Former health secretary Matt Hancock has called for every primary school child to be screened for dyslexia, The Independent reports.
Mr Hancock, who was not diagnosed with dyslexia until he went to Oxford University, introduced a Dyslexia Screening Bill in the Commons yesterday.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hancock explained his own struggle with the learning difficulty as a teenager.
He wrote: “Even though after the diagnosis and training, I understood more and was able to read and write more confidently, I still held onto what I felt was the embarrassment of having dyslexia.”
Hancock explained that having dyslexia could result in people being unemployed or getting into crime, so having targeted support early was key.
Research has suggested that privately educated children are far more likely than those at state schools to be registered as having learning difficulties, The Times reports.
In the decade up to 2018 the number of state secondary pupils registered with special educational needs fell by nearly 40 per cent. However, in the private sector the number who have had conditions such as dyslexia and dyspraxia diagnosed has increased by more than 30 per cent.
Overall in 2018, 15.2 per cent of children in the private sector were judged to have special educational needs, up from 10.5 per cent in 2008. In state secondary schools the proportion had fallen from 19.9 per cent to 12.3 per cent.
“It is quite a scandal that an estimated four in five dyslexic children leave school with their dyslexia unidentified,” said Hancock.