HC Deb 27 February 1975 vol 887 cc874-84

11.29 p.m.

Mr. John Watkinson (Gloucestershire, West)

In this short debate I wish to raise the problem of a small but significant percentage of schoolchildren, namely, those schoolchildren who suffer from dyslexia. The term "dyslexia" can be applied to children who have an inability to acquire, or a difficulty in acquiring, the skills of reading, writing and spelling. Many children have such a difficulty, but what sets dyslexic children apart from others is that their disability is unrelated to intelligence or to emotional or environmental problems. Also, it cuts across all social classes.

Thus, there can be a situation in which a child is bright but when confronted with the overwhelming problem of dealing with the written language he is unable to cope.

It should be stressed that children come to the written language at about the age of 5. They come to that meeting with the written language at different stages of development. Children mature at different rates, and at differing rates of maturity they come face to face with language.

Language is artificial. It is man-made. It moves from left to right. It is sequential. It follows certain rigid rules and patterns. Some children have great problems in absorbing, recalling and reproducing language. It is no fault of theirs. It is, rather, due to certain genetical factors so that there is a slowness in the development of the basic brain functions that underlie learning to read and to spell. This is why it has become known as the maturational lag.

The effect of dyslexia upon children can be considerable. The inability to read or write can be considerable in any child, but when the child is bright as well it can be doubly disadvantageous.

I came across the problem when I met the child of a constituent of mine—Andrew Frost, aged 11. The facts surrounding his case are probably typical of other dyslexic children. When he went to school at the age of 5 he was bright and lively. His progress was slow, but he was tested and on his intelligence quotient test he was shown to have a rating of over 100. His parents were told not to worry about this. He went on to a middle school at 8½ and was given a remedial teacher. He made some progress.

The effects over those three and a half years were to produce a nervous disposition in the lad, sickness and stomach troubles. He was taunted at school. He received sympathy from some teachers, but others treated him as a dullard. His mother says that it was heartbreaking to see him put so much effort into his work when the returns for the lad were so minimal.

Andrew moved into my constituency. Again he was tested, and again it was shown that the lad was intelligent but dyslexic. His parents were confronted with the problem of which school to send him to and decided, because of the emotional problems with which the lad was presented, that he should go to a school for the educationally subnormal. The school was totally unsuitable for the lad. Andrew very soon approached his parents and asked for extra tuition. The parents decided to make inquiries of the county council as to what should be done and whether the council would make a grant for the child's further education, possibly at another school.

The parents found such a school. It is an independent school in Swindon. The county was unable to make a grant for the purpose. Nevertheless, with the help of friends the parents were able to send the lad to that special school in Swindon. There he received the special training and treatment which he needed. He was taught on a one-to-one, regular basis each week, and the progress he made was dramatic. His faith in himself was restored. The problem now facing the parents is where and how they can find the funds to maintain the child at that school.

What it indicates, however, is that if children who are dyslexic are deprived of the special, remedial teaching which they need, there can be engendered in them a fear of school, and emotional blockages and inferiority complexes can develop. Reading can become a torment. It becomes something which has to be avoided. Indeed, we know from the rates of adult illiteracy how successful some people, through no fault of their own, are at avoiding reading.

What is more, acute embarrassment can be caused at later stages of the child's development. Examinations become an almost insuperable problem. When the child leaves school and seeks a job, the job opportunities available are severely restricted because of his inability to read. Such people have to seek jobs which do not involve reading. They have to find jobs which involve the use of their hands rather than their head.

It is difficult to know the extent of dyslexia in this country. Some people say that it is as high as between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. We know that its prevalence is mostly among boys in a ratio of four to one. We also know that when a programme was put out under the auspices of the British Dyslexia Association in midweek on Thames Television, a regional programme, it provoked over 1,200 letters to the association within three weeks. Perhaps that indicates the size of the problem.

There has been an official response to the nature of the dyslexic problem, notably under Section 27 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. Under that Act a duty is placed on local education authorities to provide the Secretary of State, at such times as he may direct, information on the provision made by those authorities for special educational facilities for children suffering from acute dyslexia. I might say that the adjective "acute" is unnecessary, because dyslexia is an acute condition in itself.

There was an Ombudsman's report in August 1974 which arose out of a complaint of parents as a result of the non-implementation of Section 27 of the Act. The Ombudsman declared that the duties imposed upon the Minister were discretionary, but he went so far as to say that the Department was unsatisfied with the progress which local education authorities had been making. He indicated that the Tizard Report, which had dealt with this problem, was unhelpful in dealing with the causes and the treatment of dyslexia. He indicated, however, that the Government were awaiting with expectation the report of the Bullock Committee.

I think it is fair to say that for those who are concerned with dyslexia the publication of that report has been a crushing disappointment. In that vast report only two paragraphs are given over to the problem of dyslexia. It ignores basically the research which has been done in the United States of America, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. In particular, it provides no specific, realistic help to the class teacher.

