to ask this without expecting a backlash?

Yes, there was a huge numbers of kids who left with relatively few qualifications. I don't know how that compares to today because it's difficult. How do you separate genuine grade inflation from kids being given better teaching from us actually needing to assess slightly different stuff. I'd like to think it's fewer though.

OP posted and ran away, she was that interested in understanding more about it…

I can look back now ( went to school in the 80s) and pick out the children that probably had some sort of neurodiversity.

However, there was maybe 1 or 2 per year, now its every second child.

I look at my own experiences with my 12 yo DD who has went though a terrible patch moving to high school totally and utterly out of the blue. All the professional services involved immediatly jumped on the ADHD/Autism train.
I even considered it but i think it was my ego that would have preffered to say "its not me thats caused it she has X"

After a few changes, compromises, boundaries ( espeically with phone use ) she has calmed down back to her usual self.

I think alot of people are looking for an excuse to diagnose their child when the behaviour is bad. We are no labeling children for life and noone has considered the potential damaging affects that could cause.

Out of my close group of 7 school friends every single one of us has been told at some point that our child/children should be assessed.

I can remember one boy at school who was labelled as the naughtiest boy in the class. But he was extremely bright if a little odd - I believe he went on to be a brilliant scientist and looking at ADHD criteria now would think he fits the criteria. However I do think that the prevalence of Autism, ADHD and other conditions isn't necessarily down to familial passing on but probably more likely to have been affected by people diets and how food has been messed with over the years and it is now manifesting itself as neurological conditions.

@LiviaDrusillaAugusta Actually when I was diagnosed with ASD in 2000, I had had to see six different people in person over the course of several months. And that was as a middle aged adult

well, things seem to have changed a lot in 25 years for a lot of people as I know of quite a few where that has not been the case in the last 5 odd years.

Of course they did. They were just the 'naughty' kids or didn't go to mainstream at all since more special schools were available because there was no inclusion push at that point.

It certainly existed, probably has throughout history, what’s changed to some degree is the total lack of discipline that existed at that time which , rightly or wrongly, checked behaviour. I had a colleague at work who said ADHD stood for adult deficit in handling disorder

If i think back to my childhood in the 90s, there were people in school who clearly had autism but no diagnosis.

My DH was in school in the 90s and had speech and language therapy and was kept back a year but there was never investigation into his social or emotional skills.

My DS was diagnosed with autism at 3. I definitely don't think the diagnosis is given out freely by professionals. There was an intensive multi disciplinary assessment and criteria that had to be met.

Despite this, If DS was tested now (at 11yo), I actually think the result would be different and it would say hes NT - but this is off the back of years of early intervention and teaching him social and emotional norms that other people get. Yes, he still encounters issues but would it be enough to pass the criteria - I don't think so. For this reason, I actually think that autistic people can be more resilient now than they were previously, because they have been taught for example social skills and coping techniques etc whereas before it was just ignored.

its so hard to get a diagnosis that I do wonder if some people say their children have x, y or z, when they present with bad behaviour, because this is what they assume, but they actually don't have a diagnosis. I know a couple of kids with asd around DS age and I don't think the behaviour of any of them is bad.

My parents were teachers from the 70s and differentiation absolutely was a thing they talked about doing. By the 70s and 80s there was more focus on group work with differentiation rather than whole class teaching and rote learning.

And there were kids in my primary school, nice, high achieving school, used to top league tables, who nowadays would absolutely have some sort of SEND diagnosis. Probably about 5-6 of them, so that's up to 20% of the class. My secondary was less naice and the difference was obvious, around behaviour. I wonder how a lot of them would be assessed today. Lots of truancy for example, but did some have anxiety around school?

In the 80s they also started to close down special schools so more kids with SEND were in mainstream schools.

Classes now have max size 30 and always one TA, often more. Used to be no max class size and no TA. My mum taught a class of 50 on her own in the 60s.

I often wonder about this too. I was born in 1979, grew up in rural Ireland. I went to a small school with 150 kids. There were 5 teachers, one of them was teaching principal. The teachers taught 2 classes together. Nobody had autism, adhd etc. Well they might have but nobody knew or did anything about it. We didn’t even have remedial or extra help in anything. I remember a little boy starting in junior infants, he was severely mentally and physically disabled. He was just left to crack on with things. No sna! It beggars belief really. Thinking back to kids who were always in trouble they were just considered difficult or badly behaved.
Now my own kids have all gone through school I see how different it it. My 12 year old is in 6th class in a small village school. It has 2 special needs classes and a new autism class opening in September. We have plenty of sna’s and extra English and maths classes for kids who need them. It’s incredible really that we all made it through school in the 70’s & 80’s with nothing. So many kids must have been suffering and it’s only now in their 40/50/60’s that they are getting diagnosed. So sad really.

