Charlie felt ‘discarded’ by his school. His story’s not unique

While governments pay lip-service to ‘inclusive education,’ many neurodiverse students still aren’t provided adequate support. Here’s how that could change.

Charlie Jackman is proudly autistic and happily attended the same private school for eight years. So his parents were blindsided when, last year, his school suggested they “consider alternative learning settings” for the 16-year-old’s final years of schooling.

In the meeting, school representatives said they “couldn’t foresee a successful pathway for Charlie through years 11 and 12,” says Charlie’s mother, Susanne West. The school also suggested it lacked the resources to support his special learning needs.

“They left us scrambling to find an alternative for Charlie,” says Ms West.

“We were pretty angry,” adds Ms West, who lives with Charlie in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. “It was quite traumatic.”

Ms West wrote an open letter about her experience with the Anglican school online, and has since received hundreds of messages from parents who have had similar encounters.

She now believes it’s “really common” for neurodivergent students to feel excluded from mainstream educational settings — and she says it’s not good enough.

But researchers around the Indo-Pacific have possible solutions to the problem.

Inclusive education: rights versus reality

Every child, including neurodivergent children — those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia or other difference in brain functioning — has the right to ‘inclusive education’ but this right doesn’t always translate to reality.

Inclusive education is broadly defined as mainstream education that recognises the right of every child, without exception, to be included in general education settings.

But systemic challenges to implementing inclusive education remain. Only 54 percent of young people with disabilities feel welcomed and included at school, while 65 percent of students report experiencing bullying, 2023 surveys from Children and Young People with Disability Australia reveal.

Just 27 percent felt supported to learn at school, while 70 percent felt excluded from events or activities at school. Young people with disability are also three times more likely to have left school before age 15, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

And the latest figures from Australia also show there’s been a slight increase in students with disabilities attending special segregated schools since 2009, despite decades of advocacy for inclusive education in mainstream settings.

Key barriers to implementing inclusive education across Australia and the Asia-Pacific include inadequate teacher training, funding troubles, and lagging policy development and implementation, new research from Griffith University has found.

Restricted stakeholder engagement and limited local research to inform practice are also prevalent across the region, the same research revealed.

With neurodiversity diagnoses on the rise across Australia, South Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific, inclusive education experts are calling for urgent responses to these barriers.

Teacher training is essential, but faces roadblocks

Dr Wendi Beamish and Dr Steve Hay are two of the Griffith University researchers who studied regional barriers to inclusive education.

They suggest that improving teacher preparation and training could involve ensuring all graduates have the knowledge and practice needed for teaching students with special educational needs. Making inclusion-focused professional development the norm for in-service teachers could also help.

Visual, auditory and kinesthetic methods (such as presenting information in pictures of charts, allowing students to repeat back what they’ve learned, or providing physical learning props students can touch) can also help engage neurodiverse students.

As Aida A.Rahman from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia writes: “Research in neuroscience shows this ‘multisensory teaching’ creates effective learning environments that support all students’ cognitive and sensory needs.”

However, even where teachers are trained and eager to “herald inclusion and social justice”, they are too often hindered by hesitation from school management to take active steps, along with systemic loopholes that maintain the status quo, as Madhusudan Ramesh, Seema Nath and Magdhi Diksha from Azim Premji University write.

Funding and policy gap remedies also needed

Under-resourcing remains a key barrier to inclusive education. Increased funding is desperately needed to allow mainstream schools to better support students with special educational needs, Dr Beamish and Dr Hay write.

Closing the policy-to-practice gap is crucial, too. Across the Asia-Pacific, governments could develop rights-based policies focused on equity principles to enable students with neurodiversity and other special educational needs to thrive in mainstream schools, the Griffith University researchers write.

In Australia, a national policy and practice framework for inclusive education is needed to unify the current, piecemeal approaches to inclusive education, they add.

But implementing effective inclusion policies also means ensuring all key educational policy processes, including parliamentary inquiries, adopt a lens of neurodiversity where relevant.

Case in point: Australia’s national inquiry into school refusal, which took place after school attendance rates dropped following COVID lockdowns. The 2023 report from that inquiry acknowledged that neurodivergent students disproportionately experience school refusal.

