Canopus

She doesn't know what a Leyland National looks like unless I show her a picture of one. Neither was she aware that the buses she travelled on for years were Leyland Nationals.

I used to think that my grandmother was a bus enthusiast because she used to and still regularly travels by bus. She used many Leyland Nationals in the 1990s and Daimler Fleetlines in the 1980s, but she seems incapable of remembering the makes and models or even recognising them. Strange how NT minds work.

Detaching teaching from the provision of examinations will be the greatest change to the mainstream school system since the introduction of O Levels in the 1950s. If exam centres imposed no minimum age limits for candidates then a strong possibility exists that it will improve educational standards as it will introduce a new level of competition where candidates compete not just for grades but by age as well. Since 2000 there has been a marked increase in the number of underage private candidates taking GCSE and A Level exams. In 2002 a 10 year old getting a GCSE was seen as remarkable. Nowadays it isn't even news when 10 year olds get A Levels. Although the numbers of such people are only a tiny fraction of the total, it seriously brings into question the mentality of restricting GCSEs to Y11 students in mainstream education. On the other hand, it creates new problems (for the government) such as whether kids should have to continue studying a subject after they have taken a GCSE exam in it. A primary school made a student sit their maths SATS exam despite him having an A grade maths GCSE. I doubt that Lib-Lab-Con politicians would back such a proposal as it has the potential to take much power and control over the school system away from the government. The Greens used to be in favour of it but they have now abandoned it in their quest to become more 'mainstream'. I have encountered some UKIP members and a odd few English Democrats who are strongly in favour. Schools have always been used as vehicles for social manipulation - everything from "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" echoed in classrooms in Edwardian England, which is why many school leavers were eager to head off to the Western Front in 1914, to all the NuLab indoctrination channelled through the NC during the Blair decade, which is why many school leavers have corrupted minds today. Sadly only a small fraction of parents (worldwide) are aware of this as the majority broadly agree that what goes on in schools is right and the government is better placed at deciding the curriculum than they are. The small number who sound the alarm that indoctrination and social manipulation is a cornerstone of the mainstream school system are branded as heretics by the masses.

A move that I would like to see implemented is the separation of the provision of teaching from examinations. Schools will no longer offer exams. Instead there will be an exam centre in every town that is used for state, independent, and HE students with no minimum age to take the exams.

Most AS schools are based around the NC and it's designated year group system. Most independent schools teach the same subjects as state schools but offer a few extra frills like Latin and separate sciences. They are not significantly differentiated for each student and are also loathe to allow students to take exams before Y10/11. Governments have made countless changes to the education system for over a century but major problems steadfastly refuse to go away. An important factor not mentioned so far are teaching unions. They wield enormous power and influence over education policy but they represent the (career / financial) interests of teachers, not the students they teach. I do not think that teaching union bosses understand SEN very well. How are 'professional educators' defined? For a start, do they know much about (or better still have been actively involved in) home education and understand the thousand or so reasons why parents opt for it and why it is increasing in popularity, or is their training and experience mainly confined to the mainstream school system?

I disagree with many aspects of this. Who should be responsible for creating new models? My experience with people from both the home education and the business community are increasingly conveying the message that the monolithic one size fits all mainstream educational model has had its days and has failed to keep with with changes in technology and business practices. I myself would only support an AS school if: 1. It did not have a year group system and taught kids by ability, not age, on a subject by subject basis. 2. It did not follow the NC and was free to develop its own curriculum including teaching subjects not taught in mainstream schools. A sensible compromise would be to ensure that English language and maths was taught to GCSE standard but the school had control over everything else. 3. It was free to choose its own exams and could offer qualifications other than GCSEs. 4. Exams could be taken at any age rather than the end of Y11.

You can read more about my experiences of school if you go back to my earlier posts from around 2005 and 2006. There were no magic bullet solutions at the time as AS was not known about, which resulted in the LA and mainstream schools being unable to offer me anything remotely positive. My preferred choice would have been home education. I was home educated during Y8 and I would continued with it if I had found a GCSE exam centre which accepted private candidates. My parents weren't happy about home education because they believe in the social aspect of school and they were concerned that I was missing out on science practical work. Exactly. It is almost a foregone conclusion that free schools will generally be run according to the whims of whoever is in charge of them. Primary schools from before the NC are the best snapshot we have of how free schools will turn out as they were almost autonomous and run according to the whims of the teachers and governors. Like the primary schools of the pre NC era, there will be some kids who fit in perfectly to a particular free school, but if they don't fit in, then it will be tears of frustration for both the kids and their parents because they will have difficulty in influencing change to accommodate requirements if it flies in the face of the beliefs of those in charge.

I think the problem is that stress and emotions gets the better of many parents. My parents signed me up for an unsuitable residential school and then refused to re-assess the situation after I had started at the school. Sadly the situation hasn't improved much since then despite AS now being known about and far more sources of information and advice being available than in 1990. There is much truth to this. Free schools are highly deceptive as they benefit the clique who run them and the kids who fit in well much more than kids with special needs or who need extra help and support.

I'm strongly of the opinion that the one size fits all model of mainstream education turns out to be the one size fails most model. I can understand where some people are coming from with regards to segregation, but unfortunately, if schools are to support the needs and requirements of individuals then a significant amount of segregation is inevitable. A school which is designed for kids with AS/HFA will not appeal to all that many NT kids with outgoing personalities. Neither is it a good idea to lump kids with AS/HFA in the same school as NT kids who are known to be vindictive bullies.

