Assessment for Learning Difficulties

Learning disabilities are neurological problems in one or more learning processes. 14 to 31 percent of school-age children struggle with a learning disability in India. 80 percent of those with learning disorders have reading disorders. Learning disabilities are ongoing problems in three areas: reading, writing and math. Difficulties with these skills may cause problems in learning subjects such as history, math, science, and social studies and may impact everyday activities. Learning disorders, if not recognized and managed, can cause problems throughout a person’s life beyond having lower academic achievement. These problems include an increased risk of greater psychological distress, poorer overall mental health, unemployment/‌under-employment and dropping out of school. Assessment Tool for Learning Disabilities is digitalized screening tool validated and compared with 3 major psychological assessments which are NIMHANS Battery for Learning Disability, Vanderbilt ADHD Rating scale for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) for Autism. The idea behind this is to make the assessments available to common people to identify neurodivergent like LD, ADHD, and ASD. The parameters which we have included are based on their behaviour pattern categorized into reading, writing, spelling, attention, memory, behaviour, and emotional wellness. These assessments are extremely helpful for teachers at school and parents at home to identify and acknowledge the problem that child is facing and then they can take the next step to provide remediation. The main purpose of the screening tool is to identify and create awareness about the disabilities, problems that the children are facing and remove the stigma around disabilities. The tool was applied and tested in 3 phases through the schoolteachers of different mediums of schools, tested reliability validation useability, errors and mistakes, and speed. Test-retest reliability of Assessment Tool for Learning Disabilities was determined by comparing assessment and post assessment scores using Intra Correlation Coefficient (ICC). Criterion validity was computed by comparing the Teacher’s rating and Clinical rating with the child’s assessment done by the Parents and Teachers who are assessing the child. Keeping the difficulties in mind, Assessment Tool for Learning Disability was developed. It has a modest goal of screening children with Learning Disability, or any other type of academic problems and it can be used for subtyping of Learning Disability or for those who would respond to intervention. Based on the test and retest and the sample size of 790 students in all the 3 phases we can deduce that with Assessment Tool for Learning Disabilities helps in identifying students with different types of learning difficulties and can be extremely helpful with providing the remediation and intervention.