Neurodivergent and Not attending

Today I gave a keynote presentation: Neurodivergent and Not Attending. (I was dressed smartly, had a microphone, slides, and presented a review of the literature on school attendance). This evening multiple people online have asked me what I said, so this is a midnight pyjama overview, very much not perfect, but roughly what I said:

Statistics nationally and internationally point to the non-attendance of neurodivergent children at school.
In the UK we operate a highly punitive approach, offering prizes for attendance and criminalising and fining parents in response to non-attendance.
The 100% attendance goal is based on out-of-date research and surface-level engagement with contemporary research; it has been implemented without criticality and is doing harm across the board.

Out of date – behaviourist carrot-and-stick approaches, reward and punishment, effective only short term for establishing habits, ineffective thereafter and likely to destroy intrinsic motivation, i.e. to do harm.
Surface level – the narrative that those who go to school more do better in life, therefore if you go to school more you will do better. But a moment’s thought casts doubt on the certainty: could it be that those who go more are those facing the least barriers to access, and might those same people face fewer barriers in adult life? Privilege remaining with the privileged is not surprising.

The experience of non-attendance feels desperately personal: this child, this family, this professional. But these personal experiences form part of a bigger picture, and the pattern points to an issue bigger than individual people or particular school policies. It is a structural issue.

Where structural inequalities exist, narratives arise that blame those experiencing prejudice. In neurodivergence we see this in the endemic pathologisation of neurodivergent mental health. Proportionate responses to very real threat are labelled as mental ill health, indicative of a lack of resilience.

Neurodivergent children are suffering poor mental health, but this is not a chicken-and-egg question. We do not struggle to work out which came first: poor mental health causing non-attendance, or school attendance causing poor mental health.

Policy is being based on rhetoric, not research. This is exemplified by ministers declaring over-diagnosis, the pathologisation of childhood, and recommending parents get trained. The government gaslighting is best illustrated by the “Look at him now” poster campaign, which denied the seriousness of what families experience and revealed how little is understood by those with the power to change it.

Parents make different decisions now about school because our understanding of the importance of good mental health has progressed.
Attendance is a measure of the accessibility of our education system, not a method for ensuring it. Forcing people into structures not built with them in mind causes harm.

We are reaching a point where the disparity between the system as it is and the population it is supposed to serve is so great it is breaking—and breaking children, families, and professionals with it. Time is running out on forcing square pegs into round holes.

Terms like “school refusal” and “school avoidance” point at the problem but do so without asking what is causing it. Contained within these terms are assumed answers: the child is refusing, the child is making a choice. It frames distress as a behaviour the child is producing.

A crass comparison: a wheelchair-using child offered a school at the top of steps. When they do not attend, do we say they need to build resilience, attend parenting classes, or receive mental-health treatment? Or do we recognise the barriers? Without a ramp or lift, the school is inaccessible.

Schools are inaccessible to neurodivergent children, or neurodivergent children face significant barriers to accessing education. They are not bad children; they do not need treatment, resilience training, punishment or rewards. Parents are not doing a shoddy job; schools are not heartless or in need of firmer discipline.

Whilst the problem is inaccurately framed, it becomes easy to build narratives of blame, pitching parents against professionals, telling stories of slack parents or heartless professionals. All the while, fighting amongst ourselves means missing the chance to see we are all here for the children. We all want what is best. When we unite we can challenge the power structures creating this inequality.

We all suffer under systems that exclude.