Dyslexia Friendly School Award

In April 2014 Whitley Lodge First School achieved the “Dyslexia Friendly School Award”, following a rigorous assessment process which had taken place over a two year period.

Teaching staff at Whitley Lodge have worked closely with North Tyneside’s Dyslexia Referral Team over a number of years, initially to help individual children who were experiencing specific difficulties with literacy. However, over time, many of the strategies, resources and techniques adopted to help those particular children were recognised as also being helpful to many others. As a result, many of these resources and strategies became embedded into general classroom teaching as examples of “good practise.” On one of their regular visits to our school, it was the Dyslexia Team who suggested we should apply for our good practise to be formally recognised in a “Dyslexia Friendly School” award.

The accreditation process started with a school “audit”, looking at how children’s needs were identified and assessed, staff training, intervention programmes, school resources and classroom strategies.
Following a full day of assessment by the Dyslexia Team we were delighted to be told that our school had met all the criteria for a “Dyslexia Friendly School” and passed the accreditation process with flying colours.

As a result, just before the Easter break 2014, Whitley Lodge First School became the first school in North Tyneside to achieve this prestigious award.

We continued to develop our inclusive practise in the teaching of literacy, and introduced several new initiatives over the following 4 years, including “Talk for Writing and the use of “Read Write Inc” resources throughout school. We spend some time reviewing our strategies for intervention, and were ready for a verification visit from the Dyslexia Team in June 2018. Following this, our re-accreditation for the Dyslexia Friendly School Award was confirmed.


Mandy Elkin
Dyslexia Friendly School Award Coordinator