ANNUAL REPORT 2012 - Dyslexia International

Letter from
the Chair
In 2012 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
announced his ‘Education First’ policy at
UNESCO, urging all NGOs working in education
to make a major drive, ‘Un Grand Effort’, to reach
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015:
quality education for all.
Dyslexia International fully endorses this policy
and addresses it by ensuring that Open Education
Resources for teacher training in literacy and
inclusion are accessible to teachers worldwide.
In February, following a meeting at UNESCO on
‘Relations with Member States, Intergovernmental
and Non-governmental Partners’, Dyslexia
International was honoured to be granted
‘consultative status’ in its partnership with UNESCO.
From September through to December we took an
active part in meetings to determine new criteria for
these relations.
Much of our energy throughout the year went into
re-positioning ourselves as we followed up the
conclusions of our forward planning activities,
finalized in early 2012. We looked at how best to
maximize the benefits of new emerging technological
solutions that allowed us to meet our primary
objective: to make enhanced teacher training
widely available as a means of attaining free and fair
education for all and equal opportunities for students
with specific learning difficulties whose needs are
still not being met.
‘Policies that effectively address teacher training
and retention should be at the core of national
education policies.
‘Children have a fundamental right to free
primary schooling of good quality. Governments
have pledged to uphold this right. I am deeply
concerned that education is slipping down the
international priority list. Education First stems
from my resolve to answer the call of parents
everywhere for the schooling their children
deserve - from the earliest years to adulthood. We
must place education at the heart of our social,
political and development agendas.
‘When we put education first, we can end wasted
potential and look forward to stronger and better
societies for all.’
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General
of the United Nations
The high point of 2012 was the launch of our new
Beta site offering, for the first time, scientificallybased,
high quality online teacher training materials
on how to identify and address dyslexia free of
charge. All visitors to www.dyslexia-international.
org were able to access our Open Courseware and
Open Educational Resources at an ’e-Campus’
for teachers and trainers, a ‘Meeting Place’ for
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