To ask, if you’re a teacher

OK so just some numbers from this thread.

I went through and counted all the responses which actually stated what diagnoses were. Discounted any "suspected" or where it wasn't stated or general SEND numbers or where the person was referring to their child's class rather than their own class. Discounted posts where a poster referred to a specific class they remembered or were aware of at their own school, but didn't mention what the average or their current class was.

The average of all these for autism specifically is less than 10% which granted, is still higher than the 1% but it's not 20-40% as claimed. I do think it's likely prevalence of autism is higher than 1% BTW. I don't know whether 10% is accurate, but it could be explained by some of the biases that people who know more about survey technique have explained.

I also counted all the responses stating they had 1 or 2 in a class, there were 8 of these responses. And actually despite OP's comment that "nobody said 0% or even 5%" - 1 in 30 would be less than 5% and this was reported by several posters, and I think one or two referred in passing to classes which have 0 even if it wasn't their current cohort.

5 EHCPs already awarded across a Reception of 60 children. All awarded for ASC. All non verbal. All with a wide range of needs.

A further 17 children awaiting ASC assessments.

My school is in an upper middle class small town.

Why is autism more lightly in a poor area I thought it was more lightly if parents or siblings have it but what dose it have to do with where you live?

It's funny isn't it, on reflection I had a friend who probably had arfid so would likely get an autism diagnosis. He did well in school, despite some bullying, and had a good group of friends. Wasn't sporty but was in the top sets. He's been very successful as an adult. Has strong friendships, a wife, kids and a good career. Would a diagnosis have helped him? I can't see he needed help with anything really other than maybe getting a wider variety of nutrients.

not a deprived area - 1000 students - I would say between 20-30 % are ND. High numbers of ASD (previously Asperger’s) increasing numbers of girls with obvious ASD traits (whereas previous generations may have marked)

Many are undiagnosed but the diagnosis pathway in my area is 2 years so many do not manage to achieve diagnosis. A number get a private adhd diagnosis but (those who need it) can not then access meds which is a travesty.

I am not dismissing it, because it does tell you something, which as I said is the range of experiences. You are right it is a blunt instrument but you say you are aware of the limitations of straw polls - the major limitation is that they are not especially accurate and should not be over-interpreted.

I do agree that if you take just this thread into consideration it seems as though more than 5% is likely, but as somebody else said, more than 5% what? You keep mixing up numbers - more than 5% autistic would be surprising, more than 5% ADHD + Autism not especially, and more than 5% SEND is not surprising at all because SEND is "officially" at 20% anyway and has been going back in reports right to the 1970s.

I don't need any validation of anything personally, but I do think that, collectively, we need to be careful around the subject of the validity of these diagnoses, because despite scientific consensus, it appears to be an alarmingly widely held view that they are some kind of conspiracy, or massively inflated because they are somehow desirable e.g. as an "excuse", and this is damaging when such views are held by people who have real influence over policy - members of local government who are responsible for funding decisions, teaching staff or management in schools, or even higher up in the government, as seen in the US.

I am very happy to talk numbers, because I also find it interesting, but I am not especially interested in rehashing all the old chestnuts like ah it's the environment - they just need to be let out to play a bit more etc. I mean sure, that would be great probably for all children, I would fully support more outdoor play in schools, but lack of playtime doesn't make a non-ADHD child into a child with ADHD. Or this idea that because we are now catching many more children and hopefully gaining a more accurate picture of prevalence that this is some kind of runaway train which needs to be stopped before 50% of the population have it - that's not an accurate picture at all and that becomes obvious as soon as you look at the actual context for these "skyrocketing" rates the papers like to talk about. Or look at properly researched studies/surveys, rather than going on vibes.

I would be really, really happy to have a discussion about numbers where the myths which are stupidly easy (but time consuming) to disprove don't even come into play at all, but weirdly enough when you get people who have gone past those myths and understand how it actually works they also don't seem especially worried by numbers.

It's very interesting. It's almost as if being neurodivergent is actually fairly typical isn't it. So begs the question why we can't set our society up to cater better to the needs of half the population?

In my daughter’s class it is 90% because she goes to a specialist provision.

You cannot clearly tell anything from 183 responses, when there are 29,000 schools that 5% is wrong. The DfE/NHS aren’t making stuff up or hiding numbers. Those are the number with a diagnosis.

Im not offended, I am struggling not suggest you are a bit thick. I agree there has been an increase in diagnosis. I think that is a good thing.

