Dyslexia in teaching is a practical problem wrapped in a lot of writing. You chose teaching because you're good at explaining things: at seeing where a student is stuck, at breaking a concept into pieces that actually land. None of that requires fluent writing. But the job requires an enormous amount of it.

The National Education Union makes this plain. Its casework guidance, updated February 2024, states that school and college staff with dyslexia find paperwork "the most challenging and stressful aspect of work." That's not an impression. That's what dyslexic teachers have been telling union caseworkers for years.

The background data makes the picture harder. Primary teachers averaged 51.4 hours a week in 2025, according to DfE workload data. Secondary teachers averaged 49.3 hours. Dyslexic teachers carry those hours with an invisible overhead on top: the extra time it takes to decode student handwriting at volume, produce written feedback within tight marking windows, and draft statutory documents that parents and inspectors will read.

What the school doesn't see

34% of teachers in England now use AI tools for at least one professional task each week. The two most common use cases are lesson planning and report writing (Teacher Tapp, 2024). Dyslexic teachers have been doing the analogue version of this for years: dictating sentences to themselves before typing, using personal templates, writing draft text in a notes app before pasting it into the school's MIS. They rarely flag it as a workaround. It just looked like getting on with things.

That's the part the school doesn't see. And because the school doesn't see it, they have no legal obligation to do anything about it.

Schools are employers under the Equality Act 2010. The duty to make reasonable adjustments applies from the moment the school knows about a teacher's dyslexia. Until they know, nothing is required of them. Every coping strategy a dyslexic teacher uses without support is invisible unpaid overhead carried entirely alone.

The adjustments you're already making to get through the job are the evidence base for a formal reasonable adjustment request. Name them, put them in writing, and the school's obligation begins.

Marking student work

A secondary English teacher with two Year 11 classes marks approximately 60 pieces of extended writing per assessment point. The school's marking policy specifies what written feedback must include: a target, a next step, an acknowledgment of progress. Many marking policies specify that comments must be handwritten.

For a dyslexic teacher, marking has two distinct difficulties. The first is reading: decoding student handwriting at volume, especially from students whose writing is rushed or inconsistent, requires active effort that typed text doesn't. The second is output: producing handwritten feedback that is legible, correctly spelled, and policy-compliant across 60 books in a single session creates a cognitive cost the marking policy never accounts for.

Most dyslexic teachers manage by front-loading the reading: getting through all the books once to form judgments, then returning to write the comments. It works. It also takes significantly longer than the school's marking time allocation assumes.

The NEU's dyslexia adjustments guidance is specific on this. Teachers "can be enabled to provide electronic or verbal feedback on work as opposed to the expectation of excessive marking by hand" (NEU, February 2024). Voice note feedback, recorded via Mote (built into Google Classroom) or a dictation app, covers the same ground as handwritten comments, often with more specificity and none of the legibility issue. Digital typed comments remove the handwriting requirement entirely and are faster for many dyslexic teachers.

If your school's marking policy requires handwritten comments and you have dyslexia, requesting digital or verbal feedback as an alternative is a direct, low-cost reasonable adjustment request. The NEU guidance backs it. The Equality Act 2010 requires your school to consider it.

Your school's marking policy is not above the Equality Act. If handwritten volume marking is a documented difficulty, the adjustment is clear: digital or verbal feedback in place of handwritten marking, formally agreed before your next assessment cycle.

End-of-term report writing

Report season is the most concentrated writing task in the teaching calendar. Secondary school teachers typically produce between 100 and 200 individual student reports in a two-week window. Each report needs a distinct description of the student's progress and a forward target. Many school MIS systems now flag repeated sentence structures across reports, which means template copying has been effectively removed as a coping strategy.

For dyslexic teachers, the combination of volume, uniqueness requirement, time pressure, and parental scrutiny creates real difficulty. The blank-page problem gets worse with each successive report. By report 90, generating fresh language for each student costs significantly more than it did at report 1.

Voice-to-text is the most effective tool here. Dragon Professional has dictation accuracy that surpasses most built-in OS tools and handles the varied vocabulary of student report writing well. Google Voice Typing is free and available on any Chromebook or Windows device. Both allow a dyslexic teacher to speak a report and correct the text, which is considerably faster than typing from zero.

Access to Work funds software for dyslexic employees in UK schools. The Access to Work grant covers assistive technology including Dragon Professional, and the school pays nothing: the DWP funds it directly. For a breakdown of what you could claim, the Access to Work calculator takes about 3 minutes.

An extended report submission deadline is a separate, lower-effort adjustment. A 5-working-day extension costs the school an administrative conversation and nothing else. If your school has a fixed report deadline, requesting an extension as a named reasonable adjustment is a direct Equality Act conversation with your line manager or HR.

Voice-to-text funded through Access to Work costs your school nothing. An extended report deadline costs an administrative conversation. Both are legally supportable. The question is whether the school knows they need to make them.

Lesson planning documentation

Most schools require written lesson plans for formal observations, NQT portfolio sign-off, and any lesson where a member of SLT is in the room. Many also require daily or weekly written planning in a set format: an A4 template with objectives, success criteria, differentiation notes for ability groups, and assessment for learning strategies.

