Reinstate allowances regarding spelling for pupils with dyslexia

Children with dyslexia will have no allowances regarding their spelling in future.  Thousands of dyslexic children will be marked as failures under the government’s controversial new primary writing assessments. Pupils will be expected to spell almost 200 words on government wordlists if they are to reach the ‘expected standard’ for writing at the end of Year 6.

No allowance will be made for the tens of thousands of pupils with dyslexia.

One headteacher of a large state comprehensive school said the change would mean that a pupil who had shown a good knowledge and understanding of for example, history – but who had spelling problems due to dyslexia – could well end up with a worse grade than a good speller who had done less well on the history questions.