A qualitative exploration of spelling errors using the Spelling Profile Assessment: A new UK spelling test for primary age children.

Spelling difficulties can have an adverse impact on written composition, as conscious attention to skills such as spelling can take resources from other writing processes, such as text production and planning (Berninger, 1999; DfE, 2025). A new spelling test, the Spelling Profile Assessment (SPA) (Niolaki et al., 2025), provides a valid and reliable means to capture strengths and weaknesses in spelling, allowing teachers, specialist dyslexia teachers, SENCOs, and Educational Psychologists to use it for support and intervention planning, especially for children who struggle with spelling.
A test that can identify a child’s spelling strategies and strengths in phonology, orthography, morphology, and semantics does not exist in the UK. Current spelling tests assess children’s spellings in a dichotomous way – scoring responses as correct or incorrect - and fail to capture children's true spelling ability, knowledge, and the logic behind their spelling errors. The SPA fills this gap and provides educators with awareness of the child’s spelling ability in a quantitative and qualitative, fine-tuned way. This paper provides a brief summary of the strengths of the SPA, looking specifically at a Year 6 sample of children with and without dyslexia. It offers a snapshot of how the SPA can differentiate between spelling strengths and challenges in comparison to other screening and diagnostic tools.