. Both

35:57

Hill and Gibbs have on occasion reviewed the

36:00

the independent educational psychologist reports

36:02

presented by parents at tribunals.

36:05

They found some of these reports alarming

36:07

because they made lavish demands upon

36:09

local authority resources before the children

36:11

had received any kind of specialist support in

36:14

a mainstream school. They argue

36:16

that best practice requires waiting to see

36:18

how a child responds to educational interventions

36:21

before doing anything as drastic as mandating

36:23

their enrolment at a specialist school. Katie

36:28

described middle and upper middle class parents as

36:30

effectively sucking the life

36:32

out of the SEN budget, and

36:35

she thinks that abuse of the system is worsening

36:37

as parents share knowledge online in

36:40

private Facebook groups and forums such as

36:42

Mumsnet. I've

36:44

been an educational psychologist for a

36:46

long time, she said. I've done

36:48

maybe 70 tribunals. I

36:50

see it again and again, the difference

36:52

between the haves and the have-nots. Meanwhile,

36:57

her local authorities' educational budget

36:59

is continually slashed. We're

37:01

constantly making cuts, she said. It's

37:04

so unjust. Since

37:06

2015, £5.4bn has been cut from England's school

37:08

budgets. In

37:19

her book, The Scars of Dyslexia, published in

37:21

1994, the special

37:23

educational needs teacher Janice Edwards

37:25

tells us about John, one of

37:28

her dyslexic students. John

37:30

was 11 but had a reading age of 7. His

37:33

experience at a mainstream preparatory school had

37:36

been violent and traumatic. Mrs

37:38

T hit me really hard once, said

37:40

John of a former teacher. She asked

37:43

me to do a piece of work and I just couldn't,

37:45

so she said I was stupid. In

37:48

class, John felt alienated from his fellow

37:50

pupils. They were all bloody

37:52

clever and I was stupid, he told Edwards.

37:55

They all passed their 11 plus and I couldn't

37:57

even read the bloody questions. I hated all of

37:59

them. He developed ways

38:01

to hide his dyslexia at school. Because

38:04

students were sometimes called upon to read out

38:06

the class register, John memorised all

38:08

the names in advance. Unhappily,

38:11

one time when John was asked to read

38:13

the register, he held it upside down, exposing

38:16

him to the ridicule he'd worked so hard

38:18

to avoid. But

38:20

after being moved to a private dyslexia school at

38:22

11, John progressed rapidly. By

38:25

the time he left school, Edwards

38:27

reports that John was even able

38:29

to read and understand Shakespeare. John's

38:33

story is a familiar one. Studies

38:35

have shown that as many as 20% of dyslexic children

38:38

experience anxiety or depression, and

38:41

there is little doubt that a diagnosis

38:43

can help children in a bruising school

38:45

system feel slightly less terrible about themselves.

38:48

When your son is screaming he wants

38:50

to kill himself, harm himself, and repeatedly

38:52

running away at the age of six

38:54

because he feels stupid, it's so difficult,

38:57

the parent of one dyslexic child told

38:59

the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dyslexia in

39:01

2019. Dyslexia

39:04

advocates often argue that this, in itself,

39:06

is a good reason to hold on to

39:09

the concept, whatever some scientists may say. "'Academic

39:12

arguments about things are great,' said

39:14

Bowden, the BDA chair. But for

39:17

us it always will be and always has been

39:19

about the people." Last

39:22

winter I attended the BDA's annual

39:24

fundraising gala at Twickenham Stadium. As

39:27

I stood in the lobby, I watched the gala crowd

39:29

arrive. Women in sparkly cocktail

39:31

dresses stepped out of ubers, aided

39:33

by men dressed in black tie. The

39:36

crowd were mostly white, in their thirties

39:38

or older, and the atmosphere inside the

39:40

room was excitable, the vibe that

39:42

of long-married couples enjoying a rare night away

39:44

from the kids. As

39:48

we dined on roast lamb, speaker after

39:50

speaker took to the stage to share

39:52

their own experiences of dyslexia. Before

39:54

they were diagnosed, they thought they were stupid.

