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Assessments

Children must be at least 6 1/2 years  old, before testing can be carried out.

There are two types of assessments: -

1) A Private Assessments
2) A Statutory Assessments (or formal assessments)

Private Assessments

A private assessment is an assessment carried out by a private Independent Educational Psychologist. This kind of assessment is fine if you need to quickly identify your child's problems or need to provide prove to your LEA that a statutory assessment should take place.  However, there are certain drawbacks to this type of assessment, namely: -

The LEA don't have to recognise this type of assessment and are likely to disagree if it indicates your child to have a dyslexic learning disability. The LEA are quite within their rights to insist that their own Educational Psychologist repeats the assessment and almost always do so. This in itself can be problematic as the tests tend to be less accurate second time around.  However, this only happens if identical tests are used.

Parents commonly find themselves paying up to £350 for a private assessment and many months further on  no closer to being able to resolve their child's educational needs. Furthermore, should the private assessment fail to identify the child's learning difficulty and the parent be naive enough to show the resulting report to the LEA without first getting a second opinion, the LEA may use this as grounds not to provide help or to refuse a statutory assessment, in effect the parent can unwittingly give the LEA a stick to beat them with. What is more, there is no right of appeal against anything contained within a private assessment.

For these reasons we only recommend private assessments to determine if a child as a specific learning difficulty (dyslexia) to support the case for a statutory assessment.

Statutory Assessments

A statutory assessment is an assessment carried out by an Educational Psychologist working directly for the LEA. The LEA have to carry out this type of assessment under the Education Act if a child is referred to them suspected of having a learning difficulty.

Assessments are provided free of charge by your LEA and are governed by strict time limits which provide a framework in which tests should be carried out. Furthermore, there is a right of appeal to an independent SEN tribunal against an LEA who refuses to carry out such an assessment.

Getting an Assessment

There are three ways that can be use to refer your child to the LEA for a free assessment.

1) Referral by a parent.

Parents may ask the LEA to conduct a statutory assessment. The LEA must comply with such a request, unless they have made a statutory assessment within six months of the date of the request or unless they conclude, upon examining all the available evidence, that a statutory assessment is not necessary. However, if you disagree you have the legal right to appeal to an independent SEN tribunal.

2) Referral by your child's school.

If you have a good relationship with your school and you feel they are doing all they should to provide special help for your child then they should refer your child for an assessment if they feel it is necessary. Some schools are excellent but many are not. You should also be aware that if you take this rout you will lose your legal right to appeal to an independent SEN tribunal. You can only appeal if you, rather than the school, have asked the LEA to carry out an assessment.

3) Referral by Social Services.

Social Services can also refer your child to the LEA for assessment. However, usually Social Services become involved when children have extreme learning difficulties such as Autism or Down's Syndrome.

Generally, Social Services department tend to consider dyslexia as a miner problem in comparison and are rarely keen to become involved. Furthermore, most parents are  understandably less than keen to become involved with Social Services.

If you would like to refer your child for assessment yourself then contact us and we will provide you with full and detailed information on the best way to go about it.

Also see Sample letter