If you could design an education system for children with ADHD and/or autism...

[TheRolyPolyBard]

... what would it look like?

I'm just curious. A family member is recently diagnosed and struggling in school. If you could design schools around the needs of these children, what would your imaginary school look like? What hours would they be in? What would classrooms look like? Would there be any classrooms?

Caveat: it needs to be affordable for the UK, so nothing too fantastic!

I'm wondering if a school system which suits NT and ND children is actually possible.

This is a very good point.

It would maximise outdoor play and follow children’s interests. Smaller groups or class sizes. Teachers would be trusted and treated like professionals.
The expressive arts, sciences, music and humanities would be as important as Core subjects of Maths and English. Children would learn to read and write when they’re ready.

When I was an undiagnosed what-would-now-be-year-2-and-3 they let me work at my own pace including work from the year ahead, then when I ran out they let me sit in the library and “write a book” on my special interest. Sadly the next year the national curriculum came in and that flexibility ended.

I think all Secondarys should have to offer at least two vocational subjects in KS4 (with an exemption for Grammar Schools). And recieve appropriate funding for this.

My DDs school offers Business, Construction, Hospitality &Catering and Animal Care and most of them do at least one alongside "academic" subjects. It offers them a good balance.

I think what the Government considers "Compulsory" needs to be looked at. Obviously they all need Literacy and Numeracy but some of the Literature and Science isn't accessible to everyone.

As pp have said and I would add mandatory training in the pgce about send.

If teachers can be aware of triggers and preventing stuff then behaviour would be better .

Keep room colours calm and neutral ,natural lights where possible and materials .plenty of rest and play breaks allow fidget toys ,doodling and other measures . If you know Johnny can't tolerate something then be proactive and either set up strategy to cope if it's unavoidable or mitigate it.

So many small tweaks are missed out of ignorance .

@TheNightingalesStarling

Most don't need the kind of numeracy we teach though. They can survive without fractions and ratios and triangles and shapes. They really can
What makes like difficult is actual proper budgeting etc

Ironically, a lot of the things you listed need at least a basic knowledge of fractions and ratios.

This. There is inclusion, and then isolation. The sad thing is that far too many children experience this, it has become the norm.

Sorry, but the idea of making children work at 13 where everywhere else in the world education is taking longer and longer just seems mad. That generation may well be working into their 70s. Why the hell would you make them work before they're even 16?

One of the things I like about DS's school is that things like ear defenders, wobble cushions, weighted stuffed toys (to sit on their laps and they can stroke them) are very normalised, any child can just take one when they want rather than it being something for specific children with defined needs. All the desks ((in his class, the youngest ones) have rubber bands stretched between the legs so the children have something to press their feet into, and wool strings hanging down to fiddle with. The school really seems to understand children's needs to fidget and move. The corridors have balance beams to walk on and they have wobbly stools in the library area.

Well, my apparently progressive 1970s primary school seemed to have the right idea. Lots of free movement, places to sit that weren't just tables and chairs, transformable areas, access straight out into outside areas, lots of enactive learning, big projects that integrated maths, English, science, art, music, drama, speech, history into a theme for the term where you were encouraged to find something that you were particularly interested in within that theme, being taught to write with each letter separate instead of hurting your fingers trying to make squiggles that didn't look anything like books turn into words squeezed into narrow lines, less visual noise on the walls shouting at you, just a single display for the term, no uniform rules, things like that. Took three years at secondary to get to the same level of maths that they taught in year 6.

All absolutely abhorrent to Ofsted, of course.

I want to echo PP’s re a complete review and overhaul of the curriculum.
Drilling children in fronted adverbials etc from a young age and reducing arts and sports has turned a lot of borderline SEND kids into school refusers IMO.

Maybe a switch to the European middle school and then different types of high school (eg, practical/technical/different types of academic) system would help all DC, not just neurodiverse ones?

Ban fucking uniforms for a start

For my ds who I think is Audhd it would be great to have it in a forest. He would run and run and enjoy the wind on his face.

For DD who has been diagnosed with ADHD it would be all warm and cosy and have lots of art. No chairs.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread.

This is an area I work in (I have the best job in the world) and have obviously name changed for this.

