I have contacted the Standard and hope that they will take a look at The CoolerRuler to see whether we can get it out to kids and achieve something of the improvement in reading ages that I found with my last piece of research - over 61% attaining an average increase of 15.75 months over only six weeks.

I have many past pupils who have benefited from using The CoolerRuler. Let’s hope that this initiative leads to many more.

After our successful piece of research in the primary sector last year, I decided to see whether I could prove that The CoolerRuler can help older children who still have problems with reading. This latest project involved fifteen readers in years 7 and 8 (aged between 11 years 10 months and 13 years 5 months) who attend the special needs unit of a state secondary school and the duration of the trial was six weeks.

The children were interviewed individually and their reading tested using a single word reading test from the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT 3 - tan form). Each was then given The CoolerRuler to keep and encouraged to use it as much as possible both in school and for homework.

Over the next six weeks, I saw each child for about fifteen minutes a week, to check that The CoolerRuler was being used correctly and to ask them for their opinions on its effectiveness. At the end of the trial, they were re-tested with the WRAT 3 - but this time using the alternative, blue form.

The outcome was very pleasing. Of the fifteen participants, two were excluded from the results - one because of personal problems at home and the other because she was physically sick on the day of the retest. From the remaining thirteen, eight made significant gains in reading age, ranging from an increase of six months to three years and eleven months. This represents an average gain of 15.75 months for over 61% of the cohort.

However, the most pleasing aspect of the project was the confidence that The CoolerRuler gave to those using it. The Head of the special needs unit found this especially noteworthy and when I asked the children to score The CoolerRuler out of ten for effectiveness, I was gratified to find that the average score was over eight out of ten. Comments included:

“It’s really helped me with reading; the sliders help me to break up the words.”

“I’ve used it two or three lessons a day. It helps by breaking down longer words I used to get stuck on. It’s great.”

“I’ve never been able to read long words like ‘dangerous’ before. It takes forever to read a book, but with The CoolerRuler, putting it over the line makes it go faster.”

“The CoolerRuler help you read better. If you get stuck on a word, you can bump the sliders up and it’s really easy - and it’s also a ruler, so it’s part of your equipment.”

“I used it a lot in my tests … and it’s a good ruler too. I use it in all my lessons where I have to read. It makes reading less tiring.”

“It makes words you’d miss, or get wrong, stand out so you can get them right.”

“It helps because the sliders split words you can’t read in half. I’d recommend it.”

My thanks to all the kids who helped with this project. These comments make everything worthwhile - and I shall continue to promote The CoolerRuler so that other poor readers may enjoy its benefits.

By the time it was announced that William was to attend St. Andrews University, Neil had been accepted there a year earlier to read history. He (like William) had taken a gap year, so they both started at the same time. Only a few weeks after Neil had arrived in St. Andrews, he fell in love with another student - also called Kate, although this Kate is from Tucson, Arizona - and they have been together ever since. On one occasion, in Broons bar, Kate (our Kate - not Middleton,) managed to knock the heir the the throne to the ground. She was deeply embarrassed, but it didn’t apparently count as an assassination attempt, so all was well.

They both love the town and have returned there several times since they graduated and it was there, three weeks ago, that they became engaged. So a generation on, the pattern continues.

Neil and Kate plan to marry in St. Salvator’s chapel in St. Andrews (a privilege offered to graduates of the university) but there the coincidences end. Our family’s big day is planned for July 2012 as no one is worried about a conflict with the diamond jubilee and the Olympics!

Now, I love my sister and I enjoy parties - so it had to be something big to make me leave early. But in fact, it was something small - a tiny teacher, about five feet tall and newly qualified, conveyed her distaste for children with dyslexia (and those who choose to train as special needs teachers) and refused to consider altering her teaching methods to accommodate those who might find it difficult to copy from the board.

The conversation began when I asked how she had been doing since I last saw her about six years ago. She has been doing well - good GCSE’s, A levels, a teaching degree and she’s about to start work. Well done her - she has a job in a private school teaching French and Spanish. This is not to her liking; she wants to work in the state sector and is pretty disgusted that the only job she could get is in the private sector.

The girl was delighted to find that I was a teacher and asked, enthusiastically, what I taught. The expression of disinterest and disdain that crossed her face seconds later when I mentioned special needs was incredible and the ensuing conversation showed why.

Having taught in a private school myself (my lack of a general teaching qualification precluded my teaching special needs in a state school for a reasonable salary!) I was able to reassure her that it would be no sinecure. She would certainly find those children that she so wants to teach, whose parents have no interest in their education - paying for it doesn’t necessarily mean that parents will actually support the educative process - as well as those who are bright but struggling through an unidentified learning disability. But she was adamant that private schools are full of children who are too dim to be able to cut it in a state school which is why their parents have had to resort to buying education for them. This from an ex-private school girl.

