For most families, booking a dyslexia assessment comes after a long stretch of worry. You’ve noticed something. Maybe homework takes twice as long as it should. Maybe a bright, funny child has started saying they’re stupid. Maybe the school has been reassuring, or maybe you’ve been quietly fighting to get someone to take it seriously.
By the time people reach me, they’ve often built the assessment up into something rather frightening. So let me take the mystery out of it. Here is what actually happens, and why each bit of it matters.
First, what an assessment is for
A full diagnostic assessment does two jobs. It works out whether a young person’s profile is consistent with dyslexia (or another specific learning difficulty), and it builds a clear, usable picture of how this particular young person learns: where their strengths are, where the barriers sit, and what should be done about them.
That second job is the one people underestimate. A good report does far more than hand down a conclusion. It should tell a school what to do on Monday morning, and it should tell you, as a parent, what to expect and what to ask for. That emphasis matters, because my research on how parents engage with school-based support (Ross, 2019) found that families too often experience getting help as a “fight”. A clear, practical report is one of the best ways I know to take the heat out of those conversations.
Before the day
Good assessment starts before we’ve even met. I gather background: developmental history, the concerns from home and from school, any earlier reports, and the young person’s own sense of how things are going. Their view matters enormously, and it gets left out far too often. My study “I’m Dyslexic but What Does That Even Mean?” (Ross, 2021) is built entirely around how much a young person’s own understanding of their dyslexia shapes the way they engage with support.
I’ll also make sure the young person knows what’s coming, in a way that suits them. Nobody does their best thinking when they’re anxious, and a child who thinks they’re about to sit an exam they can “fail” won’t show me what they can really do.
On the day: what’s actually tested
An assessment is a series of standardised activities, done one to one over several hours with plenty of breaks. It’s nothing like a school test. There’s no pass or fail. Some parts will feel easy to your child and some will stretch them, and that’s deliberate. I need to see the full shape of what they can do.
Broadly, I look at three things and how they relate to one another.
Language and reasoning skills. Reasoning and thinking skills, both verbal and non-verbal. We also look at how comfortably you can express yourself verbally and understand spoken language This helps me understand a young person’s potential, separately from their reading.
Cognitive processing. The engine-room skills that dyslexia tends to affect: phonological awareness (working with the sounds in words), verbal memory, and processing speed.
Attainment. Actual reading, spelling and writing, and sometimes number work, using standardised measures. For reading comprehension, for instance, I use well-established assessments such as the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension, the same measure I used in my published research on reading support (Ross, 2024).
Dyslexia doesn’t show up in any single score. It shows up in the pattern between them, and typically that pattern is capable thinking sitting alongside unexpected difficulty with the literacy-related processing and the attainment that leans on it. Reading that pattern well is where the training and the years of experience earn their keep.
After the day: the report
Within a couple of weeks you’ll have a full written report. A report from me will:
- explain the findings in plain language, rather than a wall of jargon and numbers;
- say clearly whether the profile is consistent with dyslexia (or another SpLD);
- describe the young person’s strengths, because those are what we build on;
- set out practical, specific recommendations for home and school;
- and, where it’s relevant, cover exam access arrangements.
I always talk families through the report rather than emailing it over and disappearing. You should come away understanding your child better than you did before, with every question answered. There’s more on reading and acting on a report in my piece Dyslexia reports and schools: what to do.
What happens next
This is the point where an assessment either changes something or gathers dust, and that comes down almost entirely to how the report gets used.
For schools, the recommendations should feed straight into everyday teaching and into any support plan. When I was a SENCo, I’d always look at a young person’s profile and the recommendations first, because that’s where the quick, low-cost, high-impact changes tend to live. A lot of what helps is the same stuff that quietly helps every learner in the room, a point I’ve made from my teachers’ agency research (Ross, 2017) through to my Council for Science and Technology review (Ross, 2020). A good report earns its keep well beyond the one child. There’s more on turning a report into action in my work with schools.
For families, the report becomes your anchor in conversations with school. It gives you the language and the evidence to ask for what your child is entitled to.
A word on cost, honestly
I won’t pretend assessments are cheap, and I’ve written plainly about the uncomfortable fact that access to support too often depends on what a family can afford. I set that out in my blog Are we supporting all of our children? The cost of dyslexia to families (Ross, 2019) and in the APPG Human Cost of Dyslexia report (Ross and Hicks, 2019), where nearly half of families told us they were spending over £1,000 a year on top of everything else. What I will say is that an assessment should earn its place by giving you clarity and direction, not just a certificate for the drawer. That’s the standard I hold myself to.
If you’d like to understand my process in more detail, including timings and what to bring, here’s what to expect. And if you’d just like to talk it through with no obligation, you can book a free 20-minute call.
Questions people often ask
How long does a dyslexia assessment take? I set aside four to five hours and only see one young person a day at home, with breaks throughout, plus the background-gathering beforehand and the report afterwards. I’d far rather take the time to do it properly than rush a young person.
What age should my child be? Full diagnostic assessments become more reliable once a child has had enough reading teaching behind them, often from around age eight. I assess teenagers and adults regularly too, including students who need a report for Disabled Students’ Allowance. Concerns before that age are still worth acting on, with early support.
Will the report be accepted by my child’s school and for exams? An assessment carried out by an appropriately qualified assessor, holding a current Assessment Practising Certificate, meets the standard schools and exam boards expect. Exam access arrangements have their own specific rules, which I can talk you through.
Do you offer online dyslexia assessments? No. I assess in person, because so much of what I need to see happens in the room: how a young person reacts when a task gets hard, their body language, and whether they are anxious, tired, or simply finding the reading difficult. A screen hides most of that. I know that means waiting longer, and I am sorry for it, but I would rather give you something you can rely on.
We can’t easily afford it. Is it still worth it? That’s a real and fair worry. I’d rather you booked a free call so we can talk about your situation, and about what an assessment would and wouldn’t give you, before you commit to anything.
References and further reading
- Ross, H. (2024) Impact of OrCam Learn on reading comprehension, Support for Learning, 39(3), 95-103. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9604.12474
- Ross, H. (2021) ‘I’m Dyslexic but What Does That Even Mean?’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 23(1), 284-294. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.782
- Ross, H. (2019) Supporting a child with dyslexia, British Journal of Special Education, 46(2), 136-157. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12254
- Ross, H. (2019) Are we supporting all of our children? The cost of dyslexia to families, University of Bath IPR Blog. Read the blog
- Ross, H. and Hicks, J. (2019) Managing Dyslexia as a Family, in The Human Cost of Dyslexia (APPG). Read the report
- Ross, H. (2017) An exploration of teachers’ agency and social relationships within dyslexia-support provision in an English secondary school, British Journal of Special Education, 44(2), 186-202. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12174
See the full list of publications.