Dyslexia Risk Screening in the First Term of School
Emma Hartnell-Baker and her team are Level 7 SEN and SpLD specialists who provide a unique approach to early identification by screening children for dyslexia risk in the first term of Reception, known as Prep in Queensland or Kindergarten in the USA. This early insight allows schools to offer targeted support before difficulties become entrenched. From the second term of Reception, we can facilitate the support of a teaching assistant who will deliver the Speedie Readies - Show the Code - prevention of the intervention system that supports each child’s specific learning profile and complements any systematic structured phonics programme being used with the class. Alternatively,, we can also provide dyslexia risk screening as a stand alone service and the school may choose to use its own prevention system. . Schools are invited to ask about training and support for PDP, which stands for Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox. This is not dyslexia screening, it is early dyslexia risk factor screening, and this upstream screening allows for earlier support.
Screening for Children Who Are Not Yet Processing Speech Sounds Effectively
“Blending and segmenting unlock the gift of reading, because fluency and comprehension rely on strong speech sound skills and reading for pleasure is a challenge when word mapping is difficult.”
Emma Hartnell-Baker, Project Lead:
The Early Dyslexia Screening Centre
We are seeking children who present with early risk factors for dyslexia, as outlined in recent consensus frameworks, including the International Dyslexia Association’s revised definition (IDA, 2025) and the Delphi Dyslexia Consensus Project, which identifies phonological processing weaknesses as the most reliable early markers of dyslexia risk (Snowling et al., 2020). Contemporary reading science consistently shows that two indicators are especially important. The first is weak phonemic awareness, which affects how easily a child can notice, isolate, and manipulate the phonemes within spoken words. The second is weak phonological working memory, which reduces a child’s capacity to hold sequences of sounds in mind long enough to map them accurately to print. When these processes are fragile, children are more likely to experience slow and effortful reading and persistent spelling difficulty because the speech to print mappings do not establish efficiently (Hulme and Snowling, 2014; Castles et al., 2018; Snowling and Hulme, 2021).
It is essential to stress that these phonological risk factors have nothing to do with intelligence. Many children with this profile are articulate, curious, and highly capable, yet still find the phonological demands of reading and spelling disproportionately difficult. Evidence shows that these weaknesses are far easier to identify and support in the early years, particularly in Reception, and even earlier when families understand how to encourage speech sound sensitivity in infancy (Caravolas et al., 2012; Ziegler et al., 2020). Studies examining infant speech perception have shown that differences in how babies process speech sounds can be detected from around six months of age (Kuhl et al., 2014).
Although some early word mapping programmes, which explicitly show children how letters and sounds connect for decoding and encoding, offer stronger support than others, large scale evidence continues to show that daily exposure to systematic structured phonics does not guarantee secure outcomes for all learners. In England, children are taught using DfE validated synthetic phonics programmes that are described as offering "sufficient support for every child to become a fluent reader" yet national data show that since 2016 one in four pupils do not reach expected standards in reading and spelling by age eleven (DfE, 2024). These are often the children who later enter dyslexia referral pathways. Early identification of risk allows schools to provide targeted support long before difficulties become entrenched and reduces the likelihood that children will need diagnostic assessment later in their school journey.
Our goal is to prevent this pattern by identifying risk early and providing targeted, developmentally appropriate support before difficulties become entrenched, so that fewer children reach a point where a dyslexia diagnosis becomes the default response. This matters because the assessment pathway is often slow and difficult for families. Recent data show that many children wait more than a year for an SEN or neurodevelopmental assessment, and in some areas average waits exceed four years (Children’s Commissioner, 2024). Private dyslexia assessments typically cost between £575 and £690 when carried out by a specialist teacher, and can exceed £800 when undertaken by an educational psychologist (British Dyslexia Association, 2024). Research and inspection reports also indicate that receiving a dyslexia diagnosis does not always lead to substantial changes in daily provision. Many children continue to receive the same classroom support they had before assessment because schools often lack capacity to provide specialist interventions. Early identification of dyslexia risk factors avoids these delays and barriers by enabling schools to provide timely, targeted support when it is most effective, which is long before literacy difficulties become established.
References
British Dyslexia Association. (2024). Diagnostic assessments: Overview. https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/services/assessments/diagnostic-assessments/overview-2
Caravolas, M., Lervåg, A., Defior, S., Moutafi, J., Gilbert, A., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2012). Different patterns, but equivalent predictors, of growth in reading in consistent and inconsistent orthographies. Psychological Science, 23(6), 678–686. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611434530
Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271
Children’s Commissioner for England. (2024). Annex to NDD waiting times report. https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2024/10/Annex-to-NDD-waiting-times.pdf
Department for Education. (2023). Key stage 2 attainment: National headlines. UK Government.
Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2014). The interface between spoken and written language: Developmental disorders. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 27(5), 365–371. https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000083
International Dyslexia Association. (2025). Definition of dyslexia. IDA.
Kuhl, P. K., Ramírez, R. R., Bosseler, A., & Imada, T. (2014). Infants’ brain responses to speech suggest Analysis by Synthesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(16), 11238–11245. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1410963111
Snowling, M. J., Nash, H., Hulme, C., & Rack, J. (2020). The Dyslexia Debate: A Delphi consensus study. Dyslexia, 26(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1644
Snowling, M. J., & Hulme, C. (2021). Annual research review: Reading disorders revisited. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 62(5), 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13320
Ziegler, J. C., Pech-Georgel, C., Dufau, S., & Grainger, J. (2020). Rapid word learning in dyslexia depends on the nature of orthographic learning. Developmental Science, 23(2), e12891. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12891