At school she was labelled stupid and when she started work she went to great lengths to hide the fact that she couldn't read or write properly. Nick Morrison meets a woman determined to ensure others don't have to suffer the way she did.

"IF you are told often enough that you are stupid you think you are stupid. At school, if you weren't good at reading, they didn't want to know, and if you couldn't grasp what they were saying you were told you were stupid. But I'm not stupid; I have got a problem."

Just under two years ago, Susan Appleby was diagnosed as dyslexic, but by then she had spent half a lifetime believing she was stupid. Now she is helping other adults overcome problems with reading and writing, but the memory of her school days still lingers.

"I could take in the first part of what the teacher was saying, and maybe the last part, but I would lose the bit in-between, and if you asked the teacher for help more than a couple of times they would lose their rag and call you stupid.

"And the words would be jumping about on the page, so I would maybe read one line and miss a line. It didn't sound right to me but I just thought I must be stupid," she says.

But Susan, now 48, was not alone. According to County Durham Lifelong Learning Partnership, more than one in four adults in the North-East - 28 per cent - have trouble with everyday literacy and numeracy. One in five are unable to look up a plumber in the Yellow Pages, and one in ten cannot understand the instructions on a medicine bottle.

And it's not just a personal problem. Difficulties relating to what used to be known as basic skills and now rechristened skills for life, including losing orders and inefficiency, are estimated to cost UK businesses £4.8bn a year. The estimated cost to the taxpayer, through lower taxes and productivity and a greater burden on the welfare state, is £10bn a year.

On an individual level, the lack of these skills inevitably means employment and promotion opportunities will be limited. Those in the lowest income group are eight times more likely to have poor literacy levels than top earners.

After leaving school, Susan, who lives in Durham, got a job in a carpet factory, where the only writing she had to do was the yardage of carpets. She managed to hide her difficulties even from her husband Ian and whenever she had to write anything, she had a ready-made tactic to hand.

"It would just be a scrawl and I used to say I have just written it quickly. I knew in my head what was on the bit of paper, but nobody else could read it. Ian used to say 'slow down,' but I just used to say my hand-writing was just like a doctor's," she says.

She managed by reading newspapers several times until she understood them, asking friends and neighbours when she was stuck and making the children wait until their dad got home if they wanted help with their homework. She got by, but she was always aware of the limits her difficulties placed on her.

"I had no ambition. I became a child-minder so I could work at home, and if there was anything difficult I would ask my husband," she says.

At first, she says, Ian thought she was just a "dippy woman", and when he realised something was wrong, Susan refused to accept it, maintaining instead that she never had time for school.

Susan then went to work in the home care service for Durham City Council, visiting elderly people in their homes. This new job forced her to develop a new strategy for hiding her writing difficulties. "If the message was too complicated, I would ring up as soon as I got home and say I had forgotten to put something on the notes. We would finish work at quarter to five, and I would get home at five and ring up straight away."

When rescue came, it was through her son, also called Ian, but while it may have led to a new direction for Susan, it also illustrates how depressingly little has changed since she was at school.

"He had problems at school with his writing and the teachers said he was slow. We thought he might be dyslexic, because at 12 he was still getting his ps and ds and bs the wrong way round, but the teachers said no. They said he wasn't interested," she says.

But at 24, after ticking the box for "Do you think you're dyslexic?" on a basic skills survey at the factory where he worked, Ian junior was diagnosed with moderate dyslexia. He then persuaded his mum to undergo the test. She was also diagnosed as dyslexic.

"It lifts a huge weight off your shoulders. I know I'm not thick, and it means you're not going to have to do menial jobs all your life, you know you can aim higher.

"Now I know that it's not that I can't do it, it's just that I need to concentrate more and work my way around it. Apart from spelling mistakes, I don't have a huge problem any more," she says.

Susan is now co-ordinating skills for life courses at Deerness Leisure Centre, in Ushaw Moor, near Durham, in a project run by her trade union, the GMB, in partnership with the city council. It brings her into contact with people who are in the same position she was, and suffering the stigma of having problems with reading, writing and adding up.

"A lot of people don't want anyone else to know, and some say they're coming on other courses so no-one finds out. We have lads in their 40s who say they'll get ridiculed at work, but often the people who would ridicule others are in the same boat.

"Some people are reluctant to come forward and you have to get through to them that it is not something that is going to be with them all their lives and they can get help for it," she says.

Susan has experienced the ridicule first hand. She says she has a thick skin, although maybe she just got used to the taunts.

"There are people who delight in making fun of you. You would get 'You can't spell for toffee', 'silly bugger', 'stupid sod'. You develop a thick skin. I didn't get it so bad but I know people who've had a huge problem with it," she says.

Before she was diagnosed with dyslexia, Susan had started a management course, but had to stop at the certificate level because of the amount of writing involved if she went further. Now she is determined to go on and complete the course at diploma level.

"I still have problems with spellings and my handwriting is still untidy, but I know there is a reason for it now. It's not as if I'm backward."

* To find out more about training opportunities in skills for life, contact Learn Direct on 0800 100 900.