The British Dyslexia Association has published a new analysis of Department for Education data, and its title says it all: GCSE attainment: A decade without progress. Last summer, only two in ten pupils with dyslexia achieved a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and maths, compared with five in ten pupils with no identified special educational need. Even at the standard pass (grade 4), just four in ten pupils with a specific learning difficulty got there, against seven in ten of their peers.
What makes this report so hard to read is not any single number, it's the trend. The gap has barely moved in three years, and more than a decade of national data tells the same story: thousands of capable young people leaving school every year with lower qualifications than they deserve.
As the BDA's chief executive Ellen Broomé put it: "Dyslexia is not linked to intelligence." Dyslexic young people are just as capable as their classmates. The gap is about whether their difficulties are recognised, and whether the right support arrives in time.
The BDA is calling on government to address dyslexia explicitly in the SEND reforms, to shift towards early identification rather than making support depend on a diagnosis, and to improve teacher training so mainstream classrooms work for dyslexic learners.
What this means for families
A gap that holds steady for a decade is not about the children, it's about the system around them. The pupils who do well despite dyslexia are usually the ones whose difficulties were spotted early and who received structured, specialist support well before exam years. If your child is heading towards GCSEs and something isn't right with their reading, spelling or writing stamina, the earlier you act the more difference it makes.