Dyslexia at School: What to Ask the Teacher (and What's Next)

If you're heading into a meeting about your child's reading, ask three things: what specific data shows the gap (running records, NAPLAN bands, spelling age versus chronological age), what the school is already doing about it, and who — by name — is responsible for reviewing progress next term. If the answers are vague, that's useful information too. In Australia, dyslexia isn't formally diagnosed by schools at all — it takes an educational or clinical psychologist, and plenty of primary schools have no in-house process for flagging it, which leaves parents to notice the pattern first.

It usually starts small. A year-2 teacher mentions, almost as an aside at pickup, that your daughter "guesses at words instead of sounding them out." Or your year-4 son, who talks like a lawyer at dinner, hands in a book review with three sentences and half the words spelled by sound rather than by rule. You know he's not lazy. You know he's not "behind" in the way that sounds fixable with more worksheets. But nobody at school has used the word dyslexia yet, and you're not sure if that's because they haven't seen it, or because they have and are waiting for you to ask.

The real gap: schools notice, but rarely diagnose

Australian primary schools are reasonably good at noticing a child is struggling with reading. NAPLAN results, running records, and everyday classroom work all surface it. What they're not set up to do is diagnose dyslexia — that requires a formal assessment from a psychologist, usually private, and schools can't refer you the way a GP refers you to a specialist. Teachers can flag concerns and put support in place through the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD), which is how schools access extra funding for students needing adjustments — but a child can be getting NCCD-level support without anyone ever saying "dyslexia" out loud.

This creates an awkward gap. Some schools are proactive: a learning support teacher notices the pattern in year 1 or 2, starts intervention, and loops parents in early. Others wait, sometimes because they genuinely believe the child will "catch up," sometimes because there's one learning support teacher for four hundred students and triage means the loudest problems get seen first. Neither is malicious. But it means the parent who asks specific questions early tends to get better outcomes than the one who waits for the school to bring it up.

What's actually working: questions that get real answers

Vague questions get vague answers. "Is my child okay with reading?" invites "she's doing fine for her age." Try these instead, at the first meeting:

"Can I see her running record or reading level data from this term and last term?" — this shows trajectory, not just a snapshot. "What specific strategies is the classroom teacher using with him day to day — not the whole class, him specifically?" "Has the school considered a referral for further assessment, and what would that involve?" "Is she registered under the NCCD, and if so, at what level of adjustment?" "Who do I contact if I want to organise an outside assessment, and will the school work with that psychologist's recommendations?"

That last one matters because many families end up going private. The Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation (DSF) in WA and state-based SPELD associations elsewhere offer lower-cost screening and assessment than a private psychologist, whose full assessment can run $600–$2,000 with waitlists of several months in most capital cities. It's a real cost barrier, and it's fair to say so out loud in the meeting — some schools have relationships with reduced-fee assessors or can point you toward subsidised options through the public system.

A framework for the first meeting: Data, Plan, Owner, Date

Walk in with four things to pin down, in this order. Data: what evidence does the school have right now, and can you get a copy? Plan: what specific adjustments — extra time, a reader for instructions, audiobooks alongside print texts, assistive text-to-speech tools, alternative ways to show understanding besides handwriting — is the school proposing, and are they written into an Individual Learning Plan? Owner: which named person is accountable for checking in on progress? Date: when is the next review, on the calendar, not "sometime next term."

If the school can answer all four clearly, you're in reasonably good hands. If they can only answer one or two, that's not a school failing you — it's a sign you'll need to drive the process yourself, and knowing that early saves months.

When the answer is nothing

Sometimes there genuinely is no plan — no data beyond "he seems a bit behind," no learning support referral, no NCCD registration, nothing written down. This happens more in schools with high turnover or thin support staff, and it's more common in the early years, when a lot of variation in reading is still developmentally normal and teachers are reluctant to over-flag.

If that's where you land, you don't need the school's permission to move. You can request a referral in writing (a paper trail helps even if it feels formal), approach your GP for a referral to a psychologist, or contact your state's SPELD association directly. Independently, tools like BrightPath's free diagnostic can help you get a clearer read on where your child's specific reading and spelling gaps sit, which is useful information to bring back to the school even before a formal assessment — it turns "he seems behind" into something more concrete you can act on together.

Where good intentions go sideways

Watch for two failure modes. The first is the over-corrected household: reading becomes a nightly battleground of extra worksheets and flashcards on top of an already exhausting school day, and the kid starts to associate books with dread rather than difficulty. The second is the opposite — a diagnosis (formal or informal) becomes an excuse to stop expecting engagement with text at all, which can quietly narrow a child's world. Most families land somewhere in between: shorter, more frequent reading practice, audiobooks treated as real reading rather than a lesser substitute, and a lot of patience on the days it just isn't clicking.

The quiet win

The kids who do best aren't the ones with the earliest diagnosis or the most tutoring hours — they're the ones who still think of themselves as capable, because somebody kept telling them the truth: reading is hard for you right now, and that's a "how," not a "whether." This week, try one thing: ask your child's teacher for their current running record or reading data, in writing, before the next parent-teacher meeting. It's a small ask, and it turns a fuzzy conversation into one with something concrete to work from.