He has been sounding the alarm for years: dyslexic students are not well detected in Catalonia or well attended to at school when they are diagnosed. And, who says dyslexia, says ADHD or any learning disorder. They read little by little, with more effort, and the first ones make a lot of spelling mistakes and the second ones constantly lose the thread of the reading. It’s not laziness or laziness, it’s a neurological disorder. Because they have a huge obstacle to learning, many students fall into the gutter before reaching higher stages, with the added hurdle of low self-esteem.
Anna Sans, pediatric neurologist and director of the Som Via institute, is convinced that, behind the low results presented in Catalonia in reading comprehension (Pirls Report 2021), there are these untreated children.
How many children with dyslexia or ADHD are there in the population?
Approximately 15% of the school-age population has learning problems (data similar to the rest of the world and corroborated by studies in Catalonia). There is no classroom where there are not 3 or 4 children with neurodevelopmental problems.
And I deduce that it is not the number detected in schools.
No way. I visit about 30 students a week, most of them with stories of poor school performance, self-esteem problems and misunderstanding. 40% arrive at ESO without a diagnosis. Almost all of the children we serve had their first reading difficulties in preschool, which is when they should be detected in order to start working on them. Today this is an exception.
And why is it not detected?
There are still clichés such as: “Each child has his own rhythm”, “let’s give him more time”, “until the age of 8 you don’t have to take tests”, “he’s immature”… And time is lost precious in which brain plasticity is maximal to create brain connections in deficit areas if scientifically validated treatment methods are put in place.
Do schools doubt this reality?
It is clear that it is not foreseen. If, in a health issue, children were less diagnosed and properly treated than the average of the surrounding countries, pediatricians would not sleep until they knew what the problem was. How can you be like 20 years ago in this very prevalent issue? The Catalan Society of Paediatrics is working to ensure that the next Pediatric Preventive Activities Protocol of the Department of Health includes the screening of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at an early age in all children who go to public and private paediatrics consultations. From ASD to language, learning and ADHD disorders. The next step will be that, once detected, circuits are established in the educational and health fields that attend to them in an appropriate way.
Do you think that in communities like Asturias, with high levels of reading comprehension, it is detected more?
There is no doubt that in communities with more investment in education things work better and that, in some, the protocols of action for children and their compliance are enviable. But in my opinion, not everything is a problem of resources. Here there is a great inequality in terms of the care that children from different areas or neighborhoods receive. And the differences sometimes depend more on an opinion or “line of thought” than on scientifically proven criteria.
What problems are encountered?
A poor reading comprehension does not allow you to extract the main idea of ??a text, which is what allows learning to be consolidated. The child with low reading comprehension retains unconnected details that are quickly forgotten, and hinders other learning, such as mathematics, due to the difficulty of understanding statements.
Will they never learn?
If the habit of reading is not acquired, spelling will not be consolidated, written expression will not be improved and the acquisition of knowledge will be greatly limited. They can keep up with school and cheat with a lot of aid, but as long as these families have a socio-cultural level to be able to support them and the means to go to private schools.
And the rest?
In the case of children from vulnerable families with learning problems, the difficulties are always attributed to the socio-economic and cultural situation, as if this excluded a learning problem. Very often they have everything and, without early and effective psychoeducational detection and attention, we have already lost these children by the 3rd grade. We know what’s next.
