About 15 years ago I was at a do for a children’s literacy charity and the guest speaker wasJamie Oliver. He got up and spoke easily, wittily and movingly – without notes – about his experiences as a child at school with undiagnosed dyslexia that meant he only read a book for the first time at the age of 33. Now he is channelling those experiences, with what he has learned over the last two decades as a campaigner (most famously about school dinners, when he brought to public attention the pennies’ worth of cheap slop we were pushing down our children’s gullets five times a week), into the cause of educational reform.
Jamie’sDyslexiaRevolution marks the culmination of six months’ work by Oliver and his team, including his right-hand woman for activism, Alison Corfield, and the beginning of a media blitz designed to force the government’s hand.
There are a number of striking moments in the documentary and it opens with one of them: we watch Oliver recording the audio version of one of his cookbooks, which he has to do a few words at a time before the jumbled print he sees forces him into error and he has to stop, breathe and start again. It’s the perfect, succinct demonstration of both how his mind works and of the immense frustration at not being able to process the written word in the same way most can.
How much greater the frustration and the demoralisation must be when you are an undiagnosed child with dyslexia (“I wrote myself off,” says Oliver) or – as the programme goes on to make clear – a diagnosed child without sufficient support – is brought equally vividly to life. We hear descriptions from children now and from adults recollecting their painful years in an education system not cognisant of their needs. “I hated being me, I hated school, I hated life.” “I remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach, how scared I was.” “When [other children] try their best you can see it. But when I try my best it looks like I’m not doing anything at all.”
Another helpful aid for those without the condition to get a sense of what it might be like is the various captions that accompany points made in the film, which are written as a dyslexic reader might experience them. “Dyslexia han sothisg [nothing] to bo with intelligesce.” It is “a learning bifference that affects the adility to reab, sqell, write, qrocess and remember information”. About 10% of children in an average class are thought to have the condition – another 15% are likely to be wrestling with other neurodiverse issues.
Oliver’s main focus is on the need for teachers to be better trained in the special needs that a quarter of each of their classes can have, and for mandatory early screening of all children for those needs to be introduced. Backed up, of course, by funding that doesn’t hack yet more money out of disappearing school budgets – for the training, screening and ongoing support of children. Specialists and scientists point out that teaching in ways and with materials that help children with dyslexia can help the entire class – no detriment is suffered by the majority by incorporating services for them as well. If anything, the introduction of multi-sensory learning and so on lifts all boats.
Statistics suggest early intervention is worth it to society on practical as well as moral grounds. Students with dyslexia are now 3.5 times more likely to be expelled than those without. Expelled students are 200% more likely to get involved in violent crime. An estimated 50% of prisoners have a learning disability often only identified once they are residing at his majesty’s pleasure.
Oliver and his team put together the facts and figures, the testimonies, their aims and ideal strategies, and hold a well-attended parliamentary event that they hope will lead – and indeed it does – to a meeting with the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. Oliver sits with her, explaining his and parents’ and experts’ concerns, and at one deeply satisfying yet dismaying point pulling her up on her fudging or misapprehension of the current practice of screening. “It’s not statutory,” he points out. “And it’s not done for every child.”
This raises bigger questions of course, beyond the remit of the programme, about the integrity of politicians, the knowledge of their subjects and why we live in a world where it takes celebrities to pressurise them into making change. Or at least, as Phillipson guardedly promises, to “take that away” and think about it.
Oliver has less bounce to him than he did during his school dinners campaign. He looks weary, though still determined. He is doing, on both fronts, still better than the rest of us.
Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution is on Channel 4 now.