Dr Sandra Marshall
Chairperson
Chairperson
Chairperson – Dr Sandra Marshall BMBS FRACGP Dip Child Health is a General Practitioner in South Australia.
She is passionate about preventative healthcare, particularly in children, and she sees the failure and underachievement of students with dyslexia at school as both a human rights and a public health issue.
Sandra was the co-founder of Dyslexia SA, a group that has won numerous awards relating to their “Dyslexia Aware School Quality Mark” including: “Community Group of the year”; SA Health Award “Strengthening Primary Health Care”; Primary Health Care “Practitioner of the Year”; and ”Most innovative Group”.
Recently they have seen the Phonics Check be introduced into all 3 school sectors of SA as a direct consequence of Dyslexia SA’s determined advocacy. Sandra has met with numerous politicians and education leaders. She has 2 sons both attending high school, one with dyslexia, and one with dysgraphia.
“There is nothing inevitable about illiteracy and school failure. Yet the students with dyslexia are subjected to what is broadly known as the “wait to fail “model of identifying dyslexia. Even then these students are often left to continue to fail and disengage from school, and often society. It staggers me that we have such low expectations of our young people.”