The impact of that report and its recommendations remains to be seen: to date, Australia’s federal government apparently intends to implement just two of the 14 recommendations from that senate inquiry.

Researchers and neurodiversity advocates have urged the government “to ensure any proposed responses to school refusal must be grounded in a solid understanding of neurodiversity, and approaches that seek to accommodate and support differences rather than further stigmatise or punish them,” as Lisa McKay and Matthew Harrison from The University of Melbourne write.

The importance of neurodiversity-affirming approaches

Experts and advocates from the neurodiversity movement also suggest another fundamental approach that, they say, should inform efforts to implement inclusive education.

They urge school leaders and educators to adopt a research-backed approach known as “neurodiversity-affirming practice” — a concept outlined in a new article by University of Melbourne researchers Dr Jessica Riordan, Dr Sarah Timperley and Dr Matthew Harris.

The neurodiversity-affirming approach frames neurodivergence as a difference — not a deficit that needs correcting — and recognises the unique differences and strengths of people with neurological differences.

In practice, this means neurodiversity-affirming schools focus on understanding and supporting all students, regardless of neurotype, rather than trying to force neurodivergent students to learn and behave like their neurotypical peers.

Schools that adopt this approach may offer flexible lesson plans, as well as environments that cater to every child’s learning needs (think: standing desks, fidget toys, and earmuffs for students who find noisy classrooms overwhelming).

Recognising the importance of sensory and emotional regulation, these schools may provide regular opportunities for regulation, such as movement breaks, throughout the day.

Neurodiversity-affirming teachers also try to look beyond challenging behaviours to see what it is that the child may need — viewing behaviour as communication.

This approach is starkly different to old-fashioned and non-neurodiversity affirming approaches, which promote the use of behavioural methods including punishments to correct challenging behaviours, as Riordan and her colleagues explain.

There’s evidence that neurodivergent students can thrive when their needs are met and teachers understand them (that is, when neurodiversity-affirming practices are used in the classroom).

But neurodiversity-affirming practices approaches are also helpful for students of varying abilities — including neurotypical students, who can develop empathy and mutual respect through being exposed to these approaches, as Shreyansi Sahai from Manav Rachna University writes.

Students who are neurodivergent but undiagnosed can also benefit from these environments, since they don’t require a diagnosis in order for students to access the flexible, inclusive approach promoted by neurodiversity-affirming practice.

This may be particularly helpful for autistic or ADHDer girls, who remain under-diagnosed and are still often misdiagnosed, as Nerelie Freeman from Monash University writes.

Researchers hope neurodiversity-affirming practices become more widely adopted over time — and to see broader systemic change that allows better support and inclusion for all children.

So, too does Charlie’s mum, Susanne West.

Charlie moved to a Catholic school at the beginning of this year and Ms West says “he’s thriving” in the new environment — completing a VET course in cookery and hospitality, while running a micro-business selling his own art. He also recently won the People’s Choice Victorian Young Achiever Award.

“To have a school that steps in behind you and really backs you like that, and looks at all the great things you can do is really amazing,” Ms West said.

“It’s been tough for him though. It’s taken every bit of his resilience to get past the distress of being discarded in the way that he was.”

The school did not respond to request for comment by deadline, but a school representative did tell ABC Radio Melbourne the school “certainly did not tap Charlie on the shoulder”.

“Every child is at the centre of the decisions that we make. And our goal is to provide a pathway for every child in our care and to enable them opportunities to succeed,” they said.

The spokesperson declined to go into details of the school’s conversation with Charlie’s family, citing privacy reasons, but said the conversation had happened at a time that the school had only recently begun offering a VCE vocational major, and had found it to be very academically rigorous and “not quite as accessible as perhaps we had hoped it was going to be for all students”.

They said the school had told Charlie’s family that “Charlie could have success at year 11 in that [pathway]. But we would need to reassess whether the year 12 would be an option”.

“And ultimately, why would we want a student to spend a year studying something to then have that pathway cut off at the end or to spend two years and not have the qualification at the end of it, if indeed that’s what the families are after.”

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.