MATTHEW Proudman is a highly intelligent young man with a wide vocabulary but had consistently struggled to achieve anything like his full potential at school - until now.

Bredon School pupil Matthew had been held back by his dyslexia for years and is only now able to show the extent of his skills thanks to state-of-the-art software.

The new voice-activated system allows pupils to get past the problems associated with the condition.

Susan Webb, vice-principal at the school, said the programme allowed pupils to train' the computer to recognise their voice.

"It can learn to recognise virtually anything: regional or foreign accents, a speech impediment, speech affected by orthodontics," she said.

"For the children with dyslexia, it is a choice of this or pen and paper - and of course many have struggled with pen and paper for 10 years or more and failed in everybody's eyes, including their own.

"Yet you put them in front of a computer screen, give them some basic training in voice-activated software, and it just liberates them. For dyslexics, learning is a vicious circle and this breaks the circle."

Matthew said the software had been life-changing for him, helping him to finally produce the work he was able to.

He said he had previously been a "ticking timebomb" because he was so frustrated, but the equipment had changed that.

"I found English problematic because we were set essays and people were writing two or three pages and I was writing small paragraphs," he said.

"I knew the words but it was writing them down, it was getting them down on paper."

He said he had used the software for all of his coursework and remembered the first piece he had completed with its help.

"It was a physics coursework about the electronic current in a one metre piece of wire," he said.

"It was fantastic. It's broken down the solid wall between the words in my head and what's on paper - it has unlocked my vocabulary. I found it invaluable and life-changing."

Mrs Webb said that, although they are a mainstream school, Bredon's expertise with specific learning difficulties had always attracted a fair proportion of children with dyslexia.

"It doesn't always work for everybody and we use many other methods too, but Matthew has certainly taken to it like a duck to water," she added.

"His high intelligence and extensive vocabulary meant his relatively severe dyslexia frustrated him for some time.

"It has been a privilege to see how it has liberated his communication skills and improved his self-esteem."

The school also boasts a wealth of other equipment to help pupils in Matthew's position, with computer programs including Inspiration, a mind mapping program, WordRead, which reads text out loud to pupils, and WordBar, which helps build up a dictionary.

Pershore High School, meanwhile, uses a variety of measures to help dyslexic pupils, and head of learning and behaviour support Jan Stoney said they had shown a marked improvement.

She said they assessed pupils to find what ways were best to help them and then used a range of measures and strategies, including computer software, following a learning programme set up by the county council's Access and Inclusion Service.

"We set up a learning programme, and they have a learning mentor who works with them twice a week," she said.

Victoria Crivelli, training co-ordinator for the county council's learning support team, said they carried out assessments, and offered strategies and resources such as books and computer tools to help children overcome difficulties.

"We also offer special assessments to help children get support for exams and tests."

She said they offered training for schools and other professionals to raise awareness for dyslexic-friendly schools and classrooms.

And, last September, they held a conference for teachers and professionals, and planned to hold one for parents.

Kay Garnett, membership secretary for the Hereford and Worcester Dyslexia Association, said they ran workshops every Saturday for children aged six up to GCSE level, who work with trained tutors. She said they had recently celebrated 25 years of the workshops in Worcester, which are also on offer in Bromsgrove, and they felt it offered a valuable service for children in the city.

DYSLEXIA: THE FACTS

The BDA estimates around four per cent of the population (more than two million people in the UK) is severely affected by dyslexia.

Of these, 300,000 are children in schools, meaning there is an average of at least one dyslexic child in every classroom.

A further 10 per cent of the population "show some signs" of the condition. However, the BDA also points out that "precise statistics cannot be given since varying criteria and severity of the learning problem have to be taken into account".

Early signs that a child is dyslexic can include confusion between directional words like up/down, in/out, and difficulty with sequences, such as lines of coloured beads, and later with days of the week or numbers.

There may be a family history of dyslexia or reading difficulties.

Dyslexia is often only spotted after a child goes to school. But there are a number of pointers that may indicate that a younger child has the condition.

Pointers include persistent jumbled phrases, and the use of substitute words, such as lampshade' for lamppost', difficulty learning nursery rhymes and rhyming words, later than expected speech development, late crawling, or not crawling at all, but possibly early walking.