Dyslexia in Australian schools: identifying the problem

According to the Australian Dyslexia Association, "Dyslexia is estimated to affect some 10% of the Australian population" This squarely puts the problem in the hands of schools. Studies in the United Kingdom indicate that at least 80 percents of students with dyslexia in the UK are never diagnosed.

Dyslexia, or Specific/Significant Learning Difficulty/Disability (SLD) is a general learning disorder that involves difficulty in reading and writing, due to not being able to listen and identify speech sounds and relate them to the written word, and make the necessary sounds to communicate back. Dyslexia is neurological, and as such cant be cured.

The general signs of dyslexia are difficult to recognize before a child attends school. The only tell-tale sign is the child maybe very slow to pick up speech as an infant. At pre-school and early primary school, the child will be observed as a slow learner. The varying severity of dyslexia often makes it very difficult to spot and diagnose, especially by untrained teachers.

The first obvious signs may only appear in the early primary grades where a child has difficulty in learning new words, reading and repeating nursery rhymes. As the child's education continues, he or she will have trouble understanding and grasping new concepts presented in class.

Thus, in the class situation, a child will start falling behind the rest of the students, where social problems will begin to manifest. This will lead to loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, and possible depression at an early age, particularly if the child is not diagnosed. Often, they are targeted by other students for bullying, just because they are different.

During these years, the child will struggle with English comprehension, doing mathematics, solving maths problems, and learning a foreign language.

Dyslexia has no correlation with intelligence. This is a mistake many make in assessing these children.

Dyslexia is sometimes associated with other learning disorders as dyspraxia, the difficulty of performing coordinated movements, dyscalculia, the difficulty in dealing with numbers, dysgraphia, the difficulty of turning thoughts into the written word, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a hyperactive behavioural disorder.

In addition, dyslexia may be associated with prosopagnosia, a condition where a person has difficulties recognising peoples faces. This will often be accompanied with a form of anonic aphasia, where a person has difficulty in remembering names.

Like dyslexia, all the above are neurological disorders. There is a probability these conditions may accompany dyslexia. Due to the complexity of these disorders, differing extremities along a spectrum, and differing sets of symptoms, they are extremely difficult to diagnose, outside a clinical situation, where cognitive tests are done.

When dyslexia is associated with other disorders, the child may find great difficulties in learning. This can lead to social integration problems, where on occasion they withdraw from parents, teachers and friends. With the addition of ADHA, students may be seen as class disrupters, being anxious and/or aggressive in the classroom.

Without any assistance, these students are likely to eventually just drop out of the education system, with low self-confidence and self-esteem. This often leads to delinquency.