PET(4)-06-11 p6a

P-03-298 Financing the provision of Welsh-language resources for people with dyslexia

Petition wording

We call on the National Assembly for Wales to encourage the Welsh Government to fund Wales Dyslexia so that it can develop some of the resources that were recommended by the Enterprise and Learning Committees report, entitled Support for People with Dyslexia in Wales, which was published in July 2008, with a follow-up report published in October 2009. These include a Welsh-language screening test, dedicated and appropriate Welsh-language resources and meeting the costs of the free Wales Dyslexia helpline. 

Link to petition: http://senedd.assemblywales.org/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=897

Petition raised by: Wales Dyslexia

Number of signatures:151

Supporting information:

We have made many applications to the Welsh Assembly Government for funding to allow us to take forward our work of developing resources and screening tests in Welsh. However, the Minister’s response has been that funding is unavailable.

Recommendation 8 of the report that was published in July 2008, which was accepted by the Minister, states that: ‘screening, assessment and support for dyslexia should be equally available in both Welsh and English, and that the Welsh Assembly Government should make additional resources available to meet the demand.’

Recommendation 2 (also accepted by the Minister) states that: ‘The Committee recommends that dyslexia screening tests in both English and Welsh are available to all children at the beginning of Year 2 who are identified as having greater reading, spelling or writing difficulties compared to their peers. This must be followed by additional support and appropriate intervention by the end of the Christmas Term in Year 2 for those children who are identified as being at risk of dyslexia by the screening tests.’

Without Welsh-language resources, schools will be unable to meet the requirements of recommendation 2.

Recommendation 6 of the follow-up report published in October 2009 states that: ‘we [the Committee] recommend that the Welsh Government should fund the Welsh Dyslexia Project to run a free helpline for users in Wales, in both the Welsh and English languages.’

It should be noted that the Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills at the time, Jane Hutt AM, stated that £2 million is available for dyslexia in Wales, with £118,000 of this amount set aside for a literature review and to define dyslexia.

Dyslexia Wales proposes that the Government should agree to fund the organisation with these monies. Without this funding, there will be no equality between the provision that is already available in English and the resources that are needed in Welsh.