Sarah Harte: How the State is making neurodivergent children feel worthless
20% Neurodiversity Population Of Ireland The Is Suggests Neurodivergent
It’s funny how a subject suddenly pops on your radar for different reasons.
Last week, somebody close to me insisted I was neurodivergent, suggesting I get myself tested. When I hotly queried the amateur diagnosis, they trotted out a list of behaviours they said conclusively proved it.
As it happens there is a rising number of adult diagnoses of dyslexia, ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia (difficulty with numbers) which are collectively referred to as neurodiversity. Each of these conditions expresses itself differently, so perhaps unsurprisingly, quantifiable data varies.
One statistic I read is that one in 10 people is dyslexic, another suggested one in five is on the dyslexic continuum, whereas one in 100 Irish people is autistic.
One in 10 may be on the ADHD continuum. Neurodiversity Ireland suggests 20% of the population is neurodivergent, which is in line with a British statistic I came across.
By coincidence, I also received a long email from a parent expressing her anger, horror, and deep disappointment at the way our educational system and society continue to treat neurodivergent young people. Her son had just concluded his mock Leaving Cert exams and it was a torturous experience for both parent and child.
Having battled for years as an advocate for her son, she has a firm grasp on the problems facing the parents of neurodivergent children, Specifically, she detailed the structural problems in the State system, meaning it is often up to parents to research and push for what is required.
The first major challenge is having your child assessed when you are met with a highly dysfunctional, disjointed system that is predicated on waiting for years for an assessment of need, before facing another long wait for interventions or a particular therapy and set of supports.
Thanks to this two-prong approach, the clock ticks away, developmental delays occur, critical developmental opportunities which help establish foundations for participation in school and social life are lost and a child’s confidence is further eroded.
Parents are pressured financially to go for expensive private assessments and therapies as State services let them down, with private assessments costing upwards of €500. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The lack of joined-up thinking between the HSE, the Department of Education and the Department of Children and Disability, she writes, hits you in the face.
“Outside of Dublin, most schools are publicly run and so we are entirely dependent on the Department of Education running a good show to get the kids through the secondary system.”
Numerous TDs have highlighted the patchwork of problems in State accommodation of special needs — meanwhile a scandal quietly unfolds.
Last week, Minister for State at the Department of Education Josepha Madigan fielded questions from Sinn Féin's Eoin Ó Broin and Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon on different aspects of the current provision of special needs services to Irish children.
Ms Madigan said the department would spend “in excess of €2bn, or over 25% of the department’s budget, on providing a wide range of schemes and supports for children with special educational needs”. Yet there is a dramatic deficiency in capacity for providing assessments and supports.
The question is, when parents are having to kick doors down to be heard, where is that money going, and how efficiently is it being spent?
To take just one example, late last year the Dyslexia Association of Ireland warned the public assessment system was increasingly failing to meet the demand for dyslexia assessments, with 77% of its members waiting two or more years to access an assessment.
In the context of autism, the HSE is on record as having said lack of qualified staff was “impacting our capacity to deliver services”.
An analysis of Government ministers' responses on the matter in Dáil debates immediately shows doublespeak and a marked refusal to admit to the crisis, never mind solve it.
Another problem is the nature of the State exams themselves. We educate our children through a rote and memorising system that neither encourages nor rewards creative and innovative thinking — which are often skills that neurodivergent children have in abundance.
I could write a treatise on how the atavistic Leaving Cert is outdated and outmoded, unfit for purpose in a modern world but certainly, it’s not structured in a neuro-inclusive way, which leaves a sizeable cohort of young people struggling because they don’t fit a narrow template.
For five years, I volunteered as a reader in a Dublin secondary school, which meant reading through exam papers with candidates, clarifying instructions, reading out questions in real-time, and ensuring each word was recognised.
The takeaway from those years was two-fold. First, there is a multiplicity of different ways our brains work. Secondly, our exam system ensures some smart, funny bright kids are left with a feeling they are failing and they are somehow stupid or lesser.
No system is perfect. However, our current educational model sends messages to students that being neurodiverse is a deficit rather than a difference. So many young lives are thrown on the slag heap as a result. There is something criminal about that.
When it comes to sitting the State second-level exams, while we afford some accommodations like access to assistive technologies, a waiver from the assessment of spelling, grammar and punctuation in the language subjects, and the provision of readers and scribes, we do not allow extra time in State exams as many other European countries do, which is inexplicable.
The 2022 Miss Ireland Ivanna McMahon, a qualified doctor, has spoken of the impact of her late dyslexia diagnosis on her self-esteem and raised the issue of extra time in exams. Nor does the Leaving Cert exam properly acknowledge the challenges neurodiverse students face, including fatigue, concentration, and organisation.
The lack of educational support feeds into an outmoded cultural perception that to think differently is a problem. It’s one I had myself. Having learned more about neurodiversity, if I am neurodivergent, I proudly accept the label.
What’s striking is that increasingly in the world of work, many companies have copped on to the fact that neurodivergent people often have skills that neurotypical people lack and in some cases are actively seeking neurodivergent applicants.
For instance, dyslexic people are often outside-the-box thinkers. Banks like JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, and tech companies like Microsoft and Hewlett Packard have recognised people with autism may possess the ability to concentrate on one subject for long periods and have superior attention to detail and data skills.
Big companies are slowly beginning to value different minds because they realise there is money in it.
Why is our educational system so slow to see the potential to maximise the opportunities that neurodiverse students provide and to help them live their best lives?
We fail to identify neurodivergent children, we fail to support them in their childhood and teenage years and fail to see what their strengths are, ultimately failing to stop many of them from falling through the cracks.
I’ll leave the last word to the parent who wrote to me: “Where is the creative thinking of the adults in the room?”