39:57

With their diagnosis came acceptance and access to a

39:59

certain age. supportive community of like-minded people

40:01

who had experienced the same struggles and

40:03

had come out the other side. I

40:06

was lucky enough to be diagnosed with dyslexia at

40:09

the age of 10, Molly King of pop group

40:11

The Saturdays told the crowd. It

40:13

breaks my heart to think that there are other

40:15

children out there who don't have this diagnosis and

40:17

still feel stupid the way I did. Guests

40:21

nodded in recognition. An

40:23

18-year-old girl received an award for her

40:25

resilience. I want people

40:27

to know that dyslexia is a gift, she

40:29

said, to applause. You aren't dumb.

40:32

You're smart in a different way. Among

40:36

scientists in the UK, one of the

40:38

most prominent defenders of the concept of

40:40

dyslexia is Margaret Snoling, a professor

40:42

of psychology based at Oxford University. Although

40:46

she has criticised Elliot's arguments, there is

40:48

some overlap in their views. I

40:50

think Joe Elliot has the right instinct, she

40:52

said. Like Elliot, Snoling

40:55

is alarmed by the practices of

40:57

independent educational psychologists, the professionals who

40:59

are paid directly by parents to

41:01

diagnose children with dyslexia. I

41:04

think it is a racket, she said. You

41:06

wouldn't have doctors giving diagnoses that are inappropriate.

41:10

She also agrees with Elliot's view that dyslexics

41:12

and non-dyslexics can basically be taught to read

41:14

and write in the same way. On

41:18

many other points, however, Snoling disagrees with

41:20

Elliot. She points out

41:22

that dyslexia has a hereditary component. Studies

41:25

have consistently shown that children with dyslexic

41:27

parents are more likely to be diagnosed

41:30

with the condition, and often

41:32

have conditions including attention deficit

41:34

disorder and dyscalculia, indicating

41:36

that dyslexia is a heritable disorder which

41:38

affects the part of the brain that

41:40

processes speech and sound. Above

41:44

all, Snoling thinks that Elliot

41:46

is being needlessly iconoclastic. Dyslexia

41:50

exists, she says, and it's

41:52

a label that most people find useful. She

41:54

has seen this up close. Her son

41:57

is dyslexic. Bottom

41:59

line is that if you know someone

42:01

who's really had an extremely tough time because

42:03

of this difficulty, then I think

42:05

they deserve to have a name," Snelling said,

42:08

pointing out that labelling helps people explain

42:10

to themselves why they seem to

42:12

be so stupid. Elliot

42:15

remains unconvinced. People

42:18

say a dyslexia diagnosis is useful, he

42:20

told me, so you can look

42:22

a child in the eye and tell them that they aren't

42:24

stupid, and it isn't their fault. But

42:27

what about the kids who aren't dyslexic? Are

42:29

they lazy and stupid? What

42:31

we should say to every kid who is struggling

42:33

to read is that it's not their fault. You

42:36

shouldn't need a diagnosis to say that. Away

42:46

from the debate over the science of dyslexia, one

42:49

local authority has transformed how it treats

42:51

children with literacy difficulties. In

42:54

2019, just after Staffordshire and Warwickshire were

42:56

flame-grilled in the House of Lords, Cambridgeshire

42:59

quietly rolled out a near-identical policy,

43:02

with one important caveat. Although

43:05

Cambridgeshire doesn't differentiate between dyslexic

43:07

and non-dyslexic children when it

43:09

comes to teaching literacy, it

43:12

never removed the word dyslexia from its

43:14

policy guidance. Cambridgeshire

43:16

simply got on with things without

43:19

becoming embroiled in a political firestorm. If

43:22

parents want to call their children dyslexic, then

43:24

that's fine, but it won't affect the

43:26

teaching or support they receive. The

43:29

BDA even endorsed Cambridgeshire's approach.

