07/03/2026
For anyone who is interested in our response to the TES article about autism.
I’ve copied the - not so pretty on FB - text below for anyone who doesn’t have LI.
The recent debate about autism following Dame Uta Frith’s interview has sparked strong reactions across education, research and the neurodivergent community.
As founders of NeuroDIVE, and through our work as educators, coaches, system leaders and parents, Claire Farmer and Sarah Bailey spend much of their time working alongside neurodivergent people, families and organisations navigating these realities every day.
Lived experience sits at the heart of our work.
This is our reflection on the conversation currently unfolding.
Over the past few days there has been significant discussion following Dame Uta Frith’s recent interview in TES and the wider debate it has prompted.
Like many others, we have been reading the responses from autistic people, parents, educators and professionals with care. Some of those reflections have been painful to read because they speak to a long standing experience of not being believed.
Before offering a reflection, it feels important to acknowledge something that often sits quietly underneath conversations like this.
For many autistic people there is an awareness that responding with visible anger or emotion risks their perspective being dismissed as reactive or overly personal. The expectation, often unspoken, is that autistic people must respond calmly and rationally if they want their experiences to be taken seriously.
There is a certain irony in that.
Many autistic people have spent their entire lives carefully regulating how they communicate so that their experiences will be acceptable to others. Even in conversations about whether those experiences are real, that same careful regulation is often expected.
This response is therefore measured. That should not be mistaken for a lack of feeling. In some ways it is a shame that, in order to be heard, many of us feel the need to hide aspects of how we naturally communicate in order to appear more palatable. Nonetheless, the purpose here is to invite thought and reflection.
Much of the current debate is quickly becoming polarised.
Is autism being overdiagnosed?
Are parents too quick to seek labels?
Are schools accommodating too much?
Are late diagnosed adults misunderstanding their own experience?
These questions are not new. Variations of them have surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades.
But there is another question that deserves equal attention.
What has changed in the environments people are expected to succeed within?
Not that long ago in our careers we worked directly in schools, including as mainstream and special school leaders and headteachers. While our work now often sits at a more strategic level across SEND and wider systems, those years continue to shape how we understand the current conversation.
The education system children are navigating today is not the same system many adults remember from their own schooling.
Over the past twenty years we have seen increasing levels of accountability, standardisation and performance pressure within education.
Curricula have tightened.
Assessment expectations have increased.
Behaviour systems in many schools have become more rigid.
Time and space for relational practice have often reduced.
None of this happened because teachers or leaders necessarily wanted it, although some undoubtedly support these approaches. Much of it reflects policy decisions and accountability frameworks that schools must operate within.
When systems narrow, more children will inevitably struggle within them.
That does not necessarily mean the children themselves have fundamentally changed.
Sometimes it means the system around them has.
More than one thing can be true at the same time.
There can be genuine challenges with diagnostic frameworks, clinical manuals and our evolving understanding of neurodevelopmental differences and the labels we use to describe them. At the same time we are seeing significantly rising levels of need across schools and classrooms.
We are also seeing increasing numbers of children who are less able to attend school. Alongside this are concerning rises in mental health difficulties and suicidality, particularly among children, young people and adults who are or identify as neurodivergent.
Both of these things are true.
It is the latter that occupies much of our attention.
As educators, system leaders, coaches and parents, our focus has always been on how systems do or do not serve people’s needs. Our work through NeuroDIVE centres on making systems more accessible, supportive and usable for everyone, both those delivering services and those receiving them.
That applies equally to children in education and to adults navigating workplaces.
Another striking feature of the current debate is how often autistic people themselves remain marginal voices within it.
For much of its history autism research and commentary has been conducted from the outside, with professionals observing autistic people and interpreting what those observations might mean.
Public debates about autism can sometimes become dominated by professional or reputational positioning. When that happens, the voices of those actually living these experiences risk becoming secondary.
Over the past decade there has been an important shift towards recognising the role of lived experience in shaping understanding. That shift matters.
Understanding autism cannot rely solely on observation. It must also include listening to autistic people themselves.
This is not about rejecting scientific inquiry. It is about recognising that people’s accounts of their own lives are also a form of evidence.
One of the areas currently being questioned is masking. For many autistic people masking is not an abstract concept or a theoretical construct. It is the daily work of navigating environments that were not designed with them in mind. It is the effort required to appear comfortable in spaces that are often exhausting to manage. The fact that this effort is not always visible does not mean it is not real.
Reasonable people can disagree about diagnostic frameworks, terminology and how research evolves over time. What is harder to dismiss are the very real experiences being described by autistic people, families, educators and employees across many different contexts.
Even if someone believes diagnoses are increasing too quickly, the most constructive response would not be dismissal.
It would be curiosity.
Why are more people seeking assessments?
Why are more adults recognising themselves in diagnostic frameworks later in life?
Why are schools reporting rising levels of need?
These questions deserve thoughtful exploration.
Because the answers are unlikely to be simple. They will involve shifts in awareness, diagnostic practice, social expectations and the environments people are expected to navigate.
Another underlying tension in this debate is the difference between how autism is conceptualised.
Much of the historic research and professional discourse around autism has emerged from a medical model, which tends to frame autism primarily as a problem to be diagnosed, treated or resolved.
An alternative perspective, increasingly reflected in both research and lived experience, focuses less on correcting individuals and more on understanding how environments, expectations and systems either support or disable people.
From that perspective the question shifts.
Instead of asking how autism can be reduced or explained away, the more useful question becomes how schools, workplaces and public systems can be designed so that neurodivergent people are able to participate, contribute and thrive.
Division and infighting only create conflict, and that conflict often fuels political and systemic harm. Too often these arguments distract from the genuine changes that are needed.
Those working in education know the system is struggling. Parents know it too.
Teachers are leaving the profession in significant numbers. School leaders frequently burn out within a few years and leave entirely. Parents often find themselves fighting daily simply to access basic support or secure the minimum provision their children require.
In workplaces the picture is similar. When neurodivergent experiences are dismissed or minimised, it becomes harder for individuals to access the adjustments that allow them to work well and contribute fully.
Nobody wins in systems that function this way.
There absolutely is a conversation to be had about diagnostic frameworks, support systems and the pressures facing schools, workplaces and public services.
But if that conversation begins from a place of dismissal or mistrust, it risks deepening the divides that already exist.
What we need right now is not less debate.
We need better debate.
Debate that includes autistic voices.
Debate that recognises the realities facing schools and workplaces.
Debate that asks difficult questions about the systems we have built.
Behind every abstract argument about diagnostic categories or prevalence rates are real people, children, families and adults trying to navigate environments that are often far harder than they should be.
Progress rarely comes from questioning whether people’s experiences exist. It comes from asking what those experiences are telling us about the systems we have built.
NeuroDIVE
Diversify. Include. Value. Empower.
Inclusion by design, not by default.
