Excluded at 16 for Being Undiagnosed, He Earned a Neuroscience Degree
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Your child’s struggle in the classroom is not the verdict on their future — but the school’s response to that struggle often shapes every path that follows. Faysal Yusuf was permanently excluded from his Croydon secondary school as a teenager and sent to a pupil referral unit with limited subjects and almost no career guidance. Both his dyslexia and dyscalculia went undiagnosed for years. He is now finishing a neuroscience degree at the University of Exeter, having completed an industrial placement year at pharmaceutical company GSK. This week he was shortlisted for a national award recognising students who overcame enormous odds. Read his story not as an inspiration but as a precise measurement of what the identification system costs when it waits too long.
TL;DR
Faysal Yusuf was permanently excluded from his Croydon secondary school as a teenager; both his dyslexia and dyscalculia went undiagnosed for years.
He completed secondary education at a pupil referral unit, received a Marshall Wace scholarship, completed a GSK industrial placement, and is finishing a neuroscience degree at the University of Exeter.
He was shortlisted for the Science Award at the 8th annual Student Social Mobility Awards (upReach, 8 July 2026, Drapers' Hall, London).
A BDA report found fewer than 2% of English local authorities track how many dyslexic children live in their area; only three councils could provide any figure at all.
A formal dyslexia diagnosis is received by 90% of children in high-income households and only 43% in low-income households — a gap that reflects access to identification, not prevalence of dyslexia.
Faysal Yusuf was permanently excluded from school at 16, his dyslexia and dyscalculia undiagnosed for years. He is now finishing a neuroscience degree at the University of Exeter. Here are the questions parents ask after reading his story.
Common questions
What is a pupil referral unit and why was Faysal sent there?
A pupil referral unit (PRU) is a UK alternative education setting for students who have been permanently excluded from mainstream school, typically due to behavioral, medical, or complex needs. PRUs offer a limited range of subjects and fewer resources for post-secondary preparation than mainstream schools. Students with unidentified learning differences — whose processing challenges surface as behavioral or academic failure — are disproportionately represented in PRUs, because the underlying learning profile was never identified before the exclusion decision was made.
Can dyslexia and dyscalculia both be present in the same child?
Yes. Dyslexia (difficulty processing the sounds of language, affecting reading and spelling) and dyscalculia (difficulty with number sense and mathematical processing) are distinct learning profiles that frequently co-occur. The International Dyslexia Association’s 2025 definition acknowledged that co-occurring processing differences are common. A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. For formal accommodations such as an IEP or 504 plan, or if you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the appropriate route to those supports.
How do I know if my child’s school is identifying learning differences early?
Ask your school specifically what the process is for identifying students whose reading or number processing does not match what instruction delivers. Ask whether structured literacy is part of classroom reading instruction. Ask what the school does when a student falls behind despite genuine effort. Schools without clear protocols for those questions tend to rely on parents raising concerns, which means the identification gap documented by the BDA lands on individual families. If you suspect your child has an unidentified learning difference, you do not need to wait for the school to act.
What steps should a parent take if they suspect dyslexia or dyscalculia before a formal evaluation?
An at-home screener is a practical first step: it gives you language, a starting point, and a basis for a more informed conversation with the school. A screener is not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation — that is the only route to those supports. With a clearer picture of your child’s processing profile, you are far better positioned to ask the right questions and act early, when support works best.
Faysal Yusuf grew up in Croydon and was permanently excluded from mainstream school as a teenager. He completed his secondary education at a pupil referral unit, a setting with limited subject offerings and, as Yusuf has noted, little career guidance. Both his dyslexia and dyscalculia remained undiagnosed throughout those years. The financial pressure of higher education nearly kept him out of university altogether.
A scholarship from investment firm Marshall Wace changed the trajectory. At the University of Exeter, Yusuf completed an industrial placement year at pharmaceutical company GSK and is now finishing his neuroscience degree. On 8 July 2026, he was shortlisted for the Science Award at the eighth annual Student Social Mobility Awards, held at Drapers’ Hall in London and organised by the charity upReach, which works to improve social mobility for students from lower-income backgrounds.
He was not the only shortlisted student whose path ran through identification failure. He was one representative of a pattern the system generates at scale.
