Welcome to the official Speedie Readies Membership site. The only place to access the One, Two, Three and Away series of books online. Speedie Readies: Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox.

Why do children in England need us? 

In England, children spend two full years in Reception and Year 1 on synthetic phonics programmes. Yet one in five cannot pass the Phonics Screening Check, and by age 11 one in four still cannot read at the minimum expected level. It is the only country to mandate this, and reading for pleasure has declined on a scale not seen in comparable countries. This shows it does not work.
 

The response has not been to question the way phonics is being taught. Instead, the Department for Education has looked for others to blame, whether parents, teachers, or the children themselves, often by labelling them with special educational needs. Children do not have special or additional needs when we begin with what they truly need to learn and thrive. The idea of “additional needs” comes from the DfE normalising a one-size-fits-all programmes and viewing difference through a deficit mindset.

Now, with results worsening, plans are being made to test reading in Year 8. There is currently no real efforts to prevent the dyslexia paradox. This is why we are launching the pilot through MySLCN.com

The dyslexia paradox describes the contradiction that dyslexia risk can be identified early, yet most children are not supported until they have already experienced years of reading failure. We know that this can be changed through early support with word mapping that a TA can offer! 
Parents who do this at home can also help in the classroom.
 

Research in cognitive neuroscience has established that the brain’s capacity to form the neural connections linking speech, print, and meaning is greatest before the age of seven. Dehaene (2009) demonstrated that learning to read reorganises neural circuits involved in visual and auditory processing, but this process becomes less efficient as neural plasticity declines. Hulme and Snowling (2016) showed that weaknesses in phoneme awareness and letter–sound mapping during the early years are among the strongest predictors of later reading disorders, highlighting the need for early, proactive intervention. Seidenberg (2017) emphasised that fluent reading depends on the automation of these mappings through exposure and self-teaching, but this process can only occur if children reach that stage early enough.
 

By Year 3, prevention is no longer possible. The focus shifts to remediation because the window for early intervention has been missed. Children who have not mastered phoneme–grapheme mapping by this stage are already behind in reading fluency and spelling. They often work harder but achieve less because their brains have not yet automated the link between speech, print, and meaning. This is not a reflection of ability but of timing. The system waited too long to act.
 

The paradox persists because the current system waits for children to fail before intervening. National policy mandates uniform, programme-based instruction in the early years, assuming that all children will respond equally to synthetic phonics. Yet around one in four do not progress as expected. These children often include those with speech, language, and communication needs or other neurodivergent profiles who require more adaptive, linguistically grounded approaches.
 

Preventing the dyslexia paradox means identifying and supporting these children early, before difficulty becomes entrenched. Interventions such as Speedie Readies focus on word mapping within meaningful context, helping learners connect speech and print through visual and linguistic cues. The system is designed to move each child towards the self-teaching phase, where reading and spelling become self-sustaining.

Early, individualised support is not about replacing phonics but about making it accessible to all learners. Every child deserves the opportunity to experience success, joy, and independence in reading from the start. The earlier this happens, the less likely it is that dyslexia will define their educational journey.
 

Miss Emma, the Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®, shows there is another way, when we focus on preventing the dyslexia paradox. With the Speedie Readie system, children see from the very start how speech maps to print and how print maps back to speech. They begin reading real words and stories far more quickly and easily. Speedie Readies start self-teaching early, with word mapping mastery facilitating reading fluency and comprehension for all.