Learning disability students win right to ‘reader’

More than 80 students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities are to get ‘reader’ help or other special accommodation for the Leaving Certificate exams following a review of the refusals of 400 applications for assistance.

The State Examinations Commission is re-examining 400 applications seeking “reasonable accommodation” for the exams arising from a High Court decision last month quashing the refusal of a reader to a student. Mr Justice Seamus Noonan overturned the refusal on grounds including failure of the Commission’s Independent Appeals Committee to give “any understandable rationale” for refusal.

After he gave that judgement for the student, represented by Feichin McDonagh SC, the boy was given a reader — an adult exam supervisor to read exam questions in a way a dyslexic student can understand.