My Arrangements + supports in Education

this blog post is going to go through the arrangements/provisions and supports that i have had throughout all my time in education.
starting with primary school has i mentioned in the primary school experience blog i was not diagnosed until after my primary years so i had very little/no support although my mum has told me i was put into the all the programs and lower level classes for special needs however as i mentioned in the previous blog (which you can find here http://bit.ly/2bNi289) my year 3 teacher was the only and first teacher in primary school who focused on the quality and content of the work rather than the handwriting or presentation whereas most other teachers did not bother marking the work if they were unable to read it.
in term of middle school (yr5-yr8) it was in year 6 that i was diagnosed with Dyspraxia however i still dont recall having many supports in place, i do remember an attempt at having a scribe (where you say the answer and the scribe then writes it down) at this point having a scribe didn't work i dont think i was comfortable having to say my answers out loud and it also makes kit slightly harder if you need to make notes or if its a long answer as you might forget some of it before the scribe has had a chance to write it all down but other than that attempt at having a scribe i dont remember any other special provision in place or attempted throughout the 4 years of middle school.
for high school and college (yr9 - yr11 + post 16/sixth form) my school attempted a few different supports the first of which i can remember was a word processor which i liked but it wasn't totally effective due to temperamental technology and because i wasn't good or fast at typing. the next attempt was having a transcribe for exams (which means that i sat the exam normally on my own then after the transcribe would come in and rewrite the bits that they were felt would be too difficult to read after i told them what was written down) i preferred this as i was able to focus on the exam however this became quite time consuming especially as the transcribe would do it on their own to prevent me from missing lessons although there was one point the entire english department weer unable to read my writing so they had to get me from the lesson i was in this eventually led to me having a scribe again at this point it did seem to work better than when i was in middle school possibly because i had the same scribe for all of my exams and someone i knew from lessons (a TA from the english department) this continued throughout the rest of my time at that school so through to sixth form/college.
at university the supports in place were mostly products that were received as a part of disabled students allowance (DSA) the equipment that i received was a dictaphone, laptop and standwith a laptop bag, a printer, keyboard and mouse also installed on the laptop was some software including audio notetaker for the dictaphone for recording of lectures and seminars dragon naturally speaking which allows you to speak and the software did the typing on to the laptop however i struggled with this as it couldnt understand my voice and as you have to train it to understand your voice by reading to it which i never really had enough time to do alongside this software for the first few weeks (i think) you also have training/tutoring on how to use all of the equipment (i never got used dragon naturally speaking however) especially the software based ones which can take a little bit of time to get used to. DSA also pays for the tutoring from within the university and their disability support department and for most of my time at uni i wasnt clear on what exactly i could go to them for most of the time it was just proof reading essays it wasnt until my dissertation in my third year that i had help that included planning and the layout of the work i also feel like there may have been more included in that but it was never made clear exactly what 'services' were 'offered' or in place.