43:33

In March, I visited Joanna

43:35

Standbridge, an educational psychologist for

43:37

Cambridge County Council. Standbridge,

43:40

who exudes a fanatical fervour for her

43:42

job, helped to push through the new

43:44

approach. It's such a

43:46

barrier not being able to read and write,

43:49

she said passionately. Everybody needs

43:51

to be able to do it, particularly those

43:53

young people who don't have the privileges other

43:55

people have. It

43:58

was our second meeting. In November 2019,

44:00

Standbridge and her colleague Kirsten Brannigan

44:03

had invited me to sit in

44:05

on a training session for Cambridge's

44:07

special educational needs coordinators. Participants

44:11

were taught how to identify literacy difficulties

44:13

in children, what interventions to

44:15

put in place, how to tailor these

44:17

interventions for children, how to

44:20

create dyslexia-friendly classrooms and

44:22

what to do if those interventions weren't working.

44:26

About 17,000 children and young people in

44:28

Cambridgeshire are believed to have some level

44:31

of literacy difficulty. After

44:34

taking me to a primary school to meet with

44:36

a low-income child who had benefited from the new

44:38

approach to teaching literacy, quietly beaming

44:40

from behind tortoise shell glasses, he told

44:43

me with pride that he'd started reading

44:45

bigger books now. Standbridge

44:47

took me for a drive around Funland, the

44:50

most deprived district in Cambridgeshire. It's

44:53

largely agricultural, she said, as we sped

44:55

along narrow roads. Funland

44:57

is flat, an expanse of fields of

44:59

green and brown, under a massive grey

45:01

sky. It's quite cut off. A

45:04

lot of the villages don't have any train stations at

45:06

all. Because there's not a lot of

45:08

transport in and out of Funland, there's not a

45:10

lot of access to aspiration. Standbridge

45:14

is an unlikely evangelist for the new approach

45:16

to teaching literacy. Her mother

45:18

is a specialist dyslexia teacher, and Standbridge

45:20

planned to follow in her footsteps when

45:22

she became an educational psychologist. She

45:25

didn't have a damascene conversion on dyslexia.

45:28

There was nothing as singular or dramatic as

45:30

Eliot's realisation as he revised his book. Hers

45:33

was a steady change, a gradual

45:35

immersion into the theory and practice of

45:37

teaching literacy, rather than an apple

45:40

thudding on her shoulder. In

45:43

the world of educational psychologists,

45:45

said Standbridge, dyslexia is such

45:47

a contentious subject. Are

45:49

they dyslexic? Aren't they dyslexic? But

45:52

I'm thinking, what do we do about it?

45:55

What's the thing to do about it? That

45:58

was probably the beginning of my 180. just thinking,

46:01

why are we spending so much time going,

46:04

are they or aren't they dyslexic? Because

46:07

no one knows. Because

46:10

change does not come fast, if it comes at

46:12

all, Cambridgeshire is still paying

46:14

to send children to private dyslexia

46:16

schools. It is still

46:18

legally obligated to honour the judgement made

46:20

in tribunals, regardless of the reforms. If

46:23

you plot the distribution of where these children live

46:26

on a map, 80% are clustered in

46:28

Cambridgesity Centre, or South Cambridge, the

46:31

wealthiest parts of the county. None

46:34

of them come from Fenland. It

46:36

is a microcosm of the situation nationally.

46:39

Following their abortive efforts to implement a

46:41

new regime, Warwickshire and Staffordshire spend roughly

46:43

£900,000 between them sending 53 children to

46:46

private dyslexia schools per year.

46:51

For the same amount of money, they could hire

46:53

27 teachers. Back

46:57

in 1976, Bill Yule

46:59

wrapped up his Isle of Wight research with

47:01

the following observation. The

47:04

era of applying the label dyslexic is

47:06

rapidly drawing to a close. The

47:09

label has served its function in drawing

47:11

attention to children who have great difficulty

47:13

in mastering the arts of reading, writing

47:16

and spelling, but its continued

47:18

use invokes emotions which often

47:20

prevent rational discussion and scientific

47:23

investigation. And

47:25

so it continues, almost half a

47:27

century on, a dyslexia

47:29

debate with no end in

47:31

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