ABSTRACT
Despite considerable published evidence that the majority of parents make good partners in the education of their children, there remains a reluctance on the part of many professionals in Local education authorities to employ this much under-used resource. The extent of this reluctance to accept parents as partners was brought home to the authors when they took evidence from parents of children with severe reading problems, some of whom had been classified as dyslexic. Pre- and post-testing using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and the Salford Reading Test as indicators showed a significant improvement had been made. The true gains of the children — who, it should be remembered, had long experience of failure — varied between one and four years' progress in reading in the project year. Although the gains of the experimental groups are gratifying, it was the unique contribution made by the parents working alongside and supervised by the project team that is of particular interest.
