Most people are likely to think of dyslexia as a problem. A manageable problem, but a problem nonetheless. YouGov research has found that only 3 per cent of the public believe that dyslexia is a positive trait, and some 73 per cent of dyslexic people have hidden the fact from their employer.

Schools, likewise, approach it as something that requires intervention and monitoring, to make sure that it doesn’t hold pupils back in lessons or impede their exam performance.

But there is a growing movement to shift that mindset. It is urging the world to finally understand how the dyslexic brain works and the benefits it can bring, both for people with dyslexia and the world around them.

Kate Griggs is the founder and chief executive of Made By Dyslexia, a charity that’s setting out to redefine our understanding of it through campaigning and training on the issue. Griggs says that we need to think of dyslexia not as a disability, or even a disadvantage, but just as “different wiring of the brain”.

Along with the commonly understood challenges around reading, spelling, writing and rote learning, she says, dyslexia can also bring strengths in all kinds of skills. These include critical thinking and communication. Identifying and nurturing such qualities could bring radical improvements in the self-esteem and life chances of young people, Griggs says.

Indeed, the evidence for the positive traits associated with “dyslexic thinking” is now well established. For instance, in 1999, John Everatt, Beverley Steffert and Ian Smythe published a series of studies investigating the relationship between developmental dyslexia and creative talents. They found that “compared with non-dyslexics, dyslexic adults presented consistent evidence of greater creativity in tasks requiring novelty or insight and more innovative styles of thinking”.

Visual skills can also be an area of strength, as a 2011 study on astrophysicists found. The participants were tasked with spotting simulated graphical signatures in black holes, and those with dyslexia scored more highly. Similarly, a 2012 study comparing the ability of university students with and without dyslexia to memorise X-ray images found that the dyslexic group performed better.

Pattern spotting and analysis is also an area of strength, says Griggs. “Dyslexic people are very good at seeing the big picture,” she explains. “They’re very good at looking at a series of information and then being able to drill down into what is the really important part of it. It’s like having a helicopter view.”

In the classroom, she continues, this can mean that while it might look like a student is daydreaming or going off on a tangent, they may simply be thinking outside the box.

“When you’re in an education system, that can be tricky because we [dyslexic people] need the big picture first,” she says. “We need to know what it is actually all about rather than going in for the traditional education model of sequentially building on things.”

It is important to note that not everyone agrees that the term “dyslexic thinking” is a useful one, with some academics claiming it to be an unhelpful catch-all name. Some have even questioned whether the term “dyslexia” itself is helpful. But however we refer to it, there are already plenty of workplaces where this type of thinking is in demand.

Classified intelligence

Jo Cavan is director of strategy, policy and engagement at the government intelligence and security organisation GCHQ. She says that its apprentices are three to four times more likely to be dyslexic than those on other apprenticeship schemes. In an intelligence role, she explains, the ability to “see the bigger picture and patterns that are not obvious to others” is of enormous benefit.

“Dyslexic people tend to approach problems differently from neurotypical people,” Cavan says. “For some of our apprentices, it gives them the ability to draw threads together from all sorts of sources and connect them together in an unusual way. Our dyslexic staff are most often working on the knottier and more technical problems. They are very often analysts or engineers working at the front line to keep the nation safe.”

And while the GCHQ recruitment process “doesn’t cherrypick neurodiverse people”, she continues, the nature of the work means that having staff who are able to think differently from the norm is hugely beneficial.

Looking back on the 100-year history of GCHQ with hindsight, Cavan says, “we can see staff historically had strengths very similar to our neurodiverse colleagues today”. Over time, the recruitment process has “evolved” to better match these useful skills to roles.

“We now focus much more on potential than academic results,” she says. “We want to attract the best candidates, whether that’s neurodiverse or neurotypical. Everyone should be judged on their strengths.”

An exciting career as a spy may await some of our dyslexic learners once they’ve finished school, then. But the issue of dyslexic people struggling to achieve academic success remains a pressing one, and it could be holding some young people back from achieving their potential, as they find themselves in a system that is not catering to their needs.

There’s still debate about how many people the term even applies to. A 2019 report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dyslexia and other Specific Learning Difficulties estimated that it could apply to 10-15 per cent of the population (making dyslexia the “most common specific learning difference” in the UK). That would mean, the report says, that of the 8.7 million schoolchildren in England, about 870,000 have dyslexia - yet fewer than 150,000 have been diagnosed.

Research from the US also suggests that the figure could be closer to 20 per cent of the population, which means that several young people in every classroom could be affected and, crucially, misunderstood.

“Dyslexia is a different way of processing information, so it’s important that we recognise that the way that we’re testing and educating and benchmarking is, in most senses, focused on the things that dyslexic people find challenging and not things that we’re good at,” says Griggs.

Changing the conversation

What, therefore, needs to change? Griggs points out that the work to understand how we can adapt the existing education system to make it work better for students with dyslexia has already been done. She was involved in the creation of the 2009 Rose Report on dyslexia, which found that dyslexic “children were not being picked up, and the solution was teacher training”.

“Jump on 10 years, and that training is still not in place,” she says. “We have a system based on exams, which is disadvantaging dyslexic children, focusing on all the things that they can’t do. It is absolutely essential that we get teachers trained and we give teachers tools to be able to empower those kids.”

It’s not that we don’t have the knowledge of how to support dyslexic young people, she says; this has been “understood since the 1930s”. We know that reading can be better supported through structured, multisensory phonics programmes and extra time; that memory challenges can be overcome with planners and other resources; and that spelling, punctuation and grammar issues can be helped by the use of assistive technology.

The problem, Griggs continues, is that this knowledge about what works is still not being effectively translated into every classroom. As a result, not only are schools missing opportunities to acknowledge the benefits of dyslexia, they also could be failing to maximise those benefits for pupils simply through a lack of the right support.

The risk of this, she argues, is that although dyslexic thinking skills could be prized in the workplaces of the future, we won’t see young people with dyslexia go on to achieve their potential if their self-esteem has already been shredded by a decade in an education system that repeatedly told them they were wrong.

In the hopes of preventing this, Made By Dyslexia has created a free two-hour training programme with dyslexia experts that aims to raise awareness and change the predominant narratives that exist around dyslexia.

The ultimate goal is to change the conversation in schools from one of deficit to one of difference and even appreciation, says Griggs.

“For teachers, it [should be] just as easy to spot a dyslexic child through their strengths as through their challenges,” she explains.

“One of the areas of strength is in people and communication skills. Dyslexics tend to be fantastic communicators and they can read people very well; they are great at empathy, problem solving and team building. All those vibrant skills that every single employer is looking for, they’re there.”

Zofia Niemtus is interim deputy commissioning editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 18 June 2021 issue under the headline “Tes focus on…‘Dyslexic thinking’”