Dyslexia: Apprenticeships

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I pay tribute to my noble friend for his tireless championing of those who suffer from dyslexia. I stress that the process for any complaint is to exhaust the centre’s procedures first—and that would be a face-to-face meeting, not necessarily a written procedure—and then go to the awarding organisation. If that does not work, complaints can be raised with Ofqual. However, Ofqual has been proactive in this respect and is in active discussion with the British Dyslexia Association to try to get a sense of the scale of the problems. So far it has come up with the problem in software compatibility to which my noble friend referred, and it is working with awarding organisations to try to address that.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

May I put it to the Minister that it is often the case that young men and women who have difficulty in passing written exams can go on with encouragement to become excellent journeymen and journeywomen? I hope that the Government’s apprenticeship scheme recognises the fact that not everyone can be academic and so clever in terms of reading and writing.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. It is absolutely right that people who are practically very skilled often find that making an assessment in a written paper poses much more of a problem for them. On apprenticeships, there has been a change to functional skills that focus on applying knowledge rather than having to pass written tests, and these are widely available as part of the apprenticeship programme. The noble Lord makes a very valid point about the value of people whose skills do not lie in writing.