What the coverage gets wrong
Most reporting on Faysal Yusuf's shortlisting frames his story as individual inspiration — proof that resilience conquers adversity. The evidence points to something harder: the identification system failed him before the school excluded him, and that failure is not random. A British Dyslexia Association report found fewer than 2% of English local authorities can name how many dyslexic children live in their area, and formal diagnosis rates are twice as high in wealthy households as in low-income ones. When a system has no mechanism to see a child's learning profile and no structural obligation to find one, exclusion becomes the default response to struggles the school cannot explain. Personal resilience is not a substitute for early identification. It is what children are forced to substitute for it.
The identification system is not seeing these children
The British Dyslexia Association’s report “Lost in the System: Councils’ Blind Spot on Dyslexia” found that fewer than 2% of English local authorities are able to report how many dyslexic children live in their area. Only three councils — Newham, South Gloucestershire, and Stoke-on-Trent — could provide any figure at all. Fewer than half of local authorities employ specialist staff to assess and support learners with dyslexia. Around a third provide no guidance whatsoever on identifying or supporting the condition.
The cost of that invisibility shows up in outcomes. Only 21% of UK pupils with a Specific Learning Difficulty met the expected standard in reading, writing, and maths at the end of primary school, compared to 74% of pupils without any recorded SEN. The identification gap is not blind to income. Children in households earning over £100,000 per year received a formal dyslexia diagnosis 90% of the time; children in households earning under £30,000 received one only 43% of the time, according to BDA data. Dyslexia is not more common in wealthier families. Access to identification is.
The International Dyslexia Association’s 2025 definition update removed the old IQ-discrepancy requirement, confirming what neuroscience has long shown: dyslexia and dyscalculia are processing profile differences that respond to the right support. They are not intelligence deficits. When a child’s unidentified processing profile surfaces as behavioral challenge or academic failure, the school’s available response becomes exclusion. That is not a discipline decision. It is a triage failure dressed as one.
Key Takeaways:
1
Diagnosis is wealth-gated in the UK: Children in households earning over £100,000 receive formal dyslexia diagnoses 90% of the time; children in households earning under £30,000 receive them 43% of the time, per BDA data. The gap reflects access to identification, not prevalence of dyslexia.
2
The identification infrastructure is nearly absent: A BDA report found fewer than 2% of English local authorities can report how many dyslexic children are in their area, and fewer than half of local authorities employ specialist staff to assess and support dyslexic learners.
3
The brain's learning profile does not expire at exclusion: The IDA 2025 definition decoupled dyslexia from IQ requirements and from outcome ceilings. Faysal Yusuf's neuroscience degree is not an anomaly — it is what appropriate identification and support make possible.
What parents can do before the school decides to act
Faysal Yusuf’s path to a neuroscience degree required a scholarship, a GSK placement year, and a degree of personal determination that should not be the entry price for any child’s education. His brain held the capability from the start. The system that excluded him did not have a mechanism to see it.
Parents navigating a school that has not flagged a child’s learning profile do not have to wait for the school’s process. A screener for dyslexia or dyscalculia gives a parent a language, a starting point, and an informed basis for a different kind of conversation with the school — before the school makes a different kind of decision about the child. A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. For formal accommodations such as an IEP or 504 plan, or if you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the route to those supports.
Ask what your child’s school’s approach is to identifying processing differences, specifically. Ask whether structured literacy is part of reading instruction. Ask what the school does when a child’s profile does not match the program on offer. The answers tell you whether identification is built into the process or outsourced to parents who know to ask. The IDA 2025 early intervention mandate is explicit: support works best early. The question is whether you wait for the school to identify, or start building the picture yourself.
Every child’s brain holds a learning profile that either gets identified and supported or gets labeled a behavior problem. The BDA’s data tells you which children get identified: the ones whose families have the resources to pursue it themselves. The obstacle is not a child who cannot learn — it is a system with no structural obligation to see them. Faysal Yusuf’s neuroscience degree was always within reach. The exclusion decision was made by a system that had no mechanism to read his profile first. Parents who want to act before the school decides to act have the Learning Success All Access membership — screeners, multi-system assessments, and structured home support, so you are not waiting for the school’s process to find what the school’s process was not designed to find.
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