Education and Health Standing Committee
Inquiry into support for autistic children and young people in schools
I am the parent of an 11 year old boy who is Autistic (Level 2), and has additional diagnosis of ADHD and Anxiety. My son is gifted and ‘high functioning’ but has still experienced significant challenges accessing education in the state of Western Australia. I use the term ‘Autistic’ rather than ASD to respect the preference of neurodivergent affirming community.
- Current support available for autistic students in WA schools, including consideration of how: a. evidence-based practices are implemented across the school system; Our experience of this across three schools across the independent and public school system has been wildly varied.
Levels of knowledge of evidence-based practice for educating an Autistic child have ranged from non-existent to intermediate. Practically this results in an ongoing need for parents to educate the educators (with varied willingness to implement this). The ‘level’ assigned to an Autistic person on diagnosis is almost exclusively a reflection of the level of impairment that is visible to others. It is a reflection of how we, the neurotypical, experience the Autistic person. It is a measure created to determine what little funding is allocated to the child. It does not reflect the whole of the Autistic persons experience. This measure is the determinant for what support is allocated for the child in an educational setting.
My son is highly verbal, can carry a conversation on almost any topic and his externally visible autistic traits are often imperceptible to others. In the Autistic community, this is referred to being able to Mask. He does however have a very strong sensory response to noise, smells and crowds of people – in short, a typical classroom environment. When experiencing sensory overwhelm my son seeks to move away from the source of sensory discomfort. He had schools flat out refuse to allow him to move to a less overwhelming space as they lack supervisory capacity. I cite this example as one of many we have experienced where evidence-based practice is not being implemented across schools.
This is not without consequence to my son. He reached burnout from the demands of school at the commencement of 2022. Diagnosed with severe anxiety I had to withdraw him from school and home-school him for most of the year. I am not alone in this situation, and it is becoming increasingly the norm for parents with the means to do so to remove Autistic children from school setting as their needs are not being met.
Even where a child’s diagnosis does attract school support funding, it is entirely at the discretion of the school as to how that funding is spent. It is well known open secret that the limited funding provided to Autistic children who do not present risk of elopement or violence is being redirected to children with behavioural problems and/or those who do not have a diagnosis which attracts funding.
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b. school supports are co-ordinated with other service areas to respond to the needs of autistic students and their families.
Our experience of this has again been determined by the level my son has been allocated and the schools policies. We have had a school completely refuse to allow any therapists on school grounds for any child with less than a level 3 diagnosis. Autism is a dynamic disability. How it affects a person changes from day to day. Denying access to services in a school environment simply because of an allocated level which does not fully reflect my son’s disability is not supported by any evidence, it is decision made purely for administrative ease by a school.
- Strategies in other jurisdictions that support school systems to respond to the needs of autistic students, and the applicability of those strategies to WA.
The WA requirement for an attendance of 70% or face the penalty of being subject to an attendance panel places unnecessary and damaging pressure on Autistic students who find the school environment exhausting and hugely stressful. Other jurisdictions support part time physical attendance to allow students who find the physical demands of school damaging. A complete overhaul of the school environment to make it sensory friendly would be expensive and likely not even possible in my son’s school years. A quick fix would be to allow more flexibility on attendance for children with sensory needs, enabling them to remain engaged with classroom education without subjecting them to conditions which lead to burn out and mental illness.
Final note:
I am fortunate to be a well-paid cyber security professional with a high degree of flexibility in my work. It is a profession that attracts the neurodivergent, with some estimates of 30% of the profession being Autistic. These are some of our best minds and people who contribute greatly to the security of our country. I have tried to encourage them (particularly the younger ones) to write a submission for this committee. When speaking to them about school it is largely referred to by them as a tortuous experience that has left deep scars including anxiety disorder and PTSD. Neurodiversity is as important to our future as biodiversity. We need to do better.