Education system is ‘failing dyslexics’

Huge progress has been made in the past 20 years in dealing with dyslexia, but there is still plenty to do, according to the general director of the Cyprus Dyslexia Association Evgenia Stylianou.

“One of our main goals is to maintain our education system as accessible for children with dyslexia,” Stylianou said.

“They have the same rights as other children and we need to help them develop their special characteristics.”

Speaking to the Cyprus News Agency on Thursday, she said there are encouraging signs for the association, as it was revived after being dismantled in 2020, as part of a government purge of around 5,000 non-governmental organisations (NGO) that were not properly registered with the government.

The association is currently organising a lecture at the European University of Cyprus on Saturday, named “Children with learning difficulties: challenges for the family”.

“The aim is to get closer to people with dyslexia and their families, first and foremost to listen to them, support and empower them,” Stylianou said.

“The educational system in Cyprus does not identify and educate people with dyslexia properly. On the contrary, people with dyslexia are rejected, marginalised and, in some cases, victims of abuse, which makes their situation very difficult.”

Stylianou specified that the abuse does not only comes from classmates of children with dyslexia, but also from teachers through ignorance.

“Think of a fifth-grade child trying to read aloud in his classroom, and his reading level is first grade. It’s an incredibly stressful situation.”

The disorder involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words.

Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language.

“People with dyslexia have a particular handwriting sometimes, they may be missing certain phonemes, graphs, they have spelling mistakes because they cannot memorise the visual representation of words,” Stylianou said.

However, she assured that a lot has been done in the past 20 years, including the creation of the Special Education Law.

“Our association, which was created in 1993 and established in 1994, has contributed to all the efforts,” Stylianou said.

“There was no understanding of what dyslexia was, people thought we were talking about someone who couldn’t speak, who had a mental problem. Still, a lot more is needed.”

The association’s general director said that the purge of NGOs, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic forced it to be temporarily closed.

“However, we need to and we will reopen. Once again, people with dyslexia need our help, especially children in schools, who are reporting more and more cases of bullying and abuse,” Stylianou said.