Don’t get me wrong, I was not on a mission to sell private education to this youngster. I also have experience of teaching in a state school; my headmistress for three years employed me as a special needs support assistant whilst I was undertaking my dyslexia training and soon realised that she had an asset in me. She couldn’t pay me any more than the £3.50 an hour I was getting, but she was able to use her staff training budget to help me continue my education and in the meantime, she gave me a classroom where I took groups of - mostly dyslexic - children who had poor literacy skills for 30 minute sessions. It was fantastic training for me (my learning curve was virtually vertical), it gave the kids access to specialised teaching that they wouldn’t otherwise have had and the class teachers loved the ability to teach with the disruptive element removed from the classroom!

However, the point I was trying to make to my new colleague is that children in private schools have the same right to good, enthusiastic teachers and will probably present as much of a challenge as those in most state schools. Her point was that, since she will be studying for her master’s degree, it was probably a good job that she was only working in a private school, because it will be so easy peasy!

Having failed to convince her of any merit to be gained from her forthcoming employment, I asked her how much training she had had in dealing with specific learning difficulties. I wasn’t surprised when she told me that “there had been a couple of seminars” but I was astounded when she added that “it didn’t matter anyway, because we were not training to be special needs teachers.” When I tried to get her to see how important the class teacher is in the life of a dyslexic pupil, she stated that, in her opinion “there is far too much dyslexia diagnosed these days”.

By now I was nearly in despair - but I ploughed on, tackling the issue of near vs. far-point copying. If nothing else, would she consider making sure that in her classroom, pupils didn’t have to copy from the board? “Oh, of course I’d give handouts to those who had been diagnosed, but the rest could copy from the board. We’ve been told that we have to keep the photocopying budget down.”

So I left the party. I am still pretty depressed today. I find it so hard to believe that in this day and age, when so much is known about the facts of life in school from the point of view of a dyslexic, teachers can finish their training with absolutely no understanding of how at least 10% of their pupils approach the learning experience. And what a miserable experience it’s going to be.

For many children it will involve starting at a new school too, with the added excitement and pressure that such a move entails. If reading is a difficulty that is being dragged along from the old school to the new, the excitement is less and the pressure is decidedly more.

I’m looking forward to the new school year. It’s a pleasure to be able to offer The CoolerRuler to a whole new band of schools and to help another generation of children with reading problems discover how this simple tool can get them reading - and fast!

I have done a fair bit in the North West and lots in the South East, but this is the year to broach the in-between lands of the Midlands. Many schools in the area have already bought into the instant advantages of The CoolerRuler, having been introduced to it at The Education Show at the NEC, but there are still plenty who have yet to discover its benefits.

For such a small cost it reaps great rewards; a simple tool that facilitates virtually instant improvements - literally, ‘easy reading at your fingertips’. The really cool CoolerRuler.

So I sent him a CoolerRuler. I wanted him to see it and I wanted to hear what he had to say about it - I even thought that he might possibly have dyslexic children himself, who could benefit from it. It has been my experience that adult dyslexics have been quick to see the merits of The CoolerRuler - most have raved about it and have commented that it would have made a big difference to their education. I sent it via a very helpful member of Jamie’s production company and addressed it directly to Jamie. I eagerly awaited his reply.

Of course I know that he’s a very busy man - TV trailers constantly show him in all parts of the world and it seems that another restaurant in his chain opens every week - so I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear anything for several weeks. I rang the helpful production company person, who echoed my thoughts, and I continued to wait.

This week I received a brush off from his ‘people’. They said that he wouldn’t have time to look at it and couldn’t possibly comment on it, as he had done that for other products in the past and his comments had been used as an official endorsement. And that, of course, is something you can only get if you buy it from him. When I asked whether he had even set eyes on The CoolerRuler, I was told that he hadn’t.

As Jamie Oliver seems so genuinely interested in the education of our children, (I understand that he is interested in opening one of the new free schools) I believe that he would have been impressed by the simplicity and unobtrusive design of The CoolerRuler.

But thanks to his ‘minders’, we will never know.

For a while I tried to think of a way of researching this phenomenon, but couldn’t come up with a method that didn’t appear offensive. I have a huge respect for the many talented dyslexic people I have met and the fascinating way in which the dyslexic brain functions, but there is still something of a stigma amongst those who don’t understand it and who still see it as a disability.

However, I have been determined to educate the scriptwriters on The Archers to see that fifty years of farming stories without a single dyslexic appearing is weird to say the least. I did receive a letter from a producer on the show some ten years ago, who was actually dyslexic herself and was only too familiar with the sense of frustration and failure at school which I had suggested as a plot line.

Since then I have had zero success in contacting the show. I write emails to the website which are either completely ignored or treated to the standard ‘we can’t cover everything’ line. I would be happy for them to make this decision if I felt that they had actually considered the problem, but just writing it off without hearing what I have to say is, in my opinion, the arrogant approach of a literate person with no understanding of the horrors of life as an unrecognised dyslexic in full time education.

