How Does a Dyslexia Assessment Work?

If you are considering a dyslexia assessment for yourself or your child, it helps to know exactly what the process involves and what happens at each stage, how long it takes, and what you will come away with. This page walks you through the assessment process at Dyslexia Assessment NZ, step by step.

Overview

A comprehensive psychological assessment for dyslexia involves four stages: an initial consultation, the assessment itself, a feedback meeting and a written report. The process is very thorough, strength-focused and practically useful, not just a diagnosis exercise.

Assessment is delivered primarily via telehealth for individuals aged 10 years and older, and face-to-face in Queenstown for younger children and those with more complex needs.

Stage 1: Initial Consultation

The process begins with a one-hour online consultation (via Zoom) with the parents or caregivers, without the child present. This is an important information gathering and plan-making step. During this session:

• Telehealth suitability is discussed and assessed (online assessment is not the right fit for everyone and this is determined openly and collaboratively)

• Informed consent is covered, plus additional consent for contacting school to retrieve information re school-wide literacy instruction practices, previous interventions and teacher observations

• A detailed background history is gathered; developmental, educational and family history

• Contact information for key people across home and school is noted

• The options of needs-based versus diagnostic assessment are explained, and a decision is made together

• The assessment session and feedback meeting are scheduled

This conversation is guided by the Delphi Model, a clinical framework that ensures the ecological and contextual picture of the learner is understood before any formal testing begins.

Stage 2: The Assessment

The assessment session involves approximately 4.5 hours of direct assessment, completed with regular planned breaks to maintain focus and reduce fatigue (it looks much like a normal school day with a break for morning tea and lunch).

The assessment gathers the child’s voice and explores what is happening within their literacy learning process; specifically, what is working well and where things are breaking down. Standardised, norm-referenced measures are used to ensure the findings are reliable and defensible.

Standard assessment tools used include:

• Woodcock Johnson V (WJ-V) — a comprehensive battery of cognitive and achievement measures

• Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 2nd Edition (TOWRE-2) — a measure of reading fluency and decoding speed

The assessment covers:

• Literacy skills — word reading accuracy, reading fluency, decoding, spelling, and writing

• Phonological processing — the core language-based skill underlying most dyslexia

• Cognitive processes — targeted and hypothesis-driven, including areas such as working memory and processing speed where relevant

• Oral language — where indicated, to explore whether language development is contributing to literacy difficulties

Assessment is conducted by a registered educational psychologist using best-practice protocols. For telehealth sessions, the child or young person works directly with the psychologist via video throughout.

Stage 3: Feedback Meeting

Following the assessment, a dedicated feedback meeting is held with parents or caregivers (and where appropriate, the young person themselves) approximately two weeks later.

Using visuals and plain language, the feedback session covers:

• The individual's thinking strengths i.e., how their mind works well

• The nature of the literacy difficulties i.e., what is specifically breaking down and why

• Whether diagnostic criteria for Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading/dyslexia have been met (if a diagnostic assessment was requested)

• Next steps — specific, prioritised recommendations for home, school and intervention

The goal of this meeting is for everyone to leave feeling positively and thoroughly understood, and confident in next steps, with a clear picture of both thinking strengths and the needs to be addressed, and straightforward sense of what needs to happen next.

Stage 4: The Written Report

A finalised written report is provided following the feedback meeting. It is written to be both as free from psychological jargon and statistics, and as ‘concise and precise’ as possible. This is so that reading it doesn’t cause cognitive overload and so it the information in it is as powerful and useful as possible for the families, schools, and learners who read them.

The report includes:

• A strength-based perspective of the individual is woven into the report from the very beginning, and extends to cover their thinking strengths, how these play out across contexts an to best build on these thinking strengths moving forward

• The ecological context for the individual i.e., their background, environment and learning history

• Wellbeing-based information, conceptualised using Te Whare Tapa Whā (Durie, 1884), weaved throughout the assessment for Māori, and for all individuals as needed

• A description of the nature and extent of the literacy difficulties

• Priority intervention recommendations; covering literacy and thinking skills, oral language and wellbeing as relevant

• Support strategies and accommodations to enable more effective engagement with learning

• If applicable, a signed NZQA Special Assessment Conditions form for NCEA examinations

Assessment of Co-Occurring Difficulties

Reading difficulties frequently occur alongside other challenges. Research estimates that around 25–40% of individuals with dyslexia also have ADHD, and co-occurring anxiety, depression, and sensory processing differences are common.

Where the assessment process indicates that co-occurring difficulties may be present, these can be screened or assessed as part of a more comprehensive evaluation. Additional assessment time and associated costs are discussed openly during the initial consultation.

What Does It Cost?

Dyslexia Assessment NZ operates a cross-subsidy model to make assessment as accessible as possible.

The Standard Assessment Package is NZ$2,300.

The Low-Cost Assessment pathway is NZ$1,300

The low-cost pathway is available to anyone who needs it. Additional costs for materials, typically costing about NZ$100 for the cognitive/literacy skills tests are also charged.

Payment in full is due on the day of the assessment, and staggered payment plans can be discussed as needed at the initial consult. The final report will not be released until the bill is settled.

Ready to Get Started?

If you would like to discuss whether assessment is the right next step for you or your child, get in touch. An initial conversation costs nothing.

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