Mobility of Educational Services for Adolescents with Dyslexia Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mobility of Educational Services for Adolescents with Dyslexia

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The project attempted to improve the mobility and availability of educational services for adolescents with dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities (SLD) in general education. Four organisations were partners in the project. Pro Futuro (LV) was the lead partner and is a national parents’ NGO that advocates for individual students, and national regulatory/legislative change. Kocaeli Dyslexia Association (Turkey) is a regional dyslexia advocacy and training organisation. They provide conferences and trainings aimed at teachers, psychologists, parents and others. The Dyslexia Association – Bulgaria is a parent organization that actively works to train and educate teachers, school administrators, and parents in good practice for remediation of dyslexia. They also have an annual conference that is an important regional event for educators. DYS-centrum Praha is a service providing organisation that works extensively with schools, parents, and directly with students. They have started involving more parents in their organisation recently.
The project worked from school, social and government level to remedy the break in the educational services – remediation and accommodation including ICT – after grades 1-4 (primary school). The project attempted to improve the opportunities available in further education by assuring that since a student with dyslexia is in the education system, he/she gets the additional assistance he/she needs. There is no mobility of individualized educational services from one stage of education to the next one – the service often is tied to an institution but does not follow the individual student and it not accordingly modified as the student moves on in education.
This is a very drastic problem in secondary education, e.g., in Latvia there is not a single student with dyslexia in general secondary education school who receives special education services. In the Czech Republic there are only 2% of students with SLDs in secondary education. This is clearly discrimination against students with SLDs. In some countries legislation and, thus, also educational services are fragmented – services are different in different stages of education and also different in testing situations and everyday learning process. All these legal and practice inconsistencies seriously damage ability of students with dyslexia to fully utilize their academic potential that damages their quality of education and later employability.
As in the project countries there (except Czech Republic) there was no provision and practice of use of personal ICT, the project undertook an analysis of the situation and based on the findings created a training for teachers (plus a section in the handbook) and provided that training in a pilot situation. The importance of ICT was highlighted in three project conferences and other dissemination activities. The project made a stakeholder analysis and created a prioritized list of legislative and regulatory changes needed and the Latvian and Bulgarian partners advocated for those changes to be inserted in the respective legislation or regulation. The project helped adolescents with dyslexia to develop self advocacy skills via participation in the project. This project took a holistic approach to assisting adolescents with dyslexia via: training teachers, making a set of training materials and also changing the legislative framework to improve and ease mobility of educational services for adolescents with dyslexia.
The project also created awareness in schools, for education authorities, parents, students and the general public regarding the rights and needs of students with dyslexia in general secondary education. This was accomplished via active recruitment for participation in the project Study, in the training, in official correspondence with local and national education authorities, use of social media and stories in general and specialized media.
For all organisation involved, a very important long term benefit is having the handbook that was jointly written by the project team. It is a very good resource for all stakeholders and has been proven useful in the trainings. In addition, for LV and BG the project leaves the long term benefit of deeper involvement in advocacy at both individual and regulatory level.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111715,71 Eur

Project Coordinator

Biedriba Pro Futuro & Country: LV

Project Partners

• DYS-centrum Praha o.s.
• SDRUZHENIE “ASOCIACIA DYSLEXIA – BULGARIA”
• Kocaeli Disleksi Dernegi