Scotopic Sensitivity Irlen Syndrome

Mr GIBSON (Blacktown) [5.20 p.m.]: I would like to speak about a young fellow in my electorate whom I will refer to as Jack. Jack is a typical six-year-old boy whom one would find in any suburb in Sydney, but he had one problem: His schoolteachers and parents discovered that Jack was not learning. They thought he may have had problems with his eyesight, so they had him fitted with glasses, but that did not solve his problem. When Jack tried to read, the words would run off
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the page, they would sit on top of each other, they would appear fuzzy, or the brightness of the page would make it impossible for him to read or learn. After falling behind his classmates Jack was diagnosed as suffering from Scotopic Sensitivity Irlen Syndrome [SSIS].

In the late 1880s European physicians and educators began to study a visual perception problem they called word blindness. In the early 1970s Helen Irlen made the first discovery of how to solve word blindness problems for many readers. By placing transparent coloured overlays on book pages, Irlen showed that for many struggling readers word blindness patterns disappear. In 1976 Irlen named word blindness Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome. In the early 1990s two research teams discovered what causes Irlen Syndrome, or word blindness. In 1991 Margaret Livingstone at Harvard Medical School and in 1993 Stephen Lehmkuhle at the University of Missouri developed the neurological model that explains what causes this visual perception phenomenon.

Special coloured lenses overcame the problem for many people affected by this syndrome. Subsequently young Jack was fitted with special coloured lenses and a new world opened up for him. His barrier to learning was overcome. But, unfortunately, Jack needs more than the coloured lenses. Jack can now read, but he still cannot read words that he could not read before he was fitted with the coloured lenses; he has to be taught. The Government is making literacy a school priority, as it should be, but to my knowledge no consideration is being given to the Irlen method of learning. The Board of Education apparently does not recognise SSIS as a learning disability. There is no funding for people such as young Jack.

Kids like young Jack need special teachers to bring them up to scratch for the years they have lost. Special provision has to be made for them. Recently it was discovered that the disability is usually hereditary. It is something about which we know very little, but it has been the cause of many people leaving school with hardly any education. Many people thought that those suffering from this syndrome were slow learners, but it has been discovered that it is a specific problem: Scotopic Sensitivity Irlen Syndrome. Diagnosis and treatment with Irlen filters have been reviewed by the United States of America Medical Board and have been determined not to be the practice of medicine. It has also been reviewed by various United States of America Boards of Optometry and been found to be not the practice of optometry.

The problem is not a medical condition. It is not pathological nor is it disease. So far as anyone knows, it is not a visual problem due to any abnormality of the eye. As a perceptual problem, it is a similar to other processing problems - visual and auditory - that are diagnosed by psycho-educational testing and treated within the educational system. In the United States of America more than 2,000 school districts have implemented the Irlen method. More than 40,000 people in the United States wear Irlen filters. I ask that the Minister for Education and Training, who is in the Chamber, and his department to consider this problem so that people like young Jack, who has had a new world opened up to him, are eligible for funding.

Mr AQUILINA (Riverstone - Minister for Education and Training) [5.25 p.m.]: I listened intently to the comments made by the honourable member for Blacktown on behalf of young Jack. I congratulate the honourable member on raising this issue. I am aware that we have many young Jacks in both government and non-government schools. The disorder from which Jack suffers has been brought to the attention of the Department of Education and Training, together with a number of other disorders that we are coming to grips with.

As the honourable member for Blacktown indicated, we are putting a great emphasis on literacy. In fact, we spent $200 million on literacy during the last term of government and we will expand on that during the current term. We employed 400 reading-recovery teachers to diagnose students in year 1 and to try to set them on the right path of instruction to improve their literacy. I also commissioned the McRae report, which investigated the integration of a number of students with disabilities. We are in the process of implementing the recommendations of the report.

The financial implications are somewhat horrendous. The last bill I received was in the vicinity of $370 million to implement fully the recommendations of the McRae report. During the course of looking at the implementation of the McRae report a number of additional disorders came to light. At the moment we are considering attention deficit disorder, autism as it affects children, and the disorder referred to by the honourable member for Blacktown. It is impossible for us to accommodate all of these at the one time, but I can assure the honourable member that we are aware of them and we are doing our best under the financial circumstances. [Time expired.]

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