‘The System is Collapsing’: A father’s plea to stop failing our neurodivergent children
Let’s be clear from the start: there is no sudden “pandemic” of neurodivergent children. We have always been here. The shocking rise in school avoidance isn’t about our kids changing; it’s about an education system that has become intolerable for them.
As a father to a neurodivergent son, and as the Green Party’s Disability Officer here in Telford and Wrekin, I hear this truth every single day. From parents, from young people, and from the dedicated education professionals who are trying – and often failing – to hold things together within a broken framework.
My own son’s story is a microcosm of the failure. He spent nearly two years in an attached ‘hub’ at a mainstream school. In all that time, he attended just one solitary lesson in the mainstream classroom. One. He was out of his depth, and the other children looked at him like he was an outsider – someone not to be trusted or liked. The same heartbreaking story played out for the other eight children in that hub, too.
It was only when he moved to a specialist secondary school that he began to thrive. He’s now coming on in leaps and bounds. Hubs are not the solution; they are at best a sticking plaster on a gaping wound, and can only play a small part in a total process that needs radical redesign.
So, what’s gone wrong? Why are so many ND (Neuro divergent) children struggling now?
Parents, autistic adults, and teachers – are unified and damning. Our children are the canaries in the coal mine, and the mine is full of toxic gas.
The consensus is clear, and it points to five crushing failures:
1. An Inflexible, High-Pressure Curriculum: As one primary teacher with 20 years’ experience told me, the demands “skyrocketed” about seven years ago. We have a curriculum obsessed with passive knowledge acquisition and high-stakes testing, leaving no time for joy, exploration, or the multi-sensory learning our children need. It’s developmentally inappropriate and punishes different thinking styles.
2. A Culture of Compliance & Control: Schools have become surveillance-heavy environments. A ND young person told me "the autonomy I relied on at school – listening to music, taking movement breaks, having freedom – would not be tolerated now.
Punitive behaviour policies misread nervous system needs as defiance.
3. Systemic Deprivation of Regulatory Needs: Remember morning and afternoon breaks? An hour for lunch? The chance to just be? They’ve been stripped away. The school day is now a constant, high-demand marathon with no organic rhythm. ND nervous systems are driven into chronic overload and burnout.
4. Inadequate Resources in a Broken System: Even the best teachers are set up to fail. “With around 1,650 students,” one secondary teacher wrote, maintaining a calm environment is a huge challenge. Classes are large, training is scant, and support staff are spread impossibly thin. Individual Education Plans (EHCPs) become paper promises.
5. A Misalignment of Values: Outcomes Over Well-being: This is the root cause. The system prioritises Ofsted ratings, attendance figures, and exam results over child development and mental health. This frames the child as a “problem” to be managed, rather than a learner to be supported.
One educator put it to me perfectly: “Neurodivergent kids are just the canaries in the coal mine telling us the education system isn’t working.”
The Green Party listens to parents and young people. We recognise this urgent need for change and know that the current plans will not work. We need a revolution in our values:
· Fund education properly: Smaller classes, more specialist staff, and mandatory neurodiversity training.
· Redefine success: Ditch the obsession with rigid testing and empower teachers to foster creativity, critical thinking, and well-being.
· Restore autonomy and trust: Give students agency, bring back proper breaks, and create sensory-safe spaces.
· Provide real choice: Properly fund and expand specialist provision for those who need it, while making mainstream truly inclusive.
•Scrap OFSTED!
My son’s thriving is proof that when the environment fits the child, miracles happen. We are failing a generation of brilliant, diverse minds by forcing them into an archaic and punitive system. It’s time to stop trying to “fix” the child and start fixing the system.
The canaries are dying. It’s time to get out of the mine and build something better.
Let’s be clear from the start: there is no sudden “pandemic” of neurodivergent children. We have always been here. The shocking rise in school avoidance isn’t about our kids changing; it’s about an education system that has become intolerable for them.
As a father to a neurodivergent son, and as the Green Party’s Disability Officer here in Telford and Wrekin, I hear this truth every single day. From parents, from young people, and from the dedicated education professionals who are trying – and often failing – to hold things together within a broken framework.
My own son’s story is a microcosm of the failure. He spent nearly two years in an attached ‘hub’ at a mainstream school. In all that time, he attended just one solitary lesson in the mainstream classroom. One. He was out of his depth, and the other children looked at him like he was an outsider – someone not to be trusted or liked. The same heartbreaking story played out for the other eight children in that hub, too.
It was only when he moved to a specialist secondary school that he began to thrive. He’s now coming on in leaps and bounds. Hubs are not the solution; they are at best a sticking plaster on a gaping wound, and can only play a small part in a total process that needs radical redesign.
So, what’s gone wrong? Why are so many ND (Neuro divergent) children struggling now?
Parents, autistic adults, and teachers – are unified and damning. Our children are the canaries in the coal mine, and the mine is full of toxic gas.
The consensus is clear, and it points to five crushing failures:
1. An Inflexible, High-Pressure Curriculum: As one primary teacher with 20 years’ experience told me, the demands “skyrocketed” about seven years ago. We have a curriculum obsessed with passive knowledge acquisition and high-stakes testing, leaving no time for joy, exploration, or the multi-sensory learning our children need. It’s developmentally inappropriate and punishes different thinking styles.
2. A Culture of Compliance & Control: Schools have become surveillance-heavy environments. A ND young person told me "the autonomy I relied on at school – listening to music, taking movement breaks, having freedom – would not be tolerated now.
Punitive behaviour policies misread nervous system needs as defiance.
3. Systemic Deprivation of Regulatory Needs: Remember morning and afternoon breaks? An hour for lunch? The chance to just be? They’ve been stripped away. The school day is now a constant, high-demand marathon with no organic rhythm. ND nervous systems are driven into chronic overload and burnout.
4. Inadequate Resources in a Broken System: Even the best teachers are set up to fail. “With around 1,650 students,” one secondary teacher wrote, maintaining a calm environment is a huge challenge. Classes are large, training is scant, and support staff are spread impossibly thin. Individual Education Plans (EHCPs) become paper promises.
5. A Misalignment of Values: Outcomes Over Well-being: This is the root cause. The system prioritises Ofsted ratings, attendance figures, and exam results over child development and mental health. This frames the child as a “problem” to be managed, rather than a learner to be supported.
One educator put it to me perfectly: “Neurodivergent kids are just the canaries in the coal mine telling us the education system isn’t working.”
The Green Party listens to parents and young people. We recognise this urgent need for change and know that the current plans will not work. We need a revolution in our values:
· Fund education properly: Smaller classes, more specialist staff, and mandatory neurodiversity training.
· Redefine success: Ditch the obsession with rigid testing and empower teachers to foster creativity, critical thinking, and well-being.
· Restore autonomy and trust: Give students agency, bring back proper breaks, and create sensory-safe spaces.
· Provide real choice: Properly fund and expand specialist provision for those who need it, while making mainstream truly inclusive.
•Scrap OFSTED!
My son’s thriving is proof that when the environment fits the child, miracles happen. We are failing a generation of brilliant, diverse minds by forcing them into an archaic and punitive system. It’s time to stop trying to “fix” the child and start fixing the system.
The canaries are dying. It’s time to get out of the mine and build something better.
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