The project will improve the mobility and availability of educational services for adolescents with dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities (SLD) in general education. The project plans to work from school, social and government level to remedy the break in the educational services - remediation and accommodation including ICT - after grades 1- 4 in which services needed by those with learning disabilities does not continue to junior high school and secondary education. This will improve the opportunities available in further education by assuring that as a student with dyslexia is in education, he/she gets the additional assistance he/she needs. In some countries helping students with dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties is concentrated only in special education classes or schools. There is no mobility of individualized educational services from one stage of education to the next one - the service often is tied to an institution but does not follow the individual student and it not accordingly modified as the student moves on in education. This is a very drastic problem in secondary education, e.g., in Latvia there is not a single student with dyslexia in general secondary education schools who receives any special education services. In Czech Republic there are only 2% of students with SLDs in the secondary education. This is a clear discrimination of students with SLDs. In some countries legislation and thus also educational services are fragmented - services are different in different stages of education and also different in testing situations and everyday learning process. All these legal and practice inconsistencies seriously damage ability of students with dyslexia to fully utilize their academic potential that damages their quality of education and later employability. In many countries there is no provision and thus practice of use of ICT and assisstive technologies. The project will undertake an analysis of the situation in partner countries to create a training for teachers (plus a related handbook), provide that training in a pilot situation and which will be shared in significant dissemination activities. Finally, the project will use a stakeholder analysis to create a prioritized list of legislative and regulatory changes needed, then will create new text for those changes and advocate for those changes to be inserted in the respective legislation or regulation. A very important feature of the project is helping adolescents with dyslexia to develop self advocacy skills via participation in the project. This project takes a holistic approach to assisting adolescents with dyslexia via: training teachers, making a set of training materials and also changing the legislative framework to ease mobility for adolescents with dyslexia.
The project attempted to improve the mobility and availability of educational services for adolescents with dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities (SLD) in general education. Four organisations were partners in the project. Pro Futuro (LV) was the lead partner and is a national parents' NGO that advocates for individual students, and national regulatory/legislative change. Kocaeli Dyslexia Association (Turkey) is a regional dyslexia advocacy and training organisation. They provide conferences and trainings aimed at teachers, psychologists, parents and others. The Dyslexia Association - Bulgaria is a parent organization that actively works to train and educate teachers, school administrators, and parents in good practice for remediation of dyslexia. They also have an annual conference that is an important regional event for educators. DYS-centrum Praha is a service providing organisation that works extensively with schools, parents, and directly with students. They have started involving more parents in their organisation recently. The project worked from school, social and government level to remedy the break in the educational services - remediation and accommodation including ICT - after grades 1-4 (primary school). The project attempted to improve the opportunities available in further education by assuring that since a student with dyslexia is in the education system, he/she gets the additional assistance he/she needs. There is no mobility of individualized educational services from one stage of education to the next one - the service often is tied to an institution but does not follow the individual student and it not accordingly modified as the student moves on in education. This is a very drastic problem in secondary education, e.g., in Latvia there is not a single student with dyslexia in general secondary education school who receives special education services. In the Czech Republic there are only 2% of students with SLDs in secondary education. This is clearly discrimination against students with SLDs. In some countries legislation and, thus, also educational services are fragmented - services are different in different stages of education and also different in testing situations and everyday learning process. All these legal and practice inconsistencies seriously damage ability of students with dyslexia to fully utilize their academic potential that damages their quality of education and later employability. As in the project countries there (except Czech Republic) there was no provision and practice of use of personal ICT, the project undertook an analysis of the situation and based on the findings created a training for teachers (plus a section in the handbook) and provided that training in a pilot situation. The importance of ICT was highlighted in three project conferences and other dissemination activities. The project made a stakeholder analysis and created a prioritized list of legislative and regulatory changes needed and the Latvian and Bulgarian partners advocated for those changes to be inserted in the respective legislation or regulation. The project helped adolescents with dyslexia to develop self advocacy skills via participation in the project. This project took a holistic approach to assisting adolescents with dyslexia via: training teachers, making a set of training materials and also changing the legislative framework to improve and ease mobility of educational services for adolescents with dyslexia. The project also created awareness in schools, for education authorities, parents, students and the general public regarding the rights and needs of students with dyslexia in general secondary education. This was accomplished via active recruitment for participation in the project Study, in the training, in official correspondence with local and national education authorities, use of social media and stories in general and specialized media. For all organisation involved, a very important long term benefit is having the handbook that was jointly written by the project team. It is a very good resource for all stakeholders and has been proven useful in the trainings. In addition, for LV and BG the project leaves the long term benefit of deeper involvement in advocacy at both individual and regulatory level.