The provision of services in our local education authorities is patchy. It is fair to say that increasingly they have become aware of the problem of dyslexia, but it is also the case that there is a desperate shortage of resources. In my local authority area we have only eight specialist remedial teachers.

What should be done in these circumstances? The first requirement is to remove the ignorance surrounding the whole subject, to remove from the language of teachers and headmasters this sort of comment, which has been made by a member of the teaching profession: How can a child be intelligent if he cannot read or write? It is particularly important that the ignorance which is still prevalent among the teaching profession on this subject should be removed.

The British Association tells me that as a result of the television programme I mentioned it has had many letters from teachers asking "What can we do?". It is also necessary for us to rethink and re-assess our assessment and screening procedures. If dyslexia is to be treated it must be identified. It should be possible to provide a simple pamphlet for teachers and local education authorities informing them of the nature of dyslexia and setting out certain alerting signals available to teachers so that they may recognise in their pupils the symptoms of dyslexia.

The sort of symptoms they should look for are problems which have existed in relation to reading, writing and spelling in the family, clumsiness in the children, a tendency to left-handedness, possible problems arising out of an at-risk birth, when the child began to write mirror-writing, and possible speech defects. Such a pamphlet has been prepared by the University of Aston and its known as "the Aston Index".

Once a child is identified as being dyslexic it is vital that he be introduced to structured learning in which over-learning and over-teaching is prevalent—a situation in which, if possible, there is a one-to-one relationship. It is also vital that there be special allowances built into all examination procedures. There should also be more in-service training within our schools.

What I have suggested would not cost a great deal of money. There are recommendations in the Bullock Report which I fully endorse. These concern the need to expand the number of teachers with remedial experience and the need to expand the number of teachers who have specialist training in dyslexia. We particularly want to get specialist training programmes into our colleges of education. I would like to see an increase in our remedial staff throughout the country, as quickly as possible. I would also like to see a reading or remedial centre in every local education authority, as has been advocated by Bullock: The Secretary of State has said that there are no available resources at present. I hope that the Department will be able to make such resources available in the immediate future.

While the debate about dyslexia continues to rage, while delay continues, while there is ignorance, the educational tide moves on and all the time it is carrying with it thousands of dyslexic children who will have to bear the social stigma of not being able to read and will be confronted with the sort of problems I have set out, unless there is action. I hope that the Department will be able to take such action in the immediate future.

11.44 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire. West (Mr. Watkinson) for raising a serious and fundamental problem which many of our youngsters experience, and also his reference to the constituency case, the boy Andrew Frost, who has a specific reading difficulty.

From what he has said, and from the information that I have received, I gather that the boys' family moved to the area from Surrey about two years ago. After discussion with the parents, Andrew was placed temporarily in a special school pending his transfer in a year's time to a secondary school with a remedial department. At first the parents accepted the arrangement but after about six months—I understand their anxiety and eagerness to do the best for the child—they decided to send their son to an independent boarding school in Swindon and paid the fees themselves.

Parents are, of course, free to do that if they wish and if they can manage it, but they cannot then expect the local education authority to take over the payment of the fees unless the authority cannot in any other way provide the education to meet the child's needs. This is a matter within the responsibility of the local authority and the Government have no power of direction in these maters.

Mr. Watkinson

Does my hon. Friend concede that there are local education authorities which provide grants for the parents of children with dylexia to send them away to independent schools?

Mr. Armstrong

Yes. Indeed, we have knowledge of such cases, but in the case of Andrew Frost, the Gloucestershire LEA considers that he would be suitably placed at an ordinary day school with a remedial department, and it is not therefore prepared to pay for him to board at an independent school.

To make its remedial policy effective, the authority employs, under the supervision of its chief educational psychologist, a group of remedial advisory teachers, each responsible for an area of the county. They visit schools to advise teachers on their problems and arrange remedial teaching for children in need of it. This need is established through the standardised reading test given to all children in the county at the age of seven and by consultation with educational psychologists, remedial teachers, advisory teachers, parents and schools.

I have a great deal of sympathy with children like Andrew who have reading difficulties which cannot be explained by lack of general ability. Such a child's difficulties may extend to spelling, writing and arithmetic. We live in a world of writing and if someone cannot understand it, it is like living in a foreign country where everybody speaks a foreign language that he cannot understand. When one does not know what a word looks like, even looking a word up in a dictionary becomes a painfully slow, hit-and-miss affair.

Another description from a sufferer which reveals the tensions and frustrations that beset dyslexic people is that one feels as though one is driving up the motorway on the wrong side. One is not blind, but one cannot see things in the way that other people can.

