- Dyslexia affects an estimated 10–15% of the global population and is the most common specific learning disability; in Dubai's multilingual school environment, it is frequently missed because reading difficulties are attributed to language exposure rather than a processing difference in the brain.
- A formal dyslexia assessment in Dubai uses a battery of standardised tests — typically including cognitive ability measures such as the WISC-V and reading and literacy measures such as the WIAT-III and TOWRE-2 — to distinguish dyslexia from other causes of reading difficulty, including language-learning challenges common in expat children.
- The assessment report produced by a licensed psychologist is the document Dubai schools require to put formal SEND accommodations in place, including extended time in exams, a reader, a scribe, and differentiated classroom instruction.
- Signs of dyslexia differ by age: in younger children (4–7), look for difficulty learning letter sounds, poor rhyming, and slow word retrieval; in older children and teenagers, look for slow reading speed, avoidance of reading aloud, and effortful writing despite strong verbal ability.
- End of the school year — when Dubai school reports flag literacy concerns — is the most common point at which families seek a dyslexia assessment; completing the assessment before summer means the school can implement support from the first day of the new academic year.
Dyslexia affects an estimated 10–15% of the global population, making it the most common specific learning disability worldwide, according to the International Dyslexia Association. In Dubai's international school environment, where many children are reading and writing in a language that is not spoken at home, it is one of the most consistently underidentified conditions our clinical team encounters. Parents are often told — sometimes for years — that their child will "catch up" once their English improves, or that the difficulty is simply a confidence issue. A formal dyslexia assessment in Dubai is the only way to establish whether a child's reading and writing difficulties reflect a genuine neurological difference or another cause entirely, and it is the document Dubai schools require before they can put structured support in place.
This article explains what dyslexia actually is, how the signs differ across age groups, what a thorough assessment involves, and how the report translates into real support inside Dubai schools. It is written by Dr. Nour Al Ghriwati, Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Psychologist at CAYA World Clinic, who leads our assessment team and has conducted psychoeducational evaluations across both the US and UAE educational systems.
What Is Dyslexia — and What It Is Not
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterised by difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition, poor spelling, and poor decoding ability. These difficulties arise from a deficit in the phonological component of language — the ability to process and manipulate the individual sounds that make up words — and are unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities. A child with dyslexia typically has average or above-average intelligence and no sensory impairment that would explain the reading difficulty. The deficit is neurobiological in origin, meaning it reflects differences in how the brain processes written language rather than a lack of effort, motivation, or instruction. This definition is drawn from the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition), which classifies dyslexia under Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in reading.
It is not a vision problem. It is not caused by letters appearing backwards on the page — that is a common misconception. It is not the result of poor teaching, although poor teaching can delay identification. And it is not something a child grows out of, though with appropriate support the impact on academic performance can be substantially reduced.
In Dubai's school population, there is an additional layer of complexity. A significant proportion of children at international schools are learning to read in English while speaking Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, French, or another language at home. Reading difficulties in a second language are not automatically dyslexia — but dyslexia also does not disappear because a child is multilingual. Disentangling these two things requires a properly structured assessment, not a teacher's observation or a brief screening tool. We return to this point in detail below.
What Are the Signs of Dyslexia in Children in Dubai?
The signs of dyslexia are not uniform across age groups. What looks like dyslexia in a four-year-old looks quite different from dyslexia in a fourteen-year-old, and the Dubai school context introduces variables — curriculum language, bilingual home environments, year-group expectations — that affect how the signs present.
Early signs in children aged 4–7
At this stage, the clearest indicators are difficulties with phonological awareness — the building blocks of reading — rather than reading itself, since formal reading instruction may only just be beginning. Watch for:
- Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or recognising when words rhyme
- Slow or effortful learning of letter names and the sounds they represent
- Trouble segmenting words into syllables (clapping out "but-ter-fly" for example)
- Poor word retrieval — the child knows what they want to say but cannot find the word quickly
- Difficulty remembering sequences: days of the week, months, the alphabet
- A family history of reading difficulties, since dyslexia has a strong heritable component — first-degree relatives of a person with dyslexia have a 40–60% likelihood of also having the condition, according to research published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience
In Dubai's Foundation Stage classrooms, these signs are sometimes attributed to the fact that a child is learning in English as an additional language. This is a reasonable consideration, but it should prompt assessment — not reassurance — if the difficulties persist beyond the first year of formal schooling.
