Understanding a Student’s Profile

That is why it is so helpful to have a diagnostic report: not to put a label on it, although that can be helpful to access support in educational or work settings but mainly to understand any relative strengths and weaknesses. Diagnostic Reports will always include recommendations of learning strategie and approaches designed to exploit a student’s strengths, in order to compensate for their weaknesses.

Given that dyslexic processing strengths and weaknesses can be different for each student, it makes sense that effective solutions and interventions will vary for different types of processing profile and individual personalities. Diagnostic assessment identifies strengths as well as weaknesses. That is very reassuring. A Student can feel reassured about their skills and abilities and can quantify the specific areas they need to compensate for. Identifying the problem means they don’t have to worry about everything all at once any more. It also means their parents or tutors understand the reasons for specific things they may find difficult, so they in turn find it easier to be supportive rather than frustrated. Finally, identifying the specific issues and how they are affecting someone means it is possible to identify the most effective ways to combat those issues. It means that if a student decides to follow a suggested strategy, they can be confident that it is likely to work for them. This is much better than not knowing why something is difficult and randomly trying all sorts of suggestions that may have worked for other people with a completely different profile. Students are far more likely to persevere with a strategy, if they know it is good use of their time and will make things easier for them.