The British Dyslexia Association's Annual Ball
The British Dyslexia Association's Annual Ball took place on the 4th November 2011. During the event many volunteers and supporters were presented with awards for their work with the British Dyslexia Association (BDA). Claire Salter was also priveledged to be given an award for raising awareness of dyslexia and outstanding teaching following her appearance on the BBC documentary about dyslexia, 'Don't Call me Stupid' in which she worked with actress Kara Tointon.
The BDA also used the event to promote their campaign to make dyslexia awareness a compulsory component of Initial Teacher Training.
Initial Teacher Training Campaign
One in ten people have dyslexia and many of these go undiagnosed and unrecognised. Often this is because teachers lack the skills to identify and support children who are dyslexic and need to be diagnosed or given extra support. To help this a government report (The Rose Review (2009) recommended that Initial Teacher Training (ITT) should include Dyslexia/SpLD. However, there is currently no mandatory minimum level of Dyslexia/SpLD training that the Initial Teacher Training course providers must deliver.
The BDA is campaigning to remedy this. In order to do this we have set up a petition on the government petition website stating that there should be a compulsory module on Dyslexia. If this petition reaches 100,000 signatures then this issue will be debated in the House of Commons.
The petition only runs for a year so every signature counts, your signature could make a difference enabling teacher to help hundreds of thousands of dyslexic pupils. We believe that dyslexic children have just as much of a right to education by teachers that understand them and their condition as any other child.
We hope that you feel the same, if you do then please take a moment to sign the petition.