I work in a small Alternate Provision - ours is aimed really at those who can't attend school but would like the opportunity to do gcse/A level/similar. We have specialist tutors for the subjects rather than the generic "home tutor to teach everything who might not be qualified" people often get offered.

I love it. Many of the staff are openly ND (so for example we completely normalise using the fidgets in the setting, discussion of which is your favourite etc).

It wouldn't be suitable for all ND kids but there is a gap in many areas for those who would like to do some academic work, but can't manage mainstream.

Its shocking how much has to fail for a student to get placed with us though and how much time out of education.

It is small, tailored to the student, and they could be taught 1-1 or 1-2 for example. There's breaks and lunch with the option to socialise or sit where there are people but there's staff there too. There's a sensory room. But also bean bags and fidgets in other rooms.

What makes a huge difference is the approach. Where we "get it" the language we use is different, there's lowered "demands", no uniform (but fine if they want to wear the same thing every time), homework is optional, the actual sessions are very flexible.

But it's a small provison and I would love for us to be bigger.

I am also aware of outdoor Alt Provisions etc.

We also do some home tutoring and we also work with students with PDA profiles .
But we couldn't do what we do without the funding. It's a high staff ratio and we're qualified staff.

They've all been failed by the education system and it would be a dream of mine to have options for schools where (autistic students in particular) didn't have to get to this point of failure before they access something like ours.

There's a big difference between "work at 13" (what my grandfather did in the 1920s) and "follow a high quality vocational pathway". My friend is bringing up two teens in Switzerland. As well as all the usual academic work (to the same or a higher standard as the UK), the eldest is on a broadly STEM pathway and the youngest on a broadly design and marketing pathway. They will move into paid work much more easily when the time comes.

Switzerland has productivity levels 20% higher than the UK!

There are issues with orienting children to vocational pathways at too young an age as well.

It sounds wonderful (and thank you for the work you do).

I have been a teacher for 15 years and have watched funding drain out of the system over that time while SEN needs go up (the most noticeable change is the state of the buildings but of course now staff are reduced too, so all class sizes are larger).

If we could return real terms funding for everyone to where it was in 2010 say (it would have to be more to be equivalent given higher min wage, NI, materials costs, energy costs) THEN maybe we could have more APs like described without the huge barriers. At the moment they'd be overwhelmed. I've got one or two kids in every class I teach who would benefit from that style of learning.

Our system would certainly benefit from flexibility. At the moment the KS3-GCSE-A-level-degree pathway locks a lot of kids in who'd do better with a more vocational approach in my experience.

By "vocational" I don't mean our narrow British idea of "health and beauty or mechanics". Nothing wrong with those things, but engineering, design technology, life sciences, social work, teaching, healthcare - these are also vocational.

Oh absolutely. @Gwenhwyfar There are so many people I met in my previous line of work (included teaching about autism to families (from a neuro affirming lived experience perspective)) for who this would be perfect.

I think we wouldn't need the high ratios we have for most of our students if we had been able to offer provision before it gets to the stage it has to to get to us currently.

Its a very broken system. We're only helping a handful or two of students and would so love to be able to put in place an alternative form of education before it gets to the stage we're needed.

There's so much that could be different and make education accessible without needing our level of provision. But not easily within the current school straughtjacket.

To get to us the LA has to satisfy that no other school would be suitable.

In my dreams I'd love to run a specialist setting that would be suitable.

But a teacher (unless potentially of a very, very practical subject) would do A levels and university. Healthcare - same for doctors and nurses so I don't really see why they'd be in vocational school at 13.

"a lot of kids in who'd do better with a more vocational approach"

Who are these kids and how would you determine it at a young age?
There's a reason why the grammar v secondary modern system was abolished in most of the UK a long time ago.

You cannot design a system because each person is unique. I visited an autism specialist school suggested on a list and it was a nightmare for my dd, she was put off just by the noise in the corridors of pupils having time out of the classroom with 1:1’s. She needed old fashioned school in rows where there is silence bar the teacher and all dc behave, no adjustments required during class time (she had support at lunch and break) alas no schools like that exist now so she was taught separately in the school office

Which of my posts are you replying to. What do you mean by 'this'.

That would actually help individual desks all facing forward.So no children, including the neurotypical ones, are able to annoy each other or distract each other.

Even when I was at school, it was multiple tables all facing each other. The amount of tom foolery from other children was just something else.