A 9 yr-old boy is struggling at school with his reading and writing. But does that mean he has a learning problem? Our Education Expert, Kate Nayler, looks at the issues.

Raisingkids member's problem
I have a 9-year-old son who is in his fourth year at school. Since he started school he has struggled with his reading and writing and is still approx two years behind with his work. I have spoken to his teacher and have been told he is in the school action which is more one-to-one work with him and a teacher. But they won't do any more than that. Would you say he has a learning problem? If so where do I go from here to get him the help he needs?

Education expert's advice
It is very difficult to say whether or not your son has a learning problem as there could be a number of reasons why he has struggled with reading and writing since starting school.

Problems with hearing, speech and language are common in very young children and are not always picked up before a child starts school. These problems impact on learning to varying degrees, but they do make the children ‘learning vulnerable’, i.e. vulnerable to experiencing failure. The children tend to be noticed when they ‘fail’ to make the same progress as their peers.

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In 1998 the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) introduced the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in an attempt to raise literacy standards in schools. For the past 8 years children in primary school have had literacy hour every day; however, as you may have read in the papers, there is a great deal of debate as to the effectiveness of the strategy. It is very prescriptive and many teachers feel that they have been undermined professionally and forced to teach in a way that goes against their better judgement.

The NLS focuses quite heavily on phonics. Good teachers use a range of strategies to teach children to read, phonics being just one of them. However, if one strategy is given greater importance than the other strategies educators must be aware of what is being pushed into the background i.e what is deemed as being less important.

What has happened over the past few years is that children who ‘fail’ to make the required progress during literacy hour are placed on catch-up programmes, such as the early literacy support (ELS) and additional literacy support (ALS). These programmes also have a strong emphasis on phonics, so the children are basically getting more of the same, albeit at a slower pace.

Children with hearing, speech and language difficulties often struggle in literacy hour because much of the work is focused towards their weaknesses, so to give them more of the same only serves to compound failure. Repeated exposure to failure is extremely damaging to a child’s confidence and self-esteem. Furthermore, because of the emphasis on one strategy, the other strategies which good readers utilise are not available to them - so it’s a double blow.

If any of this is relevant to your son, I would suggest that you look at what he is doing in his 1:1 tuition and speak to his teacher. It is possible that he simply needs a change of approach.