The House of Commons Education Committee has released a damning report on the state of SEND, supporting what we knew already – young people are being failed by a broken and unlawful system. The report highlights the disparity between children’s needs and SEND provision, something DYT has campaigned to change in every school across the country. “The significant funding shortfall is a serious [...]
This year, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Dyslexia and Specific Literacy Difficulties is looking at the human, societal and educational impact of dyslexia. In reviewing educational impact, DYT was invited to parliament to provide evidence on teacher training and professional development and here is what we said… Dyslexia training for new teachers Each year around 30,000 teachers enter initial [...]
Driver Youth Trust’s vision is to ensure every young person can access the highest quality education that is responsive to their literacy needs. Whilst we welcome ASCL’s Commission into the “forgotten third” of learners who do not achieve a standard pass in English and mathematics, it is disappointing that the final report does not mention Special Educational Needs and Disability [...]
23rd April 2019 DYT's Top Story: DYT was one of 59 signatories in this letter to The Times calling on Labour not dismiss Key Stage 2 National Assessments without clearly articulating the alternative. Whilst we feel there are areas of the current system that should be reformed to better support learners with literacy difficulties, we do not support the wholesale [...]
Driver Youth Trust (DYT) has published its response to the new Ofsted framework, welcoming its focus on reading but warning that this needs to stretch beyond the early years. DYT have identified a bias toward early years and the initial development of reading in the Ofsted draft framework. We use our response to highlight to the inspectorate that for some [...]
Read DYT's education policy round up with a literacy and SEND focus. 7th January 2019 Happy New Year! I hope you had an enjoyable and restful break. To see in the new year I have blogged reflecting on some of DYT's work and achievements in 2018 and take a look ahead to what we might expect from educational policy in 2019. [...]
DYT’s Policy and Public Affairs Executive, Dan Baynes looks at what’s coming up on the policy agenda and the work DYT will be doing to promote learners with literacy difficulties. Read his first blog looking back on our policy work from 2017-18. 2018 was a slow year for education policy. Brexit dominated the political discourse and the Department for Education [...]
Read DYT's education policy round up with a literacy and SEND focus. 17th December 2018 Welcome to the last Week Ahead briefing of 2018. It's been a tumultuous political year as difficulties over Brexit continue to dominate the attention of Westminster. Whilst this has meant a quieter time for education policy (to the relief of many teachers!) some important policy changes [...]
Read DYT's education policy round up with a literacy and SEND focus. 10th December 2018 Last week I asked if SEND provision would feature in Ofsted's Annual Report, we learnt on Tuesday that not only did it get covered but was a central tenant of Amanda Spielman's speech and the media coverage that followed. Our Director of Operations, Karen Wespieser [...]
Read DYT's education policy round up with a literacy and SEND focus. 3rd December 2018 The debate over the Brexit deal continues to impact the Department for Education. Universities Minister, Sam Gyimah, resigned on Friday calling for another referendum and warning of the impact leaving the EU could have on higher education. It comes at the start of a busy week for [...]