Dyslexia Support

The Dyslexia Centre is located off campus in two large terraced houses slightly past the College on Eastern Road and Bellevue Gardens.  The Director of the Dyslexia Centre is Bernadine Walsh who is also Head of Learning Support. 

The Centre is extremely well resourced, especially in its IT facilities.  It has six teaching rooms, interactive whiteboards, a total of twenty-seven fully networked computers and many specialist software programmes.  Most of the support offered by the Centre is delivered in small groups; these are never larger than nine and often only seven in number.  The pupils in these groups are always from the same year group and they become very supportive of one another.

Once a pupil enters the Senior School in Year 9, the Centre takes complete responsibility for the teaching of English and English Literature to GCSE, with further study skills work, help with revision techniques, and general support across the curriculum. Dyslexic pupils in Year 9 also normally attend the Centre at the time allocated to French tuition, although a restructured timetable will allow the flexibility to enable those pupils wishing to study Spanish, Mandarin and Latin to do so.

In Years 10 and 11 they take one fewer GCSE option to provide the time for extra support in addition to their small group English classes.

Many of our dyslexic pupils are able to pursue their sixth form studies with minimal support beyond that offered by the academic departments themselves, although ad hoc support is always available on request, as are one-to-one timetabled sessions.