Catherine Callaghan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to add to the great points that Deputy Currie made. If you look up online the difficulties that children with dyslexia face, you will often find something like the following statement:

Dyslexia causes difficulties with reading accuracy and fluency, spelling, writing, working at speed, holding information in mind while working on it, and processing verbal information. It can impact maths and other curriculum areas, and many dyslexics feel exhausted and challenged every day in school.

As a former SNA, I know what a struggle with dyslexia looks like in a mainstream classroom. It looks like this. It is John who misses school a lot. It is Katie who never has her homework done. It is John who pretends he is not listening when the teacher asks him to answer a question that is on the whiteboard, because he does not understand what is written on the whiteboard. It is Katie who goes out on a break and is aggressive and angry in the school yard because she just spent two hours in a classroom when she did not know what was going on and could not understand what the teacher was putting on the board, so she feels frustrated and powerless. It is John who feels sick to his stomach at the thought of being asked to read out loud. Can you imagine what that feels like? Can you put yourselves in the shoes of John or Katie?

We need to do better for our children with dyslexia in primary and secondary schools. I am working alongside a DEIS school in Kilkenny, which says that 10% of pupils in the school have dyslexia, but they have no extra support other than the standard learning supports that are in every school. Children with dyslexia need specific supports, however. The Wilson programme is the gold standard. It works by teaching phonics to dyslexic children in a way that dyslexic children can understand. We only need to look at the transformative educational experience that children with autism have experienced. I will come back in in my second contribution.

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