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Parents’ and Professionals’ Evening and OCR Graduation Ceremony
– Wednesday 12 November 2008
A highly successful Parents’ and Professionals’ Evening was held at Fairley House on 12 November. The event attracted an appreciative audience of over one hundred parents, staff and visiting professionals.
The speaker was Professor Margaret Snowling who holds a personal chair in psychology at the University of York. A researcher in the field of dyslexia for over 30 years, she is the author of numerous books and articles in reference journals. Her books include ‘Dyslexia’ first published in 1987 and revised in 2000, ‘Dyslexia, Biology, Cognition and Intervention’. It is no coincidence that she is interested in intervention as well as research and when she began her career as a lecturer and researcher at The National Hospital in Queen Square she also trained as a dyslexia therapist at Bart’s with Bevé Hornsby. In the 1980s when there was little understanding of what dyslexia was, Margaret Snowling pushed forward the boundaries of knowledge with her research. She holds the Samuel Orton Award that is rarely awarded to a non- American. This year she was made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences whose members are elected for outstanding contributions to the advancement of medical science and for innovative application of scientific knowledge, a prestigious and richly deserved award. Although an eminent researcher Maggie understands the human side of dyslexia as she has family members who are dyslexic.
Prior to Margaret Snowling’s interesting and informative lecture, she presented the certificates to the OCR candidates from last year’s course. Fairley House School is a training centre for teachers of students with specific learning difficulties and the course is now in its third year.
In her closing remarks, Principal, Jackie Murray thanked Professor Snowling and said that she was sure that the graduates felt extremely honoured to receive their awards from such a distinguished academic and hoped it would inspire those on this year’s course.