I assure my hon. Friend that he is pushing at an open door. A good deal of attention has focussed on these children in recent years. We are fortunate that two authoritative reports, one very short and the other very long, have been issued in recent years which have not merely had something to say about the detection and treatment of reading difficulties but have taken very much the same line about them. The first was the 1972 Report of the Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children on "children with specific reading difficulties"—the description it preferred to dyslexia. From the name of the chairman it is often known as the Tizard Report. The second was the Bullock Report on reading and the use of English in schools, which was published only 10 days ago. It, too, preferred the term "specific reading retardation" to "dyslexia". We welcome both reports, because to teach children to master their mother tongue is surely the very basis of education. We are giving urgent consideration to Bullock, which I regard as a call to action.

Both committees believe that these children, whose abilities in reading, and so on, are significantly below the standards which their abilities in other spheres would lead one to expect, are best considered as part of the wide range of reading difficulties.

Dr. Keith Hampson (Ripon)

I apologise for interrupting the Under-Secretary, but it is a very important point. His right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said that the Government would have to hesitate about the implementation of the report because of the financial implications. Is the Under-Secretary saying that the Government will give financial help for this particular category mentioned in the report?

Mr. Armstrong

The hon. Gentleman should know better than that. We are doing what I said. We are giving urgent consideration to Bullock, which I regard as a call to action. That is not a promise that resources will be made available. We shall, indeed, consider the whole report. As Bullock himself said, there is a great deal that can be done immediately if we can change attitudes.

The first stage of the screening process should be systematic observation and recording by the teacher. The Bullock Committee thought that this should be followed by selective diagnostic testing of those pupils about whom detailed information is required. Until, however, the necessary support services and in-service training—I agree with my hon. Friend about this, but it is certainly not as inexpensive as he indicated—are available for teachers, the testing of the whole 7 to 8 age group will be required.

The two reports agree that the great majority of children with reading difficulties can be given the help they need in their own school. The Tizard Report recommended a remedial programme tailor-made to the needs of the individual child. It also recognised that a small number of children require to be withdrawn temporarily from their ordinary schools for intensive help and for these remedial education centres should be set up. The Bullock Committee similarly recommended that there should be a reading clinic or remedial centre in every LEA, giving access to a comprehensive diagnostic service and expert medical, psychological and teaching help. In addition to its provision for children with severe reading difficulties, the centre should offer an advisory service to schools in co-operation with the adviser on children with learning difficulties, an appointment every authority should make.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has indicated in a foreword to the Bullock Report that many of its recommendations are addressed to schools and teachers and call for a change of approach and redirection of effort, rather than for additional resources which cannot be provided for the time being. He hopes that, within this limitation, local authorities and teachers will look carefully at the recommendations which concern them; and he has also said that he expects to have discussions with their representatives after they have had an opportunity to study the report.

I think it is true to say that in recent years local education authorities generally have done much to improve their arrangements for helping children with the difficulties that my hon. Friend has described. Gloucestershire was ahead of many authorities in introducing, in 1968, a standardised reading test for all children at the age of 7. Its remedial advisory teachers make a valuable contribution to in-service education for remedial teachers by arranging seminars and discussions in teachers' centres. The authority also employs seven educational psychologists, who are closely concerned with the identification of children with reading difficulties and with training and guiding teams of remedial teachers. It is noteworthy that in England and Wales the number of educational psychologists employed by LEAs in whole-time equivalents has doubled in the last 10 years. Some authorities have concentrated on establishing remedial education centres and the number of these in several big areas runs into double figures.

There have been developments, too, in in-service training. This takes a variety of forms, ranging from one-year courses in university institutes and colleges of education to short courses and conferences arranged by area training organisations and LEAs for their own staff. There are now about 60 one-year and one-term courses annually which deal, to a greater or lesser extent, with reading difficulties. Another important advance has been a course in the development of competence in reading which the Open University introduced in 1973. A total of 1,176 have enrolled for the course beginning in March of this year, and 1,775 have chosen it as part of their degree course.

All that has been done so far provides a solid base on which to develop facilities further in the light of the recommendations of the Bullock Committee. Its report wisely emphasises that attitudes are more important than systems in helping children to read. The report says that the most valuable piece of advice that a parent can be given is to help a child to look on books as a source of absorbing pleasure". This attitude needs to be maintained and extended through the school years. Where children have reading difficulties, fundamental is the teachers' ability to create warm and sympathetic individual relationships with pupils, so that they are encouraged to learn through the stimulus of success". A plea follows that remedial work is not work for the inexperienced or indifferent teacher, but for the one who combines a high level of teaching skill with an understanding of the child's emotional and developmental needs". Sir Alan Bullock has commented: If every head and principal and administrator were to sit down with their staff and say: 'What can we do with existing resources and personnel?' we would see a dramatic improvement in the standards of language work in a few years. And if we don't get that change in attitudes, lashing out millions of pounds won't do it. The hon. Gentleman has raised an important fundamental educational issue. I assure him that the Government and, indeed, local authorities, take to heart the kind of plea that he has made tonight. I give him and the House the assurance that he is pushing at an open door. We shall not be satisfied until adequate facilities are provided for those who need special remedial teaching to enable them to read and speak their mother tongue. Literacy for all is needed as a first educational priority.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Twelve o'clock.