Dyslexia

Work programme | Update June 2008

This website provides information for parents and educators on the Ministry of Education's approach to dyslexia. It will provide links to key aspects of the Ministry’s work on dyslexia, as these become available.

Internationally, the review of evidence about learning difficulties has led education agencies to have confidence that the term ‘dyslexia’ describes a specific range of persistent difficulties with reading and writing.

Along with researchers and specialists, the Ministry is now moving forward on understanding how best to act on this knowledge.

We are now focusing on more explicitly supporting the learning difficulties associated with dyslexia, based on robust evidence, and are working collaboratively with experts in the field.

The Ministry has completed a review of international research called Literature Review: An International Perspective on Dyslexia (PDF 538KB) and is using this to refocus current policies and programmes to better address dyslexia.

Work programme

The Ministry’s approved work programme for dyslexia includes:

• a working definition of dyslexia to help teachers and parents understand what dyslexia is and how it can be identified and addressed
• a pamphlet for parents, due in November 2007
• more effective assessment tools and professional development processes to ensure that students with difficulties associated with dyslexia can be identified as early as possible, due in 2008
• resources for teachers with strategies for meeting the needs of students with dyslexia, due in 2008.

June 2008 Update

The Ministry is developing a range of resources to assist teachers and parents of children with dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a spectrum of specific learning difficulties and is evident when accurate and/or fluent reading and writing skills, particularly phonological awareness, develop incompletely or with great difficulty. This may include difficulties with one or more of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy, or musical notation. These difficulties are persistent despite access to learning opportunities that are effective and appropriate for most other children.

The Ministry’s work programme includes developing a booklet to support teachers’ understanding of teaching and learning for children with dyslexia. It is part of the current series on special education needs and is due to be distributed to schools in July/August 2008.

From July, teachers can also turn to the TKI website for an online resource, Sounds and Words, that will help with teaching phonological awareness and spelling in years 1-8.

These initiatives follow on from the release in December of Dyslexia: Breaking Down the Barriers, a pamphlet for parents developed by the Ministry in association with the Dyslexia Foundation and in consultation with the Specific Learning Disabilities Federation. This pamphlet was distributed to schools in December 2007 and is also available through the Ministry’s Team-Up website. It has proved to be very popular and a reprint is currently underway.

The Ministry’s literacy website, Literacy Online, will be launched in October 2008. Information on dyslexia will become more visible and accessible on this site.

Further progress comes through the Ministry’s literacy work. The draft Literacy Learning Progressions: Meeting the Reading and Writing Demands of the Curriculum document, launched in November last year, articulates clear expectations for students’ literacy learning. These can be viewed on: http://www.literacyprogressions.org.nz/.

The English Language Learning Progressions sit alongside the Literacy Learning Progressions in that learners from language backgrounds other than English will be working towards proficiency in the same reading and writing competencies as all New Zealand students. However, their pathways and rates of progress will differ from those speakers of English as a first language.