What Spelling Tests Teach Struggling Readers About Who They Are

Last updated: July 1, 2026

You have watched your child come home with a spelling test grade that tells you nothing about how to help them, only that they failed again. Dan Batchelor, a primary school teacher in Horsham, England, knows what that feels like from the inside: he grew up with dyslexia and was not diagnosed until he was 18. Now the published author of a bestselling sci-fi series aimed at young adults, Batchelor is calling publicly for an end to traditional school spelling tests, arguing the harm is not just to grades. Research on reading self-concept published in 2023 and 2024 backs him up more sharply than most coverage lets on.

TL;DR

Dan Batchelor, a Horsham primary school teacher diagnosed with dyslexia at 18, is releasing his second sci-fi YA novel, Jack Palmer II: The Resistance (Cranthorpe Millner, pre-order now at Waterstones).
Batchelor has publicly called for ending traditional school spelling tests, arguing they harm children with learning differences and add to mental health pressure.
Research (Wilmot et al. 2023; Donolato et al. 2024; Frontiers in Education 2024) confirms children with dyslexia develop lower reading self-concept and higher anxiety in ways that are distinct, not just a milder version of typical reader experience.
Timed spelling tests repeatedly load on the phonological processing gap dyslexia creates, reinforcing a bad reader identity while hiding real strengths.
Parents should watch for fixed self-descriptions like I am just bad at reading as an identity disengagement signal, and ask schools what they do with low spelling scores beyond recording them.

Dan Batchelor is a UK primary school teacher who was diagnosed with dyslexia at 18 and is now the author of a bestselling sci-fi trilogy built to give struggling young readers a different story about who they are.

Common questions

Are spelling tests bad for children with dyslexia?

Timed spelling tests load heavily on the phonological processing system, the same system dyslexia disrupts most. For children with dyslexia, they reliably surface the primary gap while hiding strengths in comprehension, vocabulary, and verbal reasoning. Research (Frontiers in Education 2024; Wilmot et al. 2023) links repeated spelling test failure to lower reading self-concept and increased anxiety in children with dyslexia. That does not mean children should not learn to spell. It means the test format matters. Ask your school whether spelling assessment is used to build skill or primarily to rank performance.

How do I know if my child has adopted a bad reader identity?

Watch for language like I am just bad at reading, reading is not for me, or avoidance of reading tasks they once attempted. When a child reframes a skill gap as a fact about who they are, that is an identity signal, not an ability signal. Research on identity-based motivation shows children act on these predictions, disengaging before they fully try. The intervention is not pushing harder; it is building a different self-story alongside the skill work. A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the route to those supports.

What makes a book helpful for a child who struggles with reading?

A protagonist who reflects resilience and navigates challenges without being framed as broken gives a struggling reader a counter-narrative. Research on reading motivation finds that skill and self-belief develop together. Stories do not fix the reading gap; they can shift the identity prediction that blocks effort before the skill grows. Audiobooks of the same story are a research-backed bridge that builds vocabulary and comprehension while decoding skill develops.

My child’s dyslexia was not diagnosed until they were older. Is it too late to help?

No. Dan Batchelor was not diagnosed until age 18 and went on to write two novels. The neuroplasticity research (Shaywitz et al., Yale; Temple et al., Stanford) shows that reading intervention produces measurable brain change regardless of when it starts. The IDA 2025 definition moved away from the old fixed model explicitly, recognizing that dyslexia involves changeable, multi-system factors. What matters is finding the right approach for your child’s specific processing profile, not the timing of the diagnosis.

A dyslexic teacher who couldn't imagine writing a novel is releasing book two. His bigger fight: ending the spelling tests that tell struggling readers who they are before they know any different. Tweet Now Follow Learning Success

A teacher, a trilogy, and a fight for how schools measure reading

Batchelor’s debut novel, Jack Palmer: A New Order, became a bestseller for publisher Cranthorpe Millner in 2025. The second book in the planned trilogy, Jack Palmer II: The Resistance, was announced on June 25, 2026, and is available for pre-order at Waterstones. The series follows a young protagonist who reflects resilience, curiosity, and hope, deliberately written to give young readers a different kind of character to see themselves in.

Batchelor made national headlines when he publicly called for ending traditional school spelling tests, arguing that conventional measurement methods do more harm than good for children with learning differences and that academic pressure has a real cost to a child’s mental health. “Growing up with dyslexia, writing a novel, let alone a whole series, felt like an impossible dream for a very long time,” he said. “I wanted to write this story to show my students, and anyone else facing similar hurdles, that having a learning difference doesn’t hold you back. It just means you navigate the world differently. I hope this book proves to them that truly anything is possible.”

