Mr. Donald Ewing:

On the official diagnosis, there have been some improvements in the allocation of additional teaching support. One does not need an official diagnosis or report by a psychologist to get extra teaching support. What was once called resource or learning support is now called special education teaching. That is an improvement and we would be massively in favour of diagnoses not being required to unlock resources, not least because of the massive problem with demand versus supply, but also for a young person to know they have dyslexia and not just another label. Children will give themselves another label or another label will be given to them if they do not know they are dyslexic, and those labels are far more pernicious and damaging. They include words likes "careless", "lazy". "struggling", "thick" or "stupid". These are words that people with dyslexia know are far more damaging labels. Instead of us worrying about labelling children with dyslexia, albeit not an official diagnosis, we should worry about the other labels that are abounding.