A well-formatted lesson plan and a well-planned lesson are not the same thing. Experienced teachers know this. For a dyslexic teacher, the plan template is administrative work layered on top of the actual cognitive work of designing a lesson. The specific difficulty is the free-text fields: objectives phrased precisely enough to satisfy an observer, differentiation notes detailed enough to look thorough on paper.

Two adjustments address this directly. A modified planning template, where free-text fields are replaced by structured prompts or dropdown options, reduces the blank-page problem at the start of every planning session. A verbal planning discussion with a line manager, in place of a written daily plan, can substitute for the written requirement for routine lessons.

For formal observations, advance notice of at least 48 hours as a named reasonable adjustment gives a dyslexic teacher enough time to prepare written documentation without the additional pressure that comes from a short window. Observation notice periods are negotiable and cost the school nothing to extend.

If you're spending significantly longer on written planning than on the lesson itself, the template is creating a barrier. A modified template or a verbal planning alternative is an adjustment your school can make at no cost; it just needs to be formally agreed.

SEND, admin, and meeting documentation

EHCPs, provision maps, pastoral notes, CPD records, meeting minutes. These are lower-frequency documents, but the stakes are high. An EHCP contribution from a class teacher is a legal document under the Children and Families Act 2014. A set of minutes from a safeguarding meeting may be reviewed in proceedings.

Two distinct dyslexia difficulties show up here. Writing while listening (taking handwritten minutes during a fast-moving meeting) activates the same phonological processing demands as any reading or writing task. And producing specialist document language, the specific phrasing that EHCP contributions require by law, is harder from a blank page than from a structured template.

Otter.ai (free tier: 300 minutes per month) transcribes meetings in real time and produces an editable text document. This removes handwriting-while-listening entirely. The transcript needs review and correction, but that's editing from a base rather than writing from zero. The cognitive difference is significant.

For EHCP contributions specifically, a structured template with field prompts reduces the free-text requirement and helps ensure the contribution meets legal completeness standards. Most SENCO teams have standard templates. Asking for these in advance, with clear field guidance, is a direct, low-cost adjustment the school can implement immediately.

Microsoft Immersive Reader handles incoming document review. It's free for any school with a Microsoft 365 licence (which most UK state schools have) and works inside Word, OneNote, and Teams. For PDFs and non-Microsoft documents, ClaroRead or Speechify can be funded through Access to Work.

SEND documentation is where the legal stakes for written accuracy are highest. A meeting transcription tool and a template-based EHCP process cost nothing and remove the two biggest barriers at a stroke.

Telling the school

The biggest practical risk for most dyslexic teachers is managing all four of these pressures without any formal support because the school doesn't know.

Fear of disclosure in teaching is understandable. It's particularly acute for NQTs, for teachers mid-way through a performance management cycle, and for anyone whose written output has already been commented on informally by a line manager. The worry is that telling the school will raise questions about classroom competence or professional standards.

The legal picture runs the other way. The Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments is triggered from the moment your school knows about your dyslexia. You don't need a formal diagnosis. Describing specific difficulties to your line manager, your union rep, or HR is enough to trigger the duty.

Once the school knows, they have a legal obligation to consult you and to consider adjustments. If they manage you negatively for difficulties that are symptoms of your dyslexia (written marking quality, report completion speed, planning documentation detail), the legal position is clear and established. Employment tribunals have awarded significant sums for exactly this kind of failure.

Your union is the lowest-risk starting point if you're uncertain how disclosure will land. The NEU has a dedicated disability equality casework function and can advise before you say anything to school management. They can also attend meetings on your behalf once you've asked for adjustments.

The disclosure decision guide works through your specific situation in about 3 minutes: your contract stage, whether you're in a performance process, and your prior disclosure history.

Disclosure is the mechanism that creates the legal obligation. The school can't make adjustments they don't know you need. The math points toward telling someone, and your union is the right first call if you're uncertain about how.

Adjustments schools are required to consider

Under the Equality Act 2010, a school employer must consider any reasonable adjustment once they know a teacher has dyslexia. All of the following have legal footing, all are low-cost, and all appear in NEU or BDA guidance.

For marking: digital or verbal feedback (voice notes, typed comments) as an alternative to handwritten marking. Permission to use a dictation device for in-book comments.

For reports: access to voice-to-text software such as Dragon Professional (claimable through Access to Work at no cost to the school). An extended submission deadline as a named adjustment. Sentence-starter templates that reduce blank-page writing volume.

For lesson planning: a modified template with structured prompts in place of open text fields. Verbal planning discussions as a substitute for written daily plans. At least 48 hours' notice before formal observations, as a named adjustment.

For SEND and admin documentation: meeting transcription software (Otter.ai free tier covers most staff use cases). EHCP contribution templates provided in advance with clear field guidance. Screen-reading software for incoming documents (Microsoft Immersive Reader is free for M365 schools).

For all written tasks: speech-to-text on school devices. Documents sent in digital format compatible with assistive technology. Protected quiet time for written tasks where volume is the primary barrier.

If your school needs help framing these adjustments or understanding what the formal request looks like, the reasonable adjustments builder turns your specific difficulties into a conversation plan and a draft email in about 2 minutes. It's built for exactly this kind of negotiation.

These adjustments are specific, low-cost, and legally required. The conversation to get them in place is usually direct once the school understands what they're being asked to consider. Name the task, name the adjustment, put it in writing.