It isn’t possible to count all the children on pathways or waiting lists.

You still haven’t specified whether you want numbers of autistic and adhd, or ND (more than just autism and adhd) or all SEND?

To be fair both autusm and adhd include 'and the symptoms arent better explained by a different mental health disorder' aa part of the criteria (slightly paraphrased) so they are supposed to be checking that.

Im not saying that is failsafe. But I do know some adopted children struggle to get diagnosed with anything other than attachment issues even if they likely have adhd . Although Fetal alcohol syndrome is something you often find only in adopted chilren as parents arent keen on that conversely.

@Playingvideogames me too and that followed me into adulthood. I made some very questionable life choices until I worked out what the issues were.

the traits of a neurodevelopmental condition such as ASD and ADHD can be very similar to the impact of trauma and neglect which is more common in those areas sadly

I suspect apart from my son there are two other children who are non verbal autistic in a nursery class of twenty. Maybe one or two others as well. Personally you can't predict what a child might have so don't have any if you don't think you can handle it.

I’m a teacher. Out of 21 in the class there are 5 with a diagnosis and in my opinion 2 that don’t have a diagnosis but I suspect they are

It's hereditary, so at least one of the parents are likely to be ND. People with undiagnosed and untreated ND tend not to have good careers, even if tbey are very bright. Also, tbey often get fired, end up in prison or with drug and alcohol problems.

C.40% of our year 11 cohort have SEN, and over half of those are ND.
I have one class where a third of the class have NDs.
Nice leafy wealthy area, very little deprivation.
It's a teaching nightmare and the exam arrangements for GCSE are logistically impossible. Once you add the medical conditions needing access arrangements (eg snacks for diabetics) it's almost half of all the candidates.

I teach 10 year olds in a private school. Very few officially diagnosed autistic or adhd. Having said that, there's always at least one child in my class (25-30 kids) that I know has one of said conditions but parents aren't willing to consider it.

No, that’s on the pathway to diagnosis. Diagnosed children are not counted in this measure.

Infant teacher - 29 in class. No diagnosed ADHD. 3 currently have a diagnosis for ASD and another 2 are currently on the wait list. I also have another one who clearly is ASD but parents believe it’s developmental. I think I have at least 30% but possibly as high as 50% neurodiverse.

A previous class I had a couple of years ago had 28% diagnosed for ASD/ ADHD or going for diagnosis by the end of the infants.

He's a university lecturer which suits him because it's a very clear hierarchy and he's a specialist in something niche, lucrative (for the university), specialist and kind of boring sounding so they mostly leave him alone and let the fees come rolling in! He has lovely colleagues (including a guy who specialises in blowing things up for safety reasons 😂) and kind motherly admin staff. He's a lucky man!

I don’t see why some posters are taking offence at what is an objective question.

I am not seeing the responses as offence but perhaps frustration because you are not being anywhere near as objective as you think you are and you keep jumping to pattern confirmation when the numbers on this thread are much too small to draw a conclusion like that. What this kind of data in this kind of thread can give you is an idea of the range of experiences, but not the number/distribution. So if you see at least one response saying they have taught classes with 0-2 students with these diagnoses, that is an experience that exists (assuming we take all posts at face value and assume that nobody is lying or making up a completely random answer, which people do BTW). But it's unlikely to be accurate to be able to extrapolate well, only one person said that and everyone else said it's 20-40% so 20-40% must be more frequent. You can't accurately gauge that from a forum discussion thread.

Also - there are people responding just saying ADHD/Autism, some referring to all ND, some referring to all SEND. These are not the same thing, so it's confusing the numbers and making them not really comparable. The 1% in the OP is related to autism, I think? Whereas official SEND figures are about 20% so already extremely different to the 1% because that 1% is only one presentation of SEND needs, most of which are not related to autism.

There are some responding with diagnosed figures, some responding with suspected numbers. Some are responding with a whole school figure, an average, or their current class and some are responding with classes they have known of or had experience of in previous years. As some other posters have said, there's a psychological thing where when responses are open for everyone to read, it tends to put people off responding if their answer would be extremely different to the other responses (probably becuse it induces doubt about the validity of the answer) and I also think conversely, people feel more drawn to respond if they would be the first person to report a particular extreme, rather than repeating what others have already said, so someone with this experience might be more likely to respond. Because of the small nature of class sizes, you can't get any more extreme than 1/0 pupils in the downward direction, so people might be more inclined to post if the current max is 10 and they have experienced 13 (to borrow one example).