Early screening for learning difficulties: The need for repeated universal assessments

Executive summary

• Inclusive education remains a global challenge, requiring systems to monitor learners’ presence, participation, and achievement to provide tailored support, especially for those at risk of underachievement.
• Early screening is crucial for addressing emerging learning difficulties, preventing persistent academic struggles, and mitigating socio-emotional challenges, promoting a sense of school belonging and motivation.
• Current screening methods often focus narrowly on specific abilities, potentially misdiagnosing learning difficulties, necessitating universal screeners that repeatedly assess multiple domain general abilities, offering insights into both student needs and effective interventions.

Despite progress having been made over the past two decades, ensuring that all learners are included and are provided with equal and personalized opportunities for educational progress is still a challenge in almost every country (Unesco, 2017). Ensuring that all students matter, and matter equally, requires for systems to be in place to monitor the presence, participation, and achievement of all learners within the education system so that high quality support can be provided for students who are at risk for underachievement.

One group of students that are at risk for long-term underachievement and who have been shown to have poorer long-term social, educational, and vocational outcomes are those with special educational needs (SEN) (Tuckett et al., 2022; DfE, 2023). Students with SEN include a wide range of developmental conditions (including for example, autism; Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); Speech, Language and Communication Needs- SLCN), learning difficulties (such as dyslexia; dyscalculia) as well as disabilities (e.g., hearing and vision difficulties) but all have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn (DfE, 2015). However, there is wide variability within students with SEN and whilst some have difficulties with academic achievements, others with similar SEN needs do not (Holmes et al., 2020).

The importance of Early Screening

Research suggests that the earlier emerging learning difficulties are identified and addressed, the more likely it is that persistent and entrenched difficulties in achievement can be avoided (Catts et al 2013; West et al., 2021; Jordan et al. 2019). Not only can early diagnosis and intervention aid academic outcomes, it can also help avoid socio-emotional difficulties related to learning such as maths anxiety (Carey et al., 2019), motivation for learning (Gibby-Leversuch et al., 2019) and school belonging (Villadsen et al., 2023). Increased school belonging has been shown to reduce poor behaviour and truancy (Cameron et al., submitted).

In some countries early screening for learning difficulties is common practice. For example, in England the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) is statutory and is administered to all students in Year 1 of primary school. This check was introduced across all schools in England in 2012. Although it was not possible to assess the direct impact of the PSC on students’ reading outcomes, an evaluation of the introduction of the PSC has shown that the introduction of the screener has led to an increased focus on phonics and that teachers are more likely to reflect on their practice. However, some teachers have also started to explicitly teach to the test, by teaching children nonsense words (i.e., words that sound the same as English words but do not exist). This approach would make the test in the long-term unreliable, but it also means that teaching is no longer focused on best-practice of teaching young children the sounds of the language. In addition, whilst teachers were also more likely to use the results of the PSC to identify students who needed extra support, a small percentage of students were misclassified as a result of the outcome of the screener (Walker et al., 2014).

Issues with current screeners

Even though screeners can help identify students who need support, they can also introduce incorrect labels and stigma that can influence perceptions and expectations related to academic performance and learning (Woodcock & Moore, 2018). Recent research questions the use of one-off screening assessments. Increasingly evidence suggests that cognitive performance at any given moment is affected by many contextual factors (e.g., Chaku et al., 2021) and as such, conclusions about academic abilities that are drawn from single measurements may not be reliable or representative of a student’s capabilities. Indeed, daily functioning and academic abilities of students with SEN are often disproportionally affected by poor sleep (Bruni et al., 2009; Luongo et al., 2021), background noise (Massoneé et al., 2022) and general sensory processing difficulties (Butera et al., 2020) amongst other environmental factors.

In addition, most current screeners have a very narrow focus and often assess certain specific abilities related to reading or maths (i.e., domain specific abilities) without considering domain general difficulties that are relevant to many domains of academic learning, such as attention or information processing abilities (Outhwaite et al., 2024). For example, screeners may focus only on phonological awareness or phonology (e.g., Phonics Screening Check in England) or symbolic mathematical abilities (e.g. Symbolic Magnitude Processing (SYMP) Test by Brankaer et al., 2016). Yet, there is evidence that different children may struggle with reading or maths for very different reasons. Whilst phonological awareness difficulties might be considered a core deficit, dyslexia is not necessarily one‐dimensional and individuals with dyslexia may also have difficulties with oral language, rapid automatized naming, and/or visual‐orthographic processing (Snowling & Hulme, 2020). Similarly, whilst symbolic numerical processing is a strong and stable predictor for mathematical development (De Smedt, 2020), studies have suggested that there might be different sub-types of students with mathematical learning difficulties (Costa et al., 2018; Szucs, 2016) and that these different groups may fail maths for different reasons, including domain general difficulties ones such as working memory or information processing difficulties (De Smedt, 2020). Thus, screeners that focus on a particular narrow aspect of ability (e.g., symbolic counting) or development are likely to mis-diagnose students at risk for learning difficulties or SEN.

Taking development in account

It is well established that knowledge is cumulative and that more complex abilities rely on earlier acquired knowledge and experience. For example, without established knowledge of the counting names or understanding of the decimal system, it is difficult to do multi-digit calculations. Similarly, students need to be able to distinguish speech sounds to learn phonics or spell. In sum, development matters and thus, it is important to track whether early domain specific abilities and concepts are lacking in order to establish learning support, long before a formal diagnosis of SEN can be made.