I’m a little older than you and my school experience is the same as yours OP. Remedial class for small number of kids with learning difficulties, no autism or adhd, no school refusers, no anorexia, no self harm. There was some fighting, a few teenage pregnancies, some kids got picked on, some teachers got picked on. Normal school stuff in those days. Some kids thrived, others just toughed it out till it was over.

It was a thing, it always was a thing, but kids and adults masked it because it was the way, and only people with very noticeable stuff were noticed. I have the theory many many people has something, most have in in the low end of the spectrums but nowadays is more visible because we are more vocal about it.

I remember schools being worse than they are now. Children hated school and were forced to go in. Illiteracy was common into the early 2000 and many children left at 16 with no qualifications. There was no send recognition or support at all. Schools now have a problem with overcrowding, send support is pointless for a child going into a class of 30 with one teacher.

Baroness Warnock backtracked and said inclusion had gone too far and had regrets so many special schools had been shut.

The study was carried out and centered on very academic schools not your bog standard comp. She said her findings were misinterpreted, I rmmeber seeing her interviewed on tv.

Any child that had very obvious additional needs was sent to the local special school. There were some kids that were a bit naughty they got slippered in front of the class. it was always boys but the sort of firefighting my friends who are secondary school teachers have to do on a daily basis now just didn’t exist.

All classes were streamed as well so once you had exams that was it you were in classes with your ability. I was in high sets after first year so there was zero bad behaviour.

I was born in the 1960’s, there was still work that was low skilled available in manufacturing. Repetitive boring work but still work. I live somewhere now where there are huge mills that shut down and the closed mines are just up the road as next place over is a pit village. They employed thousands.There is also so much pressure to achieve now.

FASD rates should be at least the same and yet no one sees the diagnosis rates increasing. FASD is an acquired ND which is avoidable, as opposed to autism, but with much more stigma attached.

The diagnostic criteria, as well as what counts as impact or even evidence tbh, are indeed very wide. And expanding.

There are more on the spectrum as it is now being grouped together with people with Aspergers syndrom - See below, so 1944 the less sever traits were being recognised

The syndrome was named in 1976 by English psychiatrist Lorna Wing after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, who in 1944 described children in his care who struggled to form friendships, did not understand others' gestures or feelings, engaged in one-sided conversations about their favorite interests, and were clumsy

I think for autism, depending on the person’s level of support needs and the areas where they struggled schools in the 60’s, 70’s may have been easier to cope with. There was less open plan, more structure maybe, less sensory stimulation, possible smaller class sizes. All of these things may have made the symptoms less obvious and the school environment easier to cope with.

It could be the age at which we have children now contributing to rise. That and screens destroying dopamine circuitry before they even learn to write their name.

I take comfort that for every poster, there are probably 5 lurkers, and for every 5 lurkers, at least one will actually get a better perspective from reading the posts. So even clickbait threads can be positive in the long run.

One of the issues we have in schools these days are that there are no meaningful consequences a school can threaten children with for poor behaviour. The police have a similar issue here in Scotland. So a child can repeatedly assault other children, be charged by the police with assault etc but the school can only exclude them for a few days every fortnight or so and being charged with assault as an under 25 here in Scotland means little more than a note home to your mum. What is stopping bored children attacking classmates or teachers day after day after day? Pretty much nothing.

As a direct consequence of this, school is a place where kids cannot relax or feel safe anymore, which is one of the reasons for school refusal and soaring anxiety. My son’s crippling anxiety melted away as soon as he left school and went to work for instance.

We need to return calm and safety to our classrooms if we are ever to pull back from some of the current issues schools are facing. We need to remove violent and disruptive children from mainstream schools immediately.

In North America around that time there were a lot of kids on Ritalin because they were ‘hyperactive’ (that was the word at that time) who most likely has ADHD. So it was fairly common.

Also without conflating the two - kids generally (NT and ND) are more badly behaved now for a multitude of reasons. Ask anyone in education.

So better diagnosis and better help than when you grew up OP but generally kids behaviour has deteriorated.

Oh look, a goady OP who never returns to their thread. Can we stop falling for this clickbait shit please

when did they get rid of special schools ? I think after you left - lots of kids were not in mainstream .

others were labelled bad and naughty

some problems may be increasing in severity - there may be evidence that junk diets make adhd symptoms worse. That will go down well I know

in some ways there was less tolerance for autistic behaviour- girls in particular forced to mask to a very high degree - and bizzarly in hindsight more flexibility in the classroom - I recall being allowed to work on the staircase which was quieter ?