Sophia read Experimental Psychology at Oxford University in the late 1980s. Afterwards she went into counselling, training first as a Gestalt Counsellor and then qualifying in the complementary field of Movement Therapy at the Laban Centre. In the 1990s she set up “The Empress Centre” running psycho-dynamic workshops for women. She also kept an academic finger in, investigating how extremely low frequency energy affects migraines and lecturing on bipolar disorder and narcissism.
In 2000 she returned to Cookham with her husband and three children and trained with Dyslexia Action as a specialist teacher/assessor. She worked in a broad range of schools from state primary to private secondary to FE/HE Colleges until leaving teaching and moving into assessment, tutoring and supporting other assessors full time in 2014.
She worked for Dyslexia Action as an assessor at the Egham Centre, then as a tutor on their online CCET and AAC course, finally doing quality control, reading the reports of other assessors and giving mentor-style feedback. She continues to review the work of assessors renewing their practising certificates for Dyslexia Action.
She joined Real Training in 2015 as a tutor on the CCET, AAC and MA Report Writing courses. In 2018 she became co-module leader for the AAC courses and joined the JCQ regulations review body. She has made training videos of test administration, the free to view JCQ updates and course materials with her colleagues at Real Training.
Sophia maintains a love of assessing and mentoring and a dislike of wasps and Marmite. She has given lectures on statistics at ADSHE and Patoss; she enjoys nothing more than dissecting a new psychometric test. Sophia was made a Fellow of the Dyslexia Guild in 2019.
Qualifications
BA Hons (Oxon): Experimental Psychology MA
Fellow of the Dyslexia Guild 1601
PGDip (University of York): Dyslexia & Literacy
EAA (Dyslexia Institute): Exam Access Arrangements
CCET (British Psychological Society) Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing
AST (British Dyslexia Association) Approved Specialist Teacher
British Psychological Society Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing No 267777
Dyslexia Guild Practising Certificate No. 1010/256
Patoss Membership FLI5995
Dyslexia Guild Membership m4007
AMBDA no 2082
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