To ask, if you’re a teacher

[Playingvideogames]

How many children in your class are diagnosed with autism or ADHD?

I often see the ‘1%’ quoted, but my anecdata is a lot higher than this.

This isn’t a value judgement thread btw, I’m truly just curious to see the responses and if they align with the ‘official’ statistic.

Really interesting responses, thank you.

I think they support that autism and ADHD is now very very common, to the extent it may move toward a place where half the population has some kind of diagnosis.

Remember the majority of responses have been from mainstream schools so we can add to that the population of SEN schools which will be very high % autism and adhd

So in future we may have 50% of adults diagnosed, I wonder what this will look like in terms of the workforce.

Surely age and stage taught is a huge factor here too. I don’t have many diagnoses but I observe many who could do with a framework for understanding themselves and feel sad that they likely won’t get that due to lack of parent understanding and waiting lists. 1% stat relates to the whole county. I beleive it should be (WHO Modeling) 5-7%

I may be on the spectrum myself, but the way I teach is fairly ASD / dyslexia / VI friendly.

My PowerPoints have a blue background unless I have a student who'd dyslexia needs a different colour on someone VI when I change to yellow with bold writing. The PPt and handouts use the font 'lexia'.

My PowerPoints are on which ever learning platform the school / college uses from the start of the lesson along with the gapped handout. Students with dyslexia / VI get them e-mailed early.

It's only after an observation that I was told they were 'friendly'. I don't know if that means I don't notice as much .

The things ASD students find difficult in my subject (languages) are sometimes hard to mitigate for. They often struggle with the speaking element, because of the social/communication side of pairwork and the performance aspect of the speaking exam. They also often struggle with the idea of making things up or being creative for writing tasks and will tend to insist on trying to write what is true even if they don't know how to say it in the language! It's hard to get around these things!

Just thinking about my classes on Monday (Secondary)
i) 1 class 8/31
ii) another class 5/31

@BlackCatDiscoClub I actually had higher numbers of both SEND and autism in my last school which was in a very affluent area.

I think that's madly high personally. It also assumes that kids with those conditions are a nuisance in class. Some are, generally for reasons outside their control (the autistic boy I had one year who couldn't communicate verbally clearly but what he mostly wanted to communicate is how I and other students were wrong about everything ). We did a LOT of post it based feedback that year! And tbh he probably thought I was a right nuisance too.

I would freely admit my ADHD child can be a pain because she will sometimes not.shut.up.

But students who are a real nuisance in class often have no "reason" for it. And SEND students can be perfectly easy to teach, quiet, obedient, studious.

Lumping everyone into a box isn't helpful. When you've met one autistic person you've met one autistic person etc.

Yes this is hard and also extends in my subject (and in English literature, I know from my DC's experience) to struggling to infer anything that isn't directly stated in a text. This is an absolutely crucial skill for text based subjects.

DD used to (still does sometimes) scream at me re poetry and novels BUT WHAT IS THE RIGHT ANSWER? WHY ARE THEY SAD?

Case in point about wealth etc.

Child was first flagged by parents at 4 as having 'something'. School fobbed it off. Parents just quietly went off and had testing done by several experts. Eventually school and CAHMS had to accept it. Child by 7 has an EHCP.

Other child in the same class. Parents know he has some sort of SEN but have a large family and are financially strapped and don't know how to access support. Child is getting no additional help as no evidence.

My current class are hard. 30 Y5s and 10 of them are SEN or waiting to be diagnosed (and will be)
8 have ASD or ADHD
The other two are dyslexic

I teach a class of 30 in mainstream primary.
2 have EHCPs for Autism.
2 others have just been diagnosed with ADHD.
1 is in the process of diagnosis vis CAMHS for Autism.
1 other is on the waiting list, who I suspect will be diagnosed with ADHD.
6/30 = 20%.

More anecdata here, friends of mine with children in rural schools also report higher levels of ND but also amazing care for those children. A relative had two children in a rural school, there was two years difference between the children but because of the size of the school they were both in the same class. Not only did the school recognise one of the children was ND and start the pathway to diagnosis, they also fully accommodated that child in class including a wobble chair. AND they had a sibling group so that siblings of kids with ND could meet and chat and recognise their own experience. This was the most brilliant provision I've heard of, but can totally understand how this becomes less feasible the bigger the class and school.

Im a school governor in a junior school. Our Sen register is 33% of the school population (and you can bet your bottom dollar it wont gave captured everything)

Depends. In a class fo 30, some classes have 8 and some 1.
But I have been teaching 30 years ago and I had the same exact behaviours but the kids didnt have official diagnosis, so nothing changed except we now know what stands behind the problems and can hopefully support the kids better.

5 in our year 5 class of 30.

4 have EHCP, 1 is diagnosed but awaiting EHCP. Of them; 1 also has a hearing impairment, 1 also has additional speech & language needs, 1 has both Autism and ADHD.

I also suspect that we have another child with a PDA profile.

Incidentally, none of them have a 1:1 TA. Funding does not allow for such "luxuries". ☹️

25-35% in my child's class that I know of. Posh Cheshire. Only one ECHP though.

100% this. It's always been there.

All the media hype and hysteria is ridiculous. It's natural human variation.

Teacher training needs a radical shake-up.

However, UK teacher training is regarded as very good around the world. Actually, UK provision and understanding of SEN is also regarded as very good comparative to most of the rest of the world.

If government had joined up thinking, this could be a massive skills gap we could exploit. If only, if only...

Nobody’s trying to discredit autism diagnoses by saying the numbers are much much much higher than the official figures. I don’t know why some people are allergic to the apparent fact diagnoses are very probably around the 20% mark now, and set to grow.

Can I add a question - do you feel your school is accurately recording SEN on the register and as part of their census return or do you feel that the thresholds to being on the register are rising so its under reported / or the reverse quicker to add to the register as better at recognising need?

I can definitely think of children that would’ve been diagnosed when I was at school, but not 20-50% - probably more like 10%. I’m very surprised at these responses, I expected it to be higher, but not this high.

In my sons class there are 4 diagnosed that I am aware of. The parents have all discussed this openly. 3 of the 4 were diagnosed privately against school senco advice. However of the 4, only 1 (with the nhs diagnosis, coincidentally) would possibly have been diagnosed when i was at school in the 90s. The others would not have met the diagnostic criteria of the 90s, they would have been considered introverted, or naughty, or difficult but not to a point of warranting diagnosis. They are all verbal, no learning disabilities, have friends, manage clubs outside of school etc.

Separately there's one child who has dyslexia that i know of and a different child with a very obvious speech & language disorder.

My daughters class seems to have less behavioural needs.

You are a parent not the teacher. You have no clue!!

It is thought to be 5%. But you can’t take individual class percentages, it is 5% across the population, so across all types of schools and cohorts. Some schools have higher levels of SEND, sometimes down to the fact that they are deemed better for those children. Many independent schools have much lower instances, due to culture, admission criteria etc.

Adhd is thought to have a familial link and many previous generations led to high levels of excision and low attainment. Therefore the parents may not earn enough for private school, or may have negative attitudes to school.

Not all of course. I’m adhd and active very well at school, became a teacher and then burned out.

1% of population is thought to have red hair. In my dc class at primary there were 5 children with red hair. That doesn’t mean red hair is over diagnosed or that the statistic is wrong.