Can school ever be right for autistic people?
In the current ‘industrial’ [1] educational paradigm, schools aren’t accessible for autistic people.
They both contribute to and cause trauma for autistic individuals. With reasonable adjustment and an embodiment focus, steps can be made to begin to change this. However, a wholesale reform of the educational system, is what is actually needed.
Trauma is anything which is too much, too soon, too quickly. For autistic young people the pace of school alone, moving from lesson to lesson, hour after hour, without decompression and processing time, stim or sensory breaks, is ‘too quickly.’
The sensory environment is ‘too much.’
Young people experience similar sensory issues in schools as they do in other large scale societal institutional settings [2]. The sounds (bells, class sizes, scraping chairs and desks - the collective sound generated), the visuals (bright lights, the paint colours and busy wall displays), the sensations (scratchy, synthetic fibre uniforms, hard plastic chairs, sitting still for long periods of time), the smells (toilets, dinner hall, disinfectant) – all of these contribute to dysregulation and overload and that is before we even consider the demands of social processing.
In schools there are people everywhere – lots of people - too close, bumping into us, talking to us. There is nowhere ‘safe’ to go outside of lessons, during the challenging unstructured times during the school day, for quiet time. Libraries, which used to be an optional safe haven are often shut, at short notice, causing more distress and unpredicted change, due to staffing shortages, or alternatively become social hubs.
There is no option for down time, to follow our own rhythm, and honour our own pace – especially around extra time needed for processing information.
Content delivery in class, due to curriculum and exam board syllabus demands, becomes a ‘too quickly’ experience. There are pages of text and oral information to take in, understand and process every lesson. We move though the day in overwhelm. Our special interests are irrelevant to the compulsory and prescribed curriculum. Plus, the focus is on exams and content recall rather than exploration, curiosity and creativity.
We are put into groups to work with people who don’t understand us (and don’t care to understand, as they are understandably focused on their own experience, particularly when adolescent), or our communication preferences [3]. There is indirect or implied communication from peers and teachers alike – it’s all ‘too much’. We experience the Double Empathy problem [4], interpersonal violence, bullying and so mask 195 days a year – all of which impacts all aspects on our health negatively [5].
Schools getting it wrong for autistic young people increases the need for mental health intervention and has repercussions for health services.
Everybody is stressed. Teachers are under immense pressure – Ofsted, exam grades, workload. They often don’t have the headspace, knowledge or time to consider or even know how to consider reasonable adjustment. The focus remains on student behaviour – which is ‘managed’ (controlled) and young people are ‘moulded’ (modified) into the standardised product of an ‘exam answering machine’. And, by the way, this doesn’t work anyway for autistic people, as our brains do not habituate – behaviourist and modification approaches are indeed harmful [6] to us.
A wholesale cultural shift and reform is needed in education to a body first and co-regulation focus – to embodiment and relationship approaches – which would benefit and see better holistic outcomes, for all neurotypes.
In the meantime, what are five actions which can be taken to mobilise reasonable adjustment and which schools can begin implement to make schools right, or at the very least, less traumatic, for autistic people - students and teachers alike?
Facilitate the voice of autistic students and teachers – LISTEN to and ACTION what adjustments and amendments are needed.
Do a sensory environment audit [7].
Create a designated sensory friendly safe space – a staffed area where autistic students can go to decompress at any time.
Implement a Neurodivergent Friendly Wellbeing Approach [8].
Integrate embodiment approaches into leadership, policy and procedure – centring neurodiversity and relationships, nervous system, autism-informed and trauma-informed awareness, and co-regulation, as key strategies [9].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=14s “So schools kill creativity?”, Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk, YouTube
[2] https://www.ndti.org.uk/resources/publication/its-not-rocket-science “It’s Not Rocket Science” Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic children and young people in CAMHS inpatient services, NDTi
[3] More-than-words-supporting-effective-communication-with-autistic-people-in-health-care-settings.pdf (boingboing.org.uk) More than words: Supporting effective communication with autistic people in health care settings, Economic and Social Research Council
[4] https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.554875 Double Empathy: Why Autistic People Are Often Misunderstood · Frontiers for Young Minds (frontiersin.org)
[5] https://osf.io/5y8jw/ “Professionals are the hardest to trust” Supporting autistic adults who have experienced interpersonal victimisation, Amy Pearson, Kieran Rose and Jon Rees
[6] s41252-021-00201-1.pdf (springer.com) Long-term ABA Long-term ABA Therapy is Abusive: A Response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane, Gary Shkedy, Dalia Shkedy and Aileen H. Sandoval-Norton
[7] Sensory environment — Neurodiverse Connection (ndconnection.co.uk)
[8] FAQs 1 — Neurodiverse Connection (ndconnection.co.uk)
[9] Embodied Education: Creating Safe Space for Learning, Facilitating and Sharing - Kay Louise Aldred and Dan Aldred is scheduled for publication Sept 1st, 2023.
