My daughter has Asperger’s. Is she entitled to reduced CAO points?

My daughter has a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome and she had submitted her application for the disability access route through the CAO. Given how competitive the competition will be for places this year what level of points reduction requirement will she be entitled too?

Your question contains a common misunderstanding relating to how the Dare (Disability Access Route to Education) scheme works.

As you are no doubt aware your daughter has until 5pm today – March 15th – to submit medical evidence verifying that she has an autistic spectrum disorder from a relevant expert. There is no age limit applying to the date of this diagnosis.

So long as her diagnosis is deemed to have had a significant negative effect on her education, she will be eligible for consideration under the Dare scheme in 2022. She can carry this qualification forward into 2023 if needed.

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Assuming her application is successful, she will be considered for Dare in relation to every course she lists on her CAO list, provided the college is a participant in the Dare scheme. Most, but not all, are.

This is the part of the process that is misunderstood by many parents and students. Her qualification under Dare does not entitle her to any specific CAO points reduction. However, it does give her a valid ticket in the competition for the allocated Dare places on each of her listed courses.

In a course there may be four places available under the Dare scheme, with a further four places offered to those who qualify under a separate access scheme for socially disadvantaged applicants (the Hear scheme).

It is within the discretion of each department or faculty to decide who are the most suitable applicants to receive offers of places under both schemes.

The advantage to any applicant of securing a place in the competition for either Hear or Dare places depends entirely on how many successful applicants there are for each course in a given year.

This is the crux of your question.

If, for example. there are six qualifying applicants for programme “X “ and four places on offer, then securing Dare status can be highly advantageous.

The same student may apply for programme “Y” on their list of course choices, on which there are also four Dare places available, but in this case, there are sixty applicants who met the criteria for Dare.

In both cases it is at the discretion of the department in question to decide who the most suitable applicants are.

Their decision may not be based solely on which of the applicants have the highest CAO points.

Other factors such as the degree to which the disability has affected the education of the applicant or where, as I indicated above, an applicant is also from a socially disadvantaged community.