Signs in children aged 8–12
Once formal reading instruction is established, the presentation shifts. Children in this age range who have dyslexia typically:
- Read significantly more slowly than their peers, even when accuracy is adequate
- Make persistent spelling errors that do not follow expected developmental patterns
- Avoid reading aloud and become visibly anxious when asked to do so
- Produce written work that is substantially below the quality of their verbal contributions in class
- Struggle to copy from the board accurately and quickly
- Fatigue more quickly during reading tasks than peers
At CAYA World, we frequently see children in this age group who have been managing — sometimes brilliantly — by using compensatory strategies: memorising whole words by sight, using context to guess unfamiliar words, and relying heavily on verbal ability and memory to mask the underlying difficulty. The compensation works until the reading and writing demands of the curriculum outpace the strategy. In Dubai's British and American curriculum schools, this typically becomes visible around Year 4 or Grade 4, when the volume and complexity of written work increases significantly.
Signs in teenagers
Adolescents with unidentified dyslexia have often developed sophisticated coping mechanisms, which means the reading difficulty itself may be less visible than the secondary consequences: avoidance of subjects that require extended reading, underperformance in timed assessments relative to class participation, and — particularly in Dubai's high-achieving school culture — significant anxiety and low academic self-esteem. Research published in the Journal of Learning Disabilities found that students with unidentified learning disabilities report substantially higher rates of academic anxiety than their identified peers, precisely because they have no framework to explain their difficulties.
For teenagers, the most telling signs are a persistent gap between verbal ability and written output, slow reading speed under timed conditions, and spelling errors that remain inconsistent even in familiar words.
How Does a Dyslexia Assessment in Dubai Work?
A dyslexia assessment is a structured clinical evaluation conducted by a licensed psychologist. It is not a single test and it is not completed in one hour. A thorough assessment typically takes between three and five hours of direct testing time, sometimes split across two sessions, plus time for the psychologist to score, interpret, and write the report. At CAYA World, our assessment team uses a battery of internationally validated, standardised tools that are accepted by Dubai schools and recognised within the UAE's SEND framework.
What tests are used?
The specific battery varies by age and by the referral question, but a standard dyslexia assessment at CAYA World includes measures across several domains:
- Cognitive ability: The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition (WISC-V) for children and adolescents, or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) for adults. This establishes the child's overall cognitive profile — including verbal comprehension, working memory, and processing speed — and provides the baseline against which reading performance is compared.
- Reading and decoding: The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, Third Edition (WIAT-III), which assesses word reading, pseudoword decoding, reading comprehension, and oral reading fluency. Pseudoword decoding — reading nonsense words aloud — is one of the most sensitive measures of phonological decoding ability and is central to dyslexia identification.
- Reading fluency and speed: The Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Second Edition (TOWRE-2), which measures how quickly and accurately a child can read real words and phonetically decodable non-words under timed conditions.
- Phonological processing: The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, Second Edition (CTOPP-2), which directly assesses phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming — the three core phonological skills implicated in dyslexia.
- Written expression: Spelling, sentence composition, and extended writing measures, typically from the WIAT-III or the Test of Written Language (TOWL).
The psychologist also conducts a clinical interview with parents, reviews school reports and teacher observations, and — where relevant — considers the child's language background and the language of instruction at school. This last step is particularly important in Dubai, where the assessment must distinguish between a phonological processing deficit (dyslexia) and reading difficulties that arise from limited exposure to the language of instruction.
The multilingual question
Dubai's population is among the most linguistically diverse in the world. A child attending an English-curriculum school may be speaking Arabic at home, receiving Quran recitation lessons in classical Arabic, and communicating with grandparents in a regional dialect. The question of whether reading difficulties in English reflect dyslexia or language exposure is not always straightforward.
A key principle — supported by research from bilingual education and cognitive neuroscience — is that dyslexia is a phonological processing deficit that affects reading in all languages a person uses, not just the language of instruction. A child with dyslexia will show phonological processing weaknesses in Arabic and English, not only in the language they are learning at school. This cross-linguistic consistency is one of the markers our team looks for when assessing multilingual children. A child who reads fluently in Arabic but struggles significantly in English is presenting a different profile from a child who shows phonological weaknesses across both languages.
