Light it up Blue

A sobering thought, don’t you think?

But what if the word “excluded” didn’t refer to a single incident at all?

I still have a stack of fixed-term exclusion notices for H from when he was very young — forty-six of them, all issued before he was six and a half, and more than a year after his Autism diagnosis. It raises an unavoidable question: what exactly is happening in our schools when children with recognised developmental conditions are repeatedly excluded for behaviours that are fundamentally part of their condition?

Despite the tireless efforts of the National Autistic Society, local groups and countless parents, teachers are still entering the profession without the preparation they need to support autistic pupils. My own PGCE allocated half a day to SEN as a whole — nowhere near enough time even to familiarise ourselves with the full spectrum of physical, emotional, behavioural and medical needs we were likely to encounter, let alone explore how to teach and support children with them. And beyond training lies a deeper reality: for many autistic children, mainstream school is simply not an appropriate environment. Forcing a square peg into a round hole was never going to work, no matter how determined the adults involved.

As a parent of autistic children and a qualified teacher, I’ve learned more about learning, development and support than any lecture could have given me, yet ironically I wouldn’t currently be eligible to bring that experience into a classroom. Years spent caring for my children — writing every word of my son’s Statement myself — do not count as “official” experience. It’s a reminder of the odd, persistent divide between parental expertise and professional structures, and of why many families still feel they are battling the Local Authority simply to secure the support their children need. It doesn’t have to be that adversarial. In many cases, the simplest route to inclusion is to acknowledge that there is no single “correct” way to learn, and that expecting children to fit one predetermined mould is where the problems begin.

Learning has never been a conveyor belt, and the sooner we embed that understanding into the foundations of primary education, the more children with additional needs — and, in truth, many without — will be able to flourish. As a parent of children with a mixture of needs, I don’t want them singled out more than necessary, nor do I believe their needs are inherently more important than anyone else’s; they simply need different types of support at different times, just as all children do. The challenge is creating environments where those differences are acknowledged rather than resisted, and where teachers are equipped to teach rather than expected to simultaneously act as counsellors, therapists and medical coordinators without adequate training or time.

After a long day in our own household — navigating the anxieties of a 13-year-old who cannot think beyond the bike he now desperately wants, the frustrations of a 9-year-old who resents sharing space, and the pressures of a 17-year-old trying to revise in the middle of it all, alongside the various meals, medications and logistics that accompany each of them — it is obvious how individual each child’s needs are, and how quickly things unravel when any one of those needs is missed. It’s hardly surprising that many autistic children struggle in busy classrooms; if a single home environment can feel stretched to its limits, a class of thirty magnifies that pressure many times over.

Yet the most encouraging truth is that an autism-friendly classroom benefits every child. Development is not linear, and just because a child has moved beyond a particular stage doesn’t mean support for that stage ceases to be valuable. Visual timetables, built-in downtime, calm-down spaces, non-verbal ways to ask for help and flexible break systems are not “specialist interventions”; they are simple, humane practices that make learning more accessible and less overwhelming for everyone.

A classroom is, and always has been, a group of individuals travelling different paths, not a single cohort marching toward the same destination. By adopting a basic toolkit designed with autistic learners in mind, we create an environment that supports the whole group. What I want to see is straightforward: primary teachers properly trained, resourced and supported to build genuinely inclusive settings where all children, including those with Autism, can learn in ways that reflect who they are rather than who they are expected to be.

That really would be a lightbulb moment — a blue one.

#LightItUpBlue — April is Autism Awareness Month