But - I managed to speak to a real person this week who was both charming and interested. He agreed that dyslexia is a subject that would be worth covering and seemed to understand its importance to farming families. He asked me to send him more information (which I did at once) and will discuss it with the scriptwriters. I do hope that they run with this; it’s an important story and it could mean that dyslexic children get the specialised help they need at the time they need it and avoid years of damaging failure.

“An excellent product. I have used it successfully children with cerebral palsy and Downs syndrome”

and this fascinated me. I originally designed The CoolerRuler to help my pupils, who were mostly dyslexic. I have used it with one girl who has hemiplegia but had no idea that it could be so effective with readers with more complicated learning difficulties.

I hope to find out more about Veronica’s work with her pupils; I am so pleased to hear that The CoolerRuler has a wider reach than even I imagined.

When I met Sam (name changed to protect the innocent), he walked with shoulders hunched, head down, looking at the ground, a picture of misery. His educational experience at that point had consisted of failure - in fact the failure was that of his teachers at Potburger School (name changed to protect the guilty!) - but he had been assured by these so-called professionals that the fault was entirely with him. They were assiduously avoiding recognising his dyslexia and apparently lying about his achievements when it came to tests. How else could his SAT reading score of 2C have been achieved when he was unable to read even the simplest words?

I have worked with Sam for eighteen months and his progress has been remarkable. This is entirely down to his hard work and the fact that he is so keen to learn now that the teaching is directed towards his preferred learning style, but the most noticeable change has been in his demeanour. This bright, bubbly child now walks tall and his confidence shines through. His mother tells me how desperately worried she was at the changes she had seen in him after he had been at school for a couple of years and now says that she has ‘got her son back’.

She and I know that this improvement has nothing to do with Potburger School.

So why is she so angry? After years of virtually ignoring Sam, the school is now giving him some one to one tuition - and is insisting that my lessons with him follow their programme of study. This despite the fact that Sam’s ‘specialist’ lessons are delivered by a teacher who has absolutely no training in any of the specific learning difficulties. This was admitted by the Head Teacher when Sam’s mother asked the question. She stated that ‘she is a qualified teacher but doesn’t have any extra dyslexia qualifications.’ They just can’t see that simply giving him more of what has already failed him is bound to fail him again.

We had a coffee together and laughed at the school and she gradually calmed down. Although I am a great believer in parents, specialist teachers and schools working as closely together as possible to support a child, in this case I won’t be following their lead. The crumpled sheet of A4 with a few spidery notes of spelling patterns written in red biro isn’t sufficient to make me alter the targets that Sam and I have already agreed for this term.

After all, Sam is doing really well and that’s enough for him, his mother and for me.

As Eleanor Beale commented on a previous blog entry (thanks Eleanor - glad it’s helping your pupils,) “It is a great aid to developing fluency and independent reading”.

The logo took care of itself, with the small ‘r’ of Cooler forming the top right hand corner of the capital ‘R’ of Ruler, (ditto with Ruler and Reading) but it was another matter to write it down in type. After devoting so many years of my life to teaching children to spell I simply couldn’t bring myself to leave out an ‘r’ and mis-spell the words!

So I’ve finished up with two r’s in the middle of both CoolerRuler and RulerReading, which is very difficult to explain on the phone. Ho-hum, perhaps I should simply have called it The-Best-Reading-Tool-Ever, produced by The-Best-Ever-Company-To-Help-You-Learn-To-Read …. but then I guess I might have had problems with registering the trademark.

Two things about this pleased me - firstly that it had been a major accident that had caused the breakage and secondly that she reported that her son was ‘desperate’ because it had broken. “He is lost without it,” she went on to say, “and I had to get a new one as soon as possible.”

Now, I’m definitely not happy that her son is distressed, but I am delighted that The CoolerRuler is making such an obvious difference to his schooling. As a gesture of goodwill, I sent the lad an extra 20cm version of The CoolerRuler - this is a rather Heath Robinson affair, cut down from the full size version, but it has the advantage of fitting inside a pencil case, so I hope it will prove useful to him.

And the moral of the story is … that having two CoolerRulers is an advantage. One for home and one for school is ideal - and if by any chance one of them does break, then distress can be avoided.

The research will be similar to last year’s successful project with The Petersfield School. I will test respondents using the WRAT (Wide Range Achievement Tests) reading test and then introduce them to The CoolerRuler and encourage its use as much as possible. Over the following six weeks, I will visit to check that it is being used correctly and to work with offenders on identifying parts of words to be read. At the end of six weeks, I will re-test with the WRAT.

At The Petersfield School, the results showed over 61% achieved an average of 15.75 months’ gain in reading age in only six weeks. It will be very interesting to see whether these results will be replicated amongst the older cohort within Winchester Prison.

Now all I have to do is to get my security clearance to be able to work as a volunteer within the prison - or rob a bank and get in that way!

This could account for why I did so badly in my A levels all those years ago!