Waiting for a dyslexia assessment? What you can do now

Almost every week I speak to a parent who says some version of the same sentence:

“We’re waiting for the assessment, so we’re not really doing anything yet.”

I understand completely why. It feels responsible — find out what’s wrong, then act on what you find. But it means a child who is struggling now waits months to be helped, and often that’s the year their confidence goes.

So let’s take the waiting apart.

The thing nobody tells you first

Your child does not need a dyslexia diagnosis to receive support at school.

This isn’t a workaround or a nice idea. It’s what the law says. Section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014 defines special educational needs like this:

A child has special educational needs if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for them.

Read what’s missing. No diagnosis. No label. No report. The test is whether your child has a difficulty that needs support — and if they do, the school’s duties start straight away.

In practice schools should be running what’s called an assess, plan, do, review cycle — work out what the difficulty is, try something, see whether it worked, adjust. None of that requires a diagnostic assessment first.

If you’ve been told support has to wait for a diagnosis, that isn’t accurate, and it’s worth saying so politely and in writing.

Why the wait happens

Three things collide.

Schools can’t diagnose. They can run a screener — a short check that flags whether further assessment might be worthwhile. Screeners are useful, but they’re a long way short of a diagnostic assessment and they don’t produce a diagnosis.

There’s no NHS route. Unlike autism or ADHD, dyslexia assessment isn’t generally an NHS service in England. Most parents are surprised by this.

Educational psychologists are in very short supply. Local authority EP services are stretched, and dyslexia assessment isn’t usually what limited EP time gets spent on — it goes to statutory work like EHC needs assessments.

Which leaves most families choosing between a long wait and paying.

What an assessment actually is

A full diagnostic assessment usually takes two to three hours, with a written report following one to three weeks later. It looks at underlying cognitive processing as well as reading and spelling, and produces a formal conclusion about whether the profile is consistent with dyslexia.

Most children can be assessed from around age eight. Before that, difficulties can be identified and supported, but a formal diagnosis is harder to make reliably.

Who can actually diagnose

This matters, because not every “dyslexia assessment” advertised online produces a report anyone will accept.

A valid diagnostic assessment is carried out by either:

• a specialist teacher or assessor holding a Level 7 SpLD qualification and a current practising certificate, or
• an educational psychologist

Assessors are typically registered with PATOSS, the British Dyslexia Association or the Dyslexia Guild. If you’re paying privately, ask which register the assessor is on and whether they hold a current Assessment Practising Certificate before you book.

If you may later need the report for exam access arrangements or as evidence for an EHCP, that question matters a great deal.

What it costs

Independent assessments generally run £400 to £950. As an example, the British Dyslexia Association’s published prices are around £690 with a specialist teacher and £882 with a psychologist.

There is usually no funding for diagnostic assessments through schools or colleges. Limited bursaries exist — the British Dyslexia Association and the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity both run schemes — but availability is limited and there are waiting lists.

What to do while you wait

This is the part I actually care about.

Ask the school what they’re doing now. Not after the assessment. Now. Ask for it in writing, and ask what the plan is and when it’ll be reviewed.

Keep your own evidence. Dated examples of work. How long homework takes. What your child says about reading. This is useful for the assessment when it comes, and useful for the school before then.

Start structured literacy support. A good specialist teacher doesn’t need a diagnosis to work out where the gaps are and start closing them. Assessment and teaching are genuinely different jobs.

Protect their confidence. A child who spends a year believing they’re stupid doesn’t get that year back, and the damage often outlasts the reading difficulty itself.

What I look at, without a diagnosis

In a first session I’m not testing anyone. I’m listening.

I’ll ask your child to read something aloud — not to see how many words they get right, but to hear where it goes wrong. Do they decode a word they’ve never met, or guess from the picture and the shape of the sentence? Do they self-correct, or read on regardless? At what point does the effort show in their shoulders?

Then I’ll usually ask them to tell me about something they like, and afterwards to write a little of it down. The gap between those two is often the most informative thing I see all session. A child who can talk brilliantly about a film and produce three laboured sentences about it is telling me something quite specific, and it isn’t that they don’t understand the film.

I look at what kind of spelling mistakes they make — whether the word they’ve written would sound right if you read it back, or whether the sounds have gone astray too. I notice how many instructions they can hold at once. I notice how long it takes before they’re tired, because that tells me how to shape a lesson.

And I listen to how they talk about themselves. “I’m just rubbish at reading” arrives early and often, and it’s the thing I most want to start dismantling.

None of that requires a diagnosis. By the end of an hour I usually have a fair idea of where a child actually is and what would help first — and if an assessment later confirms it, good, but the teaching doesn’t have to wait for the paperwork.

When the assessment genuinely matters

I’m not arguing against assessment. There are three points where it earns its cost:

Exam access arrangements. Extra time and similar arrangements need evidence, assessed by someone appropriately qualified, and schools have deadlines. If your child is heading toward GCSEs, don’t leave this late.

Evidence for an EHCP. A good report can be important, though it’s one piece of evidence rather than the whole case.

Your child’s own understanding. This one gets underrated. For a lot of children, being told there’s a name for it — and that it has nothing to do with being clever — changes how they see themselves. I’ve watched that land more than once.

What to do now

If you take one thing from this: the waiting list is for the assessment, not for the help.

Chase the assessment if you want it. Ask the school what’s happening in the meantime, in writing. And if your child is struggling today, start supporting them today — the report will still be useful when it arrives.

Last updated: September 2026