Based in the Old Maltings in Malton, the Ryedale IDL Centre has been established to provide much needed help to those seeking to overcome Dyslexia - a difficulty with words.Dyslexia is a term which has been used in connection with this problem since 1883. Parents of dyslexic children are, naturally, very concerned by their child's inability to read and spell readily. Children themselves can be affected as they develop a feeling of insecurity and helplessness in facing up to the effects of dyslexia. With the emphasis today on schools being expected to produce ever improving standards of education and examination results, there is a group of children within each school throughout the country for whom the chance of ever doing well has always been difficult, and for whom achieving even normal standards is already an almost impossible task.National figures suggest that roughly 10% of school age children can have this problem, and with four boys affected for each girl that has difficulty.
It can be shown that in its most extreme form reading can be a virtual impossibility due to the letters and words either being blurred, moving about on the page, and generally NOT MAKING SENSE.So much so that when a youngster is asked to perhaps stand before his class and to read a passage from a book or other publication it can simply be an insurmountable task for him or her to sort out the confusion that appears on the page seen before them. Physical punishment has often been administered, accompanied by other humiliating treatment such as being called 'stupid','thick' and worse.
It has also to be acknowledged that very many of our dyslexic children from the past have gone on to prove themselves as QUITE BRILLIANT in fields other than reading and writing. The list includes artists, scientists, mathematicians, and politicians who have gone on in spite of their difficulties to become national figures of importance.
Help for those in our schools over recent times has usually come in the form of extra periods of reading, often on a one to one basis, where parents too have played an important part in the home, working patiently to achieve only a slight improvement in performance. A very real and proven system giving much needed help to the dyslexic has been evolved and developed over the past ten or twelve years by a team led by Mr and Mrs Jack Denner at Starcross, near Exeter.
Their research started because they themselves had a son with learning difficulty, and the method used has proved to be successful, and which is being made more widely available to others via centres such as The Ryedale I.D.L. Centre. The course is based on a computer, using software programmes tailored to the requirements of each participant. Children seem to thrive on the challenge which is providing them with the means of catching up to their peers in class.

The average rate of improvement can be shown to be 4.9 to 1, while other systems manage only 1.25 to 1. To find out where and how to have a child assessed and to offer him or her the chance to improve, contact