Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is about ensuring not only that teachers who are going through teacher training college will be able to undertake this module but that they will be required to do so. At the moment, it is not mandatory. Given this affects 100,000 kids in the system and the teaching of dyslexic children is so significant a responsibility, the module needs to be mandatory. We need to get together the management groups of the teacher training colleges before September next and make it mandatory. Otherwise, yet another cohort of society will be left behind. We need to change fundamentally our approach regarding education and dyslexia. We have forgotten about it and it has been left continually on the hind teat. As for those teachers who are in post in schools, we need to encourage them to get involved to a greater degree. A cohort of them have got involved but others have not. Unless we get everyone into the circle, 100,000 kids in each generation, or 10% of our society, will be left behind.