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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/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%