My child is neurodivergent but......

This week I read a school newsletter that I’m still reeling from. 

It was sent to parents at the end of Year 6, outlining this year’s KS2 results. In it, the school explained that their overall performance had dropped and pointed directly to the reason: a “high increase” in children with Special Educational Needs (38% of the year group). 

It then went on to highlight the results excluding those children.
And, just to round things off, it ended with a line claiming that “achievements aren’t about numbers,  they reflect the quality of teaching and a learning environment where every child is supported.” 

I wish I were making this up. 

You can’t blame a whole group of children for bringing your results down, publicly separate them from their peers, and then claim to support every child. You just can’t. 

Imagine if a company report blamed results on the number of disabled staff. It would never be acceptable and it shouldn’t be here either. 

SEN children are not less intelligent.
They’re navigating a system that simply wasn’t built with them in mind. 

And that matters. Because for many neurodivergent children, school is the hardest chapter of life. Not because they lack the ability or the desire to learn, but because we ask them to learn in ways that don’t work for their brains or bodies. We squeeze them into a narrow mould and when they don’t fit, we treat them as the problem. 

The truth is, many of these children are living in a constant state of high alert. Their nervous systems are working overtime just to manage the sensory, social, and emotional demands of the day. And when the body is in survival mode, the thinking part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex,  goes offline. And with it, so does the ability to focus, process, retain, or express learning. 

It’s not a question of potential.
It’s a question of whether the environment allows that potential to emerge. 

It’s a well-known and well-evidenced fact that SEN children are far more likely to experience low self-esteem, high anxiety, and exclusion. And let’s be honest when schools send out messages like this, is it really a surprise? 

The stigma neurodivergent kids face doesn’t start inside them.
It’s shaped by the adults and systems around them. 

We hear it all the time, even from parents, loving ones, “My child is neurodivergent but …”
But what? Intelligent, kind, creative, has potential?
Why are we still qualifying their strengths, as though we need to justify them? As though being different is something to excuse? 

We’ve got to stop treating neurodivergent children as if they are somehow lacking. They are not a problem to be fixed. They are not behind, they develop in a non-linear fashion. They are being disabled by the systems we’ve built around them. 

Neurodivergent brains are not a modern issue. They’ve always existed and we’ve always needed them. Our dad was a brilliant engineer, ran his own successful business for 40 years, one of the smartest people I know. Yet he failed 11+ and left school with zero qualifications. He was not lacking in intelligence he was lacking in support. We need different brains, the deeply focused ones, the ones who question the rules, who think laterally, who see what others miss. We need those who don’t fit the mould. 

It might sound bold, and yes, I’m biased,  but I don’t believe the next major leaps in our world will come from the most compliant thinkers. They’ll come from the ones who think differently, challenge norms, and step outside the box. 

So no, SEN children aren’t the reason your SATs results dropped.
They’re the reason we need to rethink what education is actually for, and, with any luck, they’ll be the ones who go on to redesign it for the better. 

The Emotions Lab