Dr. Nour Al Ghriwati has specific experience in assessing children from Arabic-speaking homes within English-curriculum school environments, and our assessment process is designed to account for the bilingual context that is standard, not exceptional, in Dubai's school population.
If you have concerns about your child's reading or learning difficulties and want to understand whether a formal assessment is the right next step, our psychoeducational testing team at CAYA World can advise you before you book. A brief consultation call is often enough to clarify whether assessment is indicated and what it would involve for your child specifically.
Concerned about your child's reading or writing?
Our licensed psychologists in Palm Jumeirah offer comprehensive dyslexia and psychoeducational assessments accepted by Dubai schools and international exam boards.
How the Dyslexia Assessment Report Supports Your Child in a Dubai School
The assessment report is not just a clinical document — it is a practical tool that unlocks specific provisions within Dubai's school system. Understanding how it is used helps parents see why a thorough, properly structured assessment matters more than a quick screening.
SEND provisions in Dubai schools
Dubai schools operating under KHDA (Knowledge and Human Development Authority) oversight are required to provide reasonable accommodations to students with identified learning disabilities, including dyslexia. These accommodations are not automatic — they require documentation from a licensed professional, typically a psychologist's assessment report. The provisions that a dyslexia diagnosis can unlock include:
- Extended time in examinations (typically 25% additional time for internal assessments)
- A reader — a person who reads exam questions aloud to the student
- A scribe — a person who writes down the student's dictated answers
- Use of assistive technology, including text-to-speech software
- Differentiated classroom instruction and modified homework requirements
- Access to a learning support teacher or specialist within the school
For students sitting international examinations — including IGCSE, A-Level, IB, and AP — the examination bodies (Cambridge, IB Organisation, College Board) have their own access arrangements processes, all of which require documented evidence of a learning disability from a qualified assessor. The CAYA World assessment report is formatted to meet these requirements. We are familiar with the specific documentation Cambridge Assessment and the IB Organisation require, and our reports are written accordingly.
What the report contains
A full psychoeducational assessment report from CAYA World includes a summary of background history, a description of the assessment process and tools used, standardised test scores with percentile rankings, a clinical interpretation of the findings, a formal diagnosis where criteria are met, and a set of specific, actionable recommendations addressed separately to parents, teachers, and — where age-appropriate — the young person themselves. The recommendations section is often what schools engage with most directly, and we write it with Dubai school structures in mind: British, American, IB, and Indian curriculum schools each have slightly different SEND processes, and the recommendations reflect that.
After the report: working with the school
Receiving a report is not the end of the process. At CAYA World, we offer a post-assessment feedback session in which we walk parents through the findings in plain language, answer questions, and help them prepare for the conversation with their child's school. We can also write a brief school communication letter that summarises the key findings and recommendations in a format that is immediately usable by the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) or learning support team.
For children who go on to need reading intervention or specialist literacy support, our team can recommend appropriate next steps — including speech and language therapy where phonological intervention is indicated, or ADHD assessment where attention difficulties appear to be co-occurring with the reading difficulties. ADHD and dyslexia co-occur in approximately 25–40% of cases, according to research published in Frontiers in Psychology, and addressing only one without screening for the other often leaves children with incomplete support.
When Is the Right Time to Seek a Dyslexia Assessment in Dubai?
The most common moment families contact CAYA World about a dyslexia assessment is after receiving an end-of-year school report that flags literacy concerns — which, in Dubai's international school calendar, means May and June. This timing makes sense: the school year's accumulation of evidence makes the pattern visible in a way that one term's results might not. But it also means that many children spend several years in school before anyone acts.
The research on early identification is unambiguous. A 2021 systematic review published in Dyslexia: An International Journal of Research and Practice found that reading interventions are significantly more effective when begun before age eight, with outcomes declining substantially when intervention is delayed to age nine or later. Waiting to see whether a child catches up is a strategy with real costs.
Practically, the best time to seek an assessment is as soon as a pattern of difficulty is consistent — meaning it persists across different tasks, different teachers, and different settings, and is not explained by a recent disruption such as a school move or a period of illness. In Dubai's expat community, school moves are common, and they do cause temporary disruption to literacy progress. But if the difficulty predates the move, or persists more than a full term after the move, that is a signal worth taking seriously.
Completing an assessment before the summer break means the report is ready for the new academic year. The school can put accommodations in place from September rather than spending the first term gathering evidence and writing referral letters. For children approaching examination years — Year 10, Year 12, Grade 10, Grade 11 — the timing of the assessment relative to the examination access arrangements deadline is particularly important, and we advise families to contact us as early as possible in those cases.
