Why did I become a Dyslexia assessor?

Some thoughts on why I became an assessor and the difficulties with the current climate in SEND.

In the beginning my main reason for studying to be a dyslexia assessor was because I wanted to be able to teach dyslexic students and help them to learn. I knew that there were many students with dyslexia who weren’t getting the level of support that they really needed, not because support wasn’t being provided but because we didn’t have the expertise to provide more individualised support. I hoped that with greater expertise we would be able to provide that bespoke level of support.

Unfortunately I think I was quite naive in thinking that things would improve once I had the expertise, because I had forgotten the other problem that SENCos have: a lack of time.

Many people have written a lot more eloquently than I about the problems with our current system in SEND and I won’t go into that in detail here, but I will say that for me a big reason to leave and do Dyslexia assessing full time was never feeling that I had enough time as a SENCo to really make the impact that I wanted and I was fed up with trying to spread a dwindling pool of resources amongst greater and greater numbers of students. Working in SEND had begun to feel very adversarial between schools and parents, and really the fault largely lies with neither side, but with the system that they are forced to operate in. Parents are increasingly forced to fight for every scrap of support and funding and schools having to share the scraps out between so many more students than previously.

Fundamentally I want (and I have always been motivated by this) to help students to reach their potential whilst feeling good about themselves.

I want to be the bridge between schools and parents, because I see the difficulties from both sides, ensuring that the right support is accessed without breaking anyone’s budget! (I spend a lot of time looking for free resources!)