Special educational needs and disabilities – better known in the media these days by the punchy acronym SEND – are a hot topic in education. For a long time considered a marginal issue for disruptive children, the discourse has shifted in recent years as parents have pressured schools into better accommodation for young people with neurodiverse conditions, like autism, ADHD and dyslexia. It is the last of these which has found a champion in the form of TV chef Jamie Oliver, whose crusade on behalf of Britain’s dyslexics is captured in a new Channel 4 documentary, Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Oliver tells a room full of assembled politicians. “I’ve been through 17 heads of education and many, many prime ministers.” He is referring, of course, to his 2004 campaign to reform school dinners, which made him, briefly, the most hated man in Britain’s schoolyards. It wasn’t just children who critiqued his advocacy: he was accused, too, of being part of a wealthy elite propagating top-down paternalism. And yet for all the political and social change since the start of the millennium, Oliver’s televisual persona has remained the same. An approachable Jack the Lad, no controversy seems capable of denting his portfolio career, including countless television shows, wildly successful cookbooks and novels aimed at children, and a restaurant group. And this has all been achieved while struggling with a form of dyslexia that makes reading and writing a challenge for him. “You’re probably better at reading than me now,” he tells his eight-year-old-son. “And I’m the second biggest author in the country.”
