Back in 2009, the Rose report, Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties, called for all schools to have access to specialist teachers, and, after its publication, money was made available by then education secretary Ed Balls to make this happen.

I have to admit, I’d never actually come across one of these beings until recently (one has to wonder where they have all gone), but it is worth knowing who they are and what they can offer schools. Specialist teachers are teachers who have undertaken qualifications at Level 7 (the same as a master’s degree or a Sendco award) in dyslexia and literacy difficulties. These awards are governed by the various dyslexia charities.

Specialist support

Depending on the kind of qualification they hold, they are able to assess and diagnose dyslexia, and point you towards the kind of interventions and/or teaching that will benefit. Upon assessment, specialist teachers will provide schools with a detailed report, identifying where a student has difficulties and covering areas such as:

* Overall development, including a family and educational history (dyslexia often runs in families).

* Oral language development.

* Letter-sound correspondences.

* Phonological processing.

* Fluency.

* Word recognition.

* Comprehension.

* Vocabulary knowledge.

* Spelling and writing.

* Standardised scores.

In a secondary, it is likely teachers will have access only to the front-page summary. However, it is worth asking to read the whole report as it will give you a lot of useful information you can use to make your teaching more accessible, as you will be able to read the diagnosis and the recommendations for specific intervention. But it is important to recognise that, however fulsome the report is, it does not contain a magic wand.

It’s a description of a child, the way they learn and the difficulties in learning they may experience, and this child is exactly the same person they were before they had the assessment.

So, when faced with a specialist teacher’s report, the classroom teacher needs to think, in conjunction with the Sendco and the specialist teacher, about what changes to classroom practice they might need to make in order to help that child make progress, not just in literacy but across the board. Often, it is simple tweaks, such as changing the font you use, or adding bullet points or numbers to lines to help them to find their place in a text, that make a surprisingly big difference.

Nancy Gedge is a consultant teacher for the Driver Youth Trust, working with schools and teachers on SEND. She is the author of Inclusion for Primary School Teachers. She tweets @nancygedge