Whether you are the Department for Education, a school or a parent you may find your answer here.
As an Educational Psychologist I’ve spent much of my career fascinated by dyslexia and the struggles some children face when learning to read.
I’d like to tell you about a piece of research I carried out for 11 years, involving more than 700 children, all taught with synthetic phonics. And here’s the remarkable thing: not one of these children went on to develop, the severe reading, spelling, and writing problems we usually associate with dyslexia.
The research was conducted in two very challenging schools. One had a very high level of special needs with lowest levels for language and social skills and the other served children with many social difficulties including travellers. In both schools, we started teaching synthetic phonics right at the start of Reception.
What did we find?
Well, in the first school after just one term of synthetic phonics, most children were already one year ahead in reading and spelling. But between 7 to 9% of the children struggled at first — they just didn’t make a start at all.
In the past, people might have assumed phonics wasn’t working for these children. But instead of changing methods, we gave them extra teaching — short, regular small-group sessions with the same phonics programme, using an in-school Nursery Nurse. They didn’t need different teaching – they needed more teaching. By the end of Reception, they had caught up with their peers.
Each year, whole cohorts of 90 children left Reception, on average 15 months ahead for both reading and spelling. Also, KS1 and KS2 SATs results were remarkable with many achieving well above average.
In the second school, where I tracked one whole class very closely, the results were equally striking: by Year 2, the class was, on average, more than two years ahead in reading and nearly two years ahead in spelling. Boys, often seen as at-risk, actually made the biggest gains. Also, in the KS1 SATS, reading and spelling in the class were above national figures.
So, what does this tell us? We can’t give a simple, early test for dyslexia because such a test doesn’t exist, but we can spot children who struggle right at the start of Reception.
Brain research shows that such children process reading differently, but with effective teaching — especially synthetic phonics — their brains change for reading and begin to function more like the brains of good readers. The key and crucial thing is early identification and early intervention.
And importantly, this doesn’t require specialist assessment, dyslexia programmes or specialist teachers. Instead, with consistent phonics teaching, using in-school staff, children who might have gone on to be labelled dyslexic were able to keep up and succeed alongside their peers.
So, if you are a school with a high level of special needs, if your children have low levels of language and social skills or if there is a high level of social difficulty you can achieve amazingly high levels of success with reading, spelling and writing with systematic synthetic phonics.
High-quality systematic synthetic phonics teaching from the very start of Reception, with early identification of strugglers and early support, will transform outcomes for struggling and potentially dyslexic children more effectively than a later diagnosis of dyslexia ever could.
One great way the DfE or your school could make a real difference is by promoting the early use of simple, single-word reading and spelling tests. This assessment would give a quick, easy, inexpensive and reliable way of identifying those children at risk of dyslexia. The beauty of this approach is that extra support can begin immediately. Progress can be monitored easily too— you just check the phonics learnt and use the same tests over time.
Dr. Marlynne Grant
Educational Psychologist
September 2025.