07/06/2023
The Dyslexia Industry Exposed
In 2018, two local authorities – Staffordshire and Warwickshire – announced that they would no longer differentiate between children with dyslexia and children with literacy difficulties. “It is widely accepted that the diagnosis of dyslexia is scientifically questionable,” the guidance – which outlined both local authorities’ provision for children with literacy difficulties – explained.
Instead, they would teach all children equally, partly making use of a pioneering approach that focuses on teaching children to read and write the 100 most commonly used words in the English language, which cumulatively account for 53% of all written English. The approach was piloted in 14 Staffordshire primary schools during a year-long study in 2011. In one school, within eight months, the number of students who had fallen behind with their reading halved, dropping from 60% of the children surveyed to just 32%. Larger studies, using this approach, showed that the incidence of reading difficulties was reduced from 20-25% to between 3-5%.
Despite the success of the earlier pilot scheme, there was strong opposition to Staffordshire and Warwickshire’s announcement in 2018. In October, the BDA president Lord Addington raised the issue in the House of Lords. Addington is a hereditary peer and, since 2011, chair of Microlink, a company that has received £132.3m in government contracts since 2003 to supply assistive technology to students with disabilities, including dyslexia.