Most of you reading this will be aware of the awful news regarding the Autistic Professor Jason Arday. Jason was literally hounded to death by the newspapers, with certain papers being the main culprits, but all guilty in my opinion (they are still hounding his poor family outside their home!). Jason resigned from his position at Cambridge University in early August where he had been appointed Professor of Sociology of Education aged only 37. He was the youngest ever Black professor at...

Language In this blog I am going to use the word neurodivergent. What do we mean by this and why is it important? Neurodivergent is a word first used by Kassaine Asasumasu in the late 1990s, early 2000s to describe people ‘whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from dominant societal norms in multiple ways’. As Sonny Jane Wise (The lived experience educator, https://www.livedexperienceeducator.com/) explains ‘Neurodivergent refers to anyone who diverges from neuronormativity - an...

Out of the children who cannot attend school in the UK, 92% are neurodivergent and 85% of these are autistic (Mullally and Connolly). Out of these autistic students many will be PDAers (PDA known as a persistent desire for authenticity, or persistent drive for autonomy) and most have likely been missed. From a young age their need for their own agenda will be seen as defiance, wilfulness and needing control ‘they are so difficult’ ‘they always have to have things their own way’, ‘they always...