Author Quote "

Growing up with dyslexia, writing a novel, let alone a whole series, felt like an impossible dream for a very long time. I wanted to write this story to show my students, and anyone else facing similar hurdles, that having a learning difference doesn’t hold you back. It just means you navigate the world differently. I hope this book proves to them that truly anything is possible.

What the coverage gets wrong

Most reporting on Batchelor's story frames it as an inspiration narrative: dyslexic person does impressive thing, proves labels do not define you. That frame is accurate but incomplete. Research published in Dyslexia (Wilmot et al., 2023) and Frontiers in Education (2024) confirms that children with dyslexia develop distinctly lower reading self-concept and higher anxiety in ways that cannot be reduced to their current reading level. Batchelor's call to end spelling tests is the harder news: by loading repeatedly on the exact processing system dyslexia disrupts, traditional spelling tests reinforce the identity a struggling reader least needs, and the research supports that concern.

The science behind the spelling-test argument

Most reporting frames Batchelor’s story as inspiration: dyslexic person does impressive thing, proves labels do not define you. That frame is true but leaves out the mechanism that makes it matter. The research on reading self-concept points to something more specific than motivation. A 2023 study published in Dyslexia (Wilmot et al., PMC 2024) found that children with dyslexia consistently report lower self-esteem and higher rates of anxiety and mental health struggle than peers, in ways not reducible to reading skill level alone. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Education confirmed that reading self-concept, emotional intelligence, and anxiety interact in a distinct pattern for children with dyslexia, different from peers at a similar reading level, not simply further along the same scale. Donolato et al. (Dyslexia, 2024) found that children with a dyslexia diagnosis differ in reading motivation and emotion in ways that cannot be inferred from a continuum of skill.

This is what the identity research is pointing at. When a child internalizes “I am bad at spelling,” that belief is not a description of their current skill. It is a prediction about who they are as a learner, and the research on identity-based motivation shows children act on those predictions by disengaging before they have fully tried. The feedback loop is structural: a timed, rote-recall spelling test loads heavily on the exact phonological processing system that dyslexia disrupts, surfaces the primary gap reliably, and then repeats the failure signal until a child writes it into their understanding of themselves. Comprehension, vocabulary, verbal reasoning, pattern recognition, the strengths a multi-system assessment would find, are invisible on a Friday spelling test. The real obstacle is the single-metric feedback loop that teaches a struggling learner their effort does not change their outcome. The International Dyslexia Association 2025 definition, which explicitly decoupled dyslexia from IQ and moved to a multi-system, changeable model, is the clearest sign yet that the field itself knows this. Dyslexia is not a fixed state, and neither is the story a child tells about themselves while living with it.

Key Takeaways:

Identity predicts disengagement: Children who develop a bad reader self-concept disengage from literacy before fully trying, a pattern research now distinguishes from low reading ability alone.

Spelling tests amplify the gap: Timed rote-recall spelling tests are built to surface the exact processing weakness dyslexia creates, while hiding the strengths a multi-system assessment would find.

Counter-narrative is a prerequisite: A struggling reader needs a different story about who they are alongside skill instruction; without it, identity predictions about being a bad reader can undercut the skill gains.

What this means for your child and what to ask the school

For parents of children who struggle with reading, Batchelor’s story carries a specific message that gets lost in the feel-good retelling. The novel is not the point; the counter-narrative is. Research on reading motivation consistently finds that skill and self-belief develop alongside each other, or stall alongside each other. A child who has concluded they are fundamentally incapable of reading will not bring the sustained effort that literacy actually requires, because sustained effort in the face of repeated failure is what produces learned helplessness, not resilience, unless something shifts the identity frame first.

If your child’s school still uses traditional timed spelling tests as the primary literacy metric, Batchelor’s advocacy gives you a foothold for the conversation. Ask what the school does with a consistently low spelling score beyond recording it. Ask whether there is any assessment of the strengths, the comprehension, the vocabulary, the lateral thinking, that do not surface on a phonological processing test. And watch for the signal that matters most: has your child started describing themselves as not a reading person or bad at spelling? That is not a reading level indicator. That is an identity signal, and it is worth addressing at home before the school addresses it with another test.

Your child’s reading journey belongs to them, not to a spelling test score on a Friday afternoon. Every struggling reader navigating school is up against a measurement framework that was never built around how their brain actually works, and every parent who understands that changes what their child hears at home. The feedback loop that turns a failed spelling test into I am not a reader is the system worth fighting, not your child’s brain. The Learning Success All Access program gives parents the multi-system roadmap to start rewriting that story today.