A brief description of the Spelling Profile Assessment: a new UK spelling test for primary school age children (pilot phase)

The brief paper summarises why the Spelling Profile Assessment (SPA) is a necessary tool for primary school teachers, SENCos, and specialist assessors in identifying children’s spelling strengths and weaknesses in the English language. As we highlight below, spelling is essential for writing, which is an important everyday skill, especially in societies where the use of social media and devices continues to increase the need for written communication. Even if reading difficulties are mitigated, spelling difficulties often persist into adulthood. Thus, being able to intervene early is important towards addressing learners’ helplessness, aversion towards writing or general literacy-related activities, anxiety and depression. We summarise the extremely positive results from our pilot study, conducted between 2017 and 2019, and the next steps we took in creating an assessment tool that at the time of writing does not exist in the UK or other English-speaking countries.