If you are unsure whether your child's difficulties warrant a formal assessment, our team at CAYA World is happy to discuss what you are seeing before you commit to booking. You can reach us via WhatsApp or phone, and a brief conversation is usually enough to give you a clearer sense of whether assessment is the right next step. Learn more about our psychoeducational testing service or explore how we approach ADHD and learning assessments for children and teens.
Frequently Asked Questions About Dyslexia Assessment in Dubai
A thorough dyslexia assessment at CAYA World typically involves three to five hours of direct testing with your child, usually spread across one or two sessions. After the testing is complete, the psychologist scores and interprets the results and writes a full report — this process takes approximately two weeks. We then schedule a feedback session with parents to walk through the findings and answer questions before the report is issued.
A formal dyslexia assessment using standardised tools is most reliable from age six onwards, when formal reading instruction has been established and there is a basis for comparison with age-expected norms. Phonological processing screening can be conducted from age four, and for younger children showing early warning signs, we can offer a developmental assessment that identifies risk factors and guides early intervention — even before a formal dyslexia diagnosis is appropriate. We also assess teenagers and adults; dyslexia does not resolve with age, and many adults in Dubai seek assessment for the first time when they recognise the pattern in their own child.
Yes. Our assessment reports are produced by licensed psychologists using internationally standardised tools and are formatted to meet the documentation requirements of Dubai schools operating under KHDA, as well as the access arrangements requirements of Cambridge Assessment, the IB Organisation, and College Board (for AP examinations). We are familiar with the SEND processes at the major British, American, and IB curriculum schools in Dubai and write our reports accordingly. If a school has a specific documentation requirement, let us know at the time of booking and we will ensure the report addresses it.
Yes, and this is one of the most common reasons dyslexia goes unidentified in Dubai's international school population. Reading difficulties in a second language are often attributed to language exposure rather than a processing difference. A properly structured assessment distinguishes between the two by examining phonological processing across languages and looking for the cross-linguistic consistency that characterises dyslexia. A child with dyslexia will show phonological weaknesses in their home language as well as in the language of instruction — that pattern, alongside the standardised test results, is what allows a confident diagnosis in multilingual children.
The two conditions co-occur in approximately 25–40% of cases, so the question is not always either/or. If your child's teacher is reporting both reading and attention difficulties, or if your child is struggling to complete written work but also has difficulty sustaining focus, finishing tasks, or staying organised, it is worth considering a comprehensive assessment that screens for both. At CAYA World, our psychoeducational assessment can be structured to address both reading and attention, and we will always flag co-occurring concerns when they emerge during the evaluation. You can read more about our approach to ADHD assessment for children and teens on our services page.
Assessment fees at CAYA World reflect the time involved in a thorough evaluation — testing sessions, scoring, report writing, and the feedback session. We are happy to provide a detailed fee breakdown when you contact us. Regarding insurance: some UAE health insurance plans cover psychological assessments, but coverage varies significantly by provider and plan. We recommend contacting your insurer directly to ask whether psychoeducational or learning disability assessments are included in your policy. Our admin team can provide a letter of medical necessity if your insurer requires one to process a pre-authorisation request.
Sources and Further Reading
- International Dyslexia Association — Dyslexia Basics — https://dyslexiaida.org/dyslexia-basics/
- American Psychiatric Association — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) — Specific Learning Disorder — American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013
- Snowling, M.J., & Hulme, C. — The nature and classification of reading disorders: A commentary on proposals for DSM-5 — Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2012 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22141434/
- Willcutt, E.G., et al. — Comorbidity of reading disability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — Early Education and Development, 2010 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21643524/
- Galuschka, K., et al. — Effectiveness of treatment approaches for children and adolescents with reading disabilities: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials — PLOS ONE, 2014 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24671162/
- Paulesu, E., et al. — Dyslexia: Cultural diversity and biological unity — Science, 2001 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11239145/
- Scerri, T.S., & Schulte-Körne, G. — Genetics of developmental dyslexia — European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2010 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20063023/
Dr. Nour Al Ghriwati is Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Psychologist at CAYA World Clinic, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. She holds a PhD from a leading US university and has published peer-reviewed research in child and adolescent psychology. DHA License #93013624-002.