After an early career in the fashion and entertainment industries, Suzanne Currell studied Child Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She moved to London in 1979 and, after starting a family, worked on early literacy in a school while, at the same time, studying for a degree and then a Masters in Occupational Psychology at Surrey University. After working for the NHS, she went back to the USA, returning to the UK in 2002. She volunteered at a local secondary school doing educational testing for children with special educational needs alongside other coaching and assessment work.
In 2011, Suzanne moved to Kingston College, where she still works today in student support, assessing students who require examination access arrangements and providing one-to-one support for students with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). “It’s very rewarding,” she says. Suzanne is encouraged that dyslexia is now better recognised in further education colleges but she fears the effect that financial cuts are having on student support, as well as the inequities associated with EHCPs.
Her first encounter with Dyslexia Action arose because she wanted to have a really solid knowledge of access arrangements for her job and so enrolled on an Access
Arrangements course. “I was so impressed. The staff that run the courses are so supportive and very encouraging. The course materials are exemplary, in-depth and intellectually rigorous. So much dyslexia training is very generalist and, although there is a place for that, as a dyslexia professional, I need to know the evidence and how to apply it. Dyslexia Action Training and The Dyslexia Guild get that as an association get that balance just right. Where else can you spend time really analysing higher education psychometric tests? It is fabulous and I’d like to see more of that.”
Interview by Annie Grant, 2019.
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Please note: Anyone can join The Dyslexia Guild and our network of professionals, to have designatory letters after your name you are required to have a certain level/type of SpLD qualification. The Associate FE/HE (ADG FE/HE) level of membership is for Study Skills Support Tutors.