Having been away for three weeks I was astonished to find over 150 
messages waiting for me. What's happened to dis-forum, or have you 
all got time on your hands now the students are preparing for exams.

Two issues struck me, the "Lewisham Syndrome" and the interest in 
UCL's lecture on deaf students in HE. If you don't mind I would like 
to continue them for a while, or at least bring the former to a 
better conclusion.

I am not here to apologise for, or justify, Lewisham's methods. Nor 
are they alone in the procedure they adopt. Several LEAs, an 
increasing number, are choosing to refer their dyslexia bids to their 
in-house ed-psychs. This began when diagnoses were being done by all 
manner of people, usually to save the expense of an ed psych, but 
often by people who were not qualified to provide adequate evidence. 
I have many such examples in my office of chatty, anecdotal 
conversations which prove nothing. I have shown them to members of 
the National Working Party and am not alone in this view.

As a result, and to avoid making arbitrary, uninformed decisions, 
Awards Officers started asking their ed psychs for a second opinion. 
In the above cases the evidence was rejected and the student was told 
to obtain a psych's report. The process continued even when a full 
psych's report was submittedr. Then the result was often something 
like "I accept the diagnosis of dyslexia but regard the level of severity 
to be very mild. As a result I reccomend xyz" 

xyz could be nothing at all, a wordprocessor, or the whole works.

Apart from slowing down the process the method had the weakness that 
the final decision was being taken by someone who has never met the 
student despite the fact that the original diagnosis and subsequent 
needs assessment were based on at least six or more hours of 
face-to-face contact.  I have spoken to several of the ed psychs who are 
used by their LEAs in this way and while they defend their reasoning 
all feel uneasy about the process and wish that their intervention 
was not required (they do have their own jobs to do already).

There is no point in seeking scapegoats in all this. The awards were 
a well meant Government effort to improve things for disabled 
students but they were thrust on an unprepared system both within the 
LEAs and the universities. Whereas many other disabilities had well 
understood medical support dyslexia took most of by surprise. Because 
of the costs involved, its diagnosis was one of the first things to 
become "innovative" and it was for this reason I started arguing for 
a National Working Party in the summer of 94. A desire to see the 
same probity and standards applied to a condition as to any other is not 
a hostile act. It is only fair to other conditions and avoids 
discrediting the condition itself. Nevertheless, LEA reactions can 
be traced back to some of these early dubious diagnoses.

>From some of the mail one would think the university side had sorted 
itself out by now. Sadly, that is not my experience. In the last 
twelve months I have received numerous examples of the above chatty 
variety whose authors were surprised, and often annoyed, to be told 
their evidence did not stand up. For one thing, such reports never 
include any data on overall intellectual ability or performance, 
something ed psychs regard as essential. Several from one source 
were endorsed by an ed psych using an obviously photocopied letter.
 When she was challenged she agreed she had not seen any of the 
reports sent in her name and wrote to the college insisting they stop.

Another, produced recently, was a claim for a student whose ed 
psych (one of the most experienced in the region) had clearly stated 
the student was not dyslexic. Despite that, a bid was made on the 
grounds of the student's "specific learning difficulty". (And no he 
wasn't dyspraxic or anything else accoring to the psych) I spend 
hours on such reports when LEAs ask me to look into them and refuse 
always to comment until I have spoken to the authors. I still see far 
too many from students who may know better than anyone how their 
condition affects them, but very little about the support available. 
The results are often bids for big overpriced games machines which 
fail to include any disability-related features.

I know many of the e-mail correspondents and know that none of 
this applies to them, but wacky bids still appear in abundance and 
most LEAs do not like to act arbitrarily. They may seem, and 
sometimes be too tough, and act as if it was their own money they 
were protecting. But once they adopt a process they tend to stick to 
it.

The solution is what I am working towards when I can find the time, 
to set up a local working party of university staff, awards officers 
and ed psychs to consider how we can improve things while retaining 
the integrity of the system.

One final point. The newly published, excellent guidebook produced by 
Skill has, on page 26, the list of qualifications which the Working 
Party under Chris Singleton, felt were required by those performing 
diagnoses. It includes teachers with a substantial qualification like 
the SpLD. This point should be raised with Awards Officers as many of 
you who are trying to provide affordable screening have this 
qualifiaction and should no longer be forced to look elsewhere for 
support.

Sorry about the length of this.

 
Dave Laycock MBE

Head of CCPD, Chair of NFAC
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities
University of Westminster
72 Great Portland Street
London W1N 5AL

tel. 0171-911-5161
fax. 0171-911-5162
WWW home page: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/


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