Autistic children are regularly excluded from class, physically restrained to the point of being bruised, suspended and expelled from school because their needs are neither understood nor accommodated in out-of-date codes of behaviour, a leading autism charity warns.
The AsIAm charity, responding to independent research it commissioned on schools’ codes, says even in special schools, codes are breaching autistic children’s rights. Schools are “punishing children not based on wilful misbehaviour but based on their support needs”, said Adam Harris, founder and chief executive of the charity.
Under legislation all schools must have a code of behaviour which parents and sometimes the child must sign to gain admission. Parents of autistic children, who often had to fight to get a school place for their child, can feel under duress to sign codes they know are inappropriate, said Mr Harris.
The report, What We Wish You Knew: A rights-based analysis of school codes of behaviour in Ireland, finds most codes are “structurally ableist and discriminatory”.
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Drawing on analyses of 40 randomly selected codes of behaviour, two focus groups – with autistic young people and with parents – and a literature review of articles about codes and children’s rights, author Dr Amy Hanna, lecturer in children’s studies at the University of Galway, found rules around attendance, uniforms and homework, as well as rewards and sanctions practices, were particularly discriminatory.
She found none was rights-compliant. In most, behaviour was deemed “unacceptable” if “disruptive” and “challenging”. One code defined as unacceptable “the consistent refusal of a child to obey instructions; persistently seriously disruptive behaviour; exhibitions of unpredictable and, possibly, violent or aggressive behaviour”.
Emphasis was on rewards and sanctions to “change” children’s “offending” behaviour, rather than on understanding or accommodating individual children.
On uniforms, for example, which children with sensory issues may find difficult and even unbearable to wear, schools had no flexibility for them, leading to many schools breaching their right to access education by sending them home.
One parent said: “There’s days where I cannot get [daughter] to school. And on the days that we arrive in late, I don’t care what she’s wearing. She has made it in that door, and I am delighted for her [but] she will get pulled [aside].
“Despite the fact that I have told her autism teacher, I’ve told the main teacher, the principal, I’ve told them all, they’ve agreed that she’s on a list where she’s not going to be picked up for certain things – she has been pulled repeatedly for things like uniform violations where she’s getting detention.”
Last year AsIAm heard from 672 families about a lack of understanding of autism in their child’s school; lack of access to reasonable accommodations; exclusion from the classroom; seclusion/restraint; and suspension and expulsion.
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