Domain specific abilities such as reading and maths are not only reliant on earlier domain specific abilities (like counting knowledge for mental arithmetic or phonics for reading), the abilities of students with SEN at primary school level are the outcome of atypical developmental trajectories that include a complex interplay between the child’s genetic make-up and their environment and result in different brain structures and behavioural outcomes over time (Karmiloff-Smith & Van Herwegen, 2015). For example, infants with Down syndrome show difficulties with sustained attention as well as have delayed and less intensive motor activity compared to typically developing children. Together these differences impact on how children explore and interact with the world around them and have cascading effects on their social abilities which in turn impact on language and cognitive abilities (D’Souza, & D’Souza, 2022). As such, it is unlikely that the difficulties related to school achievement seen in students with SEN are caused by single deficits (Johnson et al., 2021). Rather children adapt to their environment and thus many students with SEN show atypical development and learning that relies on alternative adaptive strategies. Although these strategies can yield immediate benefits, they may restrict the child’s later experiences, affecting their developmental or later learning trajectory. Current screeners often examine domain specific abilities and are only administered at one point in time and as such, they cannot establish what the cause of the difficulties is or whether the learning abilities observed rely on alternative strategies that have developed as a result of learning difficulties.

A final reason why development needs to be considered when screening children for learning difficulties is that protective factors have been identified that provide resilience against deviations from typical developmental pathways or modify a trajectory to ameliorate atypical symptoms. For example, there is evidence that executive attention coupled with maternal sensitivity may be important factors that can explain why some children who are at risk for autism do not meet diagnostic criteria for autism later on in development (Johnson et al., 2021). However, single assessment points do not allow for the identification of any resilience or protective factors and how these may interact.

The need for universal and dynamic screeners

Seeing the need to identify learning difficulties as early as possible, it is important to consider universal screeners. Universal screeners can be defined as short, easy to administer assessments by teachers that are administered to all students with the aim to identify students who are at risk and might need additional support. However, current screeners focus on domain specific outcomes, such as reading (e.g., Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills or DIBELS)., maths (e.g. The SYMP test; Brankaer et al., 2016), and socio-emotional behaviour (e.g., Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders [SSBD]; Walker et al., 1990). As discussed above, these screeners do not provide insight as to why students fail and they can lead to misidentification of learning difficulties.

As such, universal screeners are required that characterise individual cognitive strengths and weaknesses across core cognitive and learning domains that underpin the access and consolidation of the school curriculum. Seeing the high co-morbidity that exists between different learning difficulties (Astle et al., 2018), a number of domain general abilities should be included in universal screeners instead.

There is evidence that attentional control might be a good candidate for early screening. Attentional control includes the ability to focus and shift attention at the right time to the right place. Attentional control is important as without attention no learning is possible. Indeed, studies have found that attentional control abilities at preschool age predict academic outcomes for maths and reading in adulthood (McLelland et al., 2013). Secondly, many groups of students with learning difficulties have been shown to have difficulties with attentional control (Hendry et al., 2016).

Other studies have suggested that working memory is an important domain general factor that is affected in numerous groups of students with learning difficulties (Astle et al., 2018). Working memory is the ability to hold and manipulate information for brief periods of time that is vital for classroom learning in areas including English, maths and science. Working memory measured at pre-school has been found to be a reliable predictor for educational outcomes at age 15 (Ahmed et al., 2019).

Good oral language abilities are required for many aspects of learning and academic outcomes, including understanding of teaching instructions and learning facts. Vocabulary is often considered a good predictor of overall language abilities and vocabulary in the early years has been linked to reading abilities (BLESES et al., 2016) at the end of primary school.

Although it is currently not clear exactly which domain general abilities should be included in a universal screener, multiple domain general abilities should be included in a universal assessment seeing that development is complex. In addition, it is important to consider changes in development and abilities over time. Research has shown that individual variabilities in early-stage processing are not stable across time (Farran et al., 2023) and that environmental factors may influence performance leading to incorrect conclusions. As such, repeated or intensive longitudinal assessments are required that assess young children’s abilities repeatedly over a short period of time.

Repeated assessments over a limited amount of time would also provide insight into whether or not students are responding to specific teaching methods and strategies and this response to intervention can provide further insight into the mechanisms and learning difficulties that students are experiencing. This would allow greater insight into why students may experience difficulties and can inform better support. Although it could be argued that repeating the universal screening of multiple domain general abilities can be time intensive, a number of these abilities can now reliably be assessed through short teacher or parental questionnaires that are not resource intensive and can be applied without much training. In addition, most schools and young children are familiar with and have access to educational technologies. As such, these tools should be harnessed to obtain more frequent data about domain general predictors for learning and allow for earlier screening of learning difficulties.

Summary

Universal screeners administered during the early school years are required that include repeated assessment of several domain general abilities that are predictive of academic outcomes to identify students that are at risk for learning difficulties or SEN. This dynamic approach will not only clarify which students are at risk but also provide insight into why students are struggling which in turn can lead to better educational provision. Benefits of such early universal screeners would be the early identification of the strength and difficulties of all children in the classroom and the identification of children at risk for early learning difficulties. This would allow teachers and other professionals in education to provide the right type of support early onwards and prevent future educational gaps. However, in order for teachers and other educational professionals to be able to address issues identified by the screeners they will need to receive additional training in special educational needs and learning difficulties.

Universal screeners assessing domain general abilities offer additional benefits. These include the potential application of similar criteria to define learning needs across different cultures, facilitating cross-cultural comparison studies. These studies can inform policymakers about the necessary adjustments to support students with learning difficulties effectively.

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