Dear Bridget Phillipson
We are Neurodivergent Labour (ND Labour), an organisation of neurodivergent Labour Party members founded in 2019 to advocate for neurodivergent people. Many of us have worked as teachers, SEND teachers or school support staff, have been through the systems to fight for appropriate provision for our own children, and of course went through the school system ourselves.
We welcome your department’s review of curriculum and assessment, and the announcement that behaviour policies will also be review. We ask you to give us the opportunity to assist you with these and advise you on making curriculum, assessment and behaviour policies appropriate for, and inclusive of, neurodivergent pupils.
ND Labour calls for flexible teaching and assessment methods, because current methods discriminate against neurodivergent pupils. For example, even with adjustments such as extra time, a dyslexic student is unlikely to be able to demonstrate their full ability and knowledge in a written examination. We very much regret the shift towards exams that took place under the Tories and hope that Labour will reverse this.
We also call for neurodiversity to be included in the curriculum. It is important that all children learn that they, their peers and the rest of society have minds of all kinds, and that this diversity is welcome and to be accepted. We would also like to see children facilitated to learn about subjects that particularly interest them; many neurodivergent, especially autistic, children have intense special interests.
On behaviour, we are sure that you share our horror at revelations of abuse of autistic, learning-disabled and other neurodivergent children in special schools over recent years. There is a need for urgent action to bring these schools into public control in order to make them accountable and prevent such abuse. In mainstream schools, neurodivergent pupils are too often punished for alleged wrongdoings that are actually the consequences of an unsuitable environment. We would like schools to begin by investigating and removing these triggers rather than punishing the child.
We are also concerned that the scope of these two reviews may not include some of the root causes of our neurodivergent children and young persons too often having poor outcomes. For example, it can take at best eighteen months to get appropriate interventions or placements once the child or young people is experiencing difficulties, and too often it takes many years and the majority of their primary and secondary education – eighteen months or years in which they continue to be failed by their education setting.
The processes for getting appropriate provisions are arduous, very expensive to local authorities and cause conflict between education settings and parents. Even when everything for a child is known and stated, they may not get any of the help stated.
We are also deeply concerned about the potential roll-out of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) amongst children with learning disabilities, a therapy that has been linked to PTSD amongst children subjected to it.
The previous Conservative governments have been chronically poor at consulting neurodivergent people with lived experience on policies that directly affect us. Everything has been about us without us, from primary and further education, healthcare, social services, work conditions, access and how benefits systems are applied.
We hope this Labour government will be different when it comes to reviewing and changing current systems, and will remove barriers to us fully participating and sharing our sometimes unique talents through all aspects of our societies.
Our Labour Party Autism and Neurodiversity manifesto calls for smaller class sizes, varied teaching and assessment methods, education about neurodiversity in the school curriculum, an end to abusive and cruel practices and punishments against neurodivergent children, and an inquiry on the harm caused by Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and PBS.
We look forward to hearing from you and helping to make life better for neurodivergent children in education.
In Solidarity
Janine Booth
Jan Gray
Joseph Michael
on behalf of Neurodivergent Labour