It is very important that parents take their kid's talents and strengths seriously, even if they are not in school subjects, if there is strong potential that they can be used in employment. This a more of a general issue than an AS issue but my findings are that a significant proportion of parents of kids with AS put talents and strengths in second place whilst worrying too much about the NC and GCSEs. The mainstream education system and LA officials are rarely interested in anything outside of the NC apart from possibly music and sports. A clear definition of social skills is required here. Do you mean social skills for kids of his own age in the school playground, or do you mean social skills and life skills for use as an adult? They are two completely different things in reality. It is also a fallacy to believe that if you 'get it right' for the primary school playground then you have fixed the social skills problem and everything will run its natural course as the individual progresses through life, so when the leave school they automatically have the social skills for life as an adult.

This is basically the keystone problem. If a kid is below average, average, or slightly above average in all or some subjects then school often works out fine. If a kid is very advanced in certain subjects - like up to GCSE level in Y5 - then there are very few schools which can accommodate their needs and either special tuition or home education are the only options remaining. I find this very worrying as it looks like the LA officials are still stuck in that mindset from the 80s that kids with high academic ability cannot have SEN. The cynic in me thinks that this is a political move.

I had similar problems of being ahead of the curriculum in certain subjects at primary school and being held back due to a refusal to implement accelerated learning whilst at the same time the school failed to effectively provide support for social skills and accommodate my needs. Home education is probably the only option unless you can find a suitable school - that probably doesn't exist.

That is a very good question. Should it focus primarily on the low functioning / Kanner autism or on the high functioning autism / AS? Should it focus on teaching life skills for use outside of school or should it focus on social skills for school? Should if offer academic support, advice on taking exams as an external candidate etc. or should it restrict itself to social and extra curricular activities? Should it support home education or should it support school education? Should it be for parents only or should kids be allowed to attend? Should it allow computers or should it be a computer free zone? Should it offer activities or should it only offer advice? I have encountered groups that offer all the above.

MBTI was designed to be administered by professional psychologists. It was not designed for determining successful candidates in job interviews.

The MBTI was developed in the US in the 1940s without any knowledge of AS when psychology was in its infancy. There have been questions whether it is accurate for people with AS. I find it interesting that it isn't well known in Holland and I am now wondering whether it is most popular in the Anglophone world.

There isn't even an accurate definition of a broad and balanced education. What schools really teach is a selection of subjects but whether it is broad and balanced or not is down to the individual. For example, the NC doesn't include astronomy, economics, Japanese, law, or psychology, despite GCSEs being available for these subjects. Neither does it cover software development, video production, the history of South America, plumbing, or car maintenance. It was like that with CSEs and O Levels as well. They set the Y10 and Y11 curriculum in secondary schools. This also restricts the subject choices available in secondary schools. A secondary school once offered a statistics O Level and a course in motor mechanics but had to discontinue both after 1988 because they didn't fit in with the NC. It also makes it difficult to offer non-European foreign languages even though there may be a local demand for them.

I wouldn't worry about this too much. I'm of the opinion that the 21st century is going to be a century where talents lead to success. Not a so called broad and balanced education or GCSE grades. That's so last century. If a kid has talents in certain areas then they could well be a pathway to a successful and well paid career if even their geography and maths schoolwork is mediocre. This didn't significantly change the secondary school curriculum from the subjects taught in 1980ish.

The secondary school curriculum is actually based on the grammar school curriculum from the early 20th century. Critics say that it was not a curriculum designed for the masses. Reform isn't easy because it would effectively mean sacking a high proportion of existing teachers and replacing them with teachers who know about the workings of the real world. Another problem that refuses to go away is that society categorises kids according to academic ability in school subjects and little else. Uneven profiles; knowledge and talents outside of the school curriculum; and the requirements of support services for social and life skills do not fit into the equation. There is still the mindset that kids of high academic ability cannot have SEN so all SEN services are for kids of low academic ability.

She claims that she has AS. I believe that she is quite famous and well known in the business community in the US and the articles on her website have generated much publicity. What do you think of them?

Is the problem a lack of suitable courses or is it the inability to sit through an exam? There are a variety of alternatives to GCSEs such as IGCSEs, Open University courses, vocational courses at colleges, and various industry qualifications.

It's not her real name. According to Wikipedia her real name is Adrienne Greenheart (nee Roston).

You are right about education not just being academic... The problem we have with mainstream schools goes back to the 19th century when they were set up primarily to teach academic subject like how to read and do maths. Almost every educational reform since then has focused on the academic side of things much more than the social and life skills side of things. Schools are rated according to their academic excellence, not social excellence. SATS results for primary schools and GCSE grades for secondary schools. Thousands of parents are even willing to pay huge sums of money to send their kids to private schools where academic excellence is the name of the game and the teaching of social and life skills is seen as anathema or downright repugnant, but how many schools exist in Britain which pride themselves on social excellence? The mainstream school system was not designed with ASD kids in mind. Kids are explicitly taught academic subjects in timetabled lessons according to the National Curriculum but are expected to pick up social skills and life skills naturally as they go along with only ad hoc advice from the teachers. Many NT kids can do this but ASD kids can't. They have to be explicitly taught them but they are not part of the NC. Very few schools are able or willing to set aside lesson time for this as an additional subject. The consequence of this and the primary focus on academics means that there is plenty of support and services for kids who struggle with academic subjects like English and maths but there is little in the way of support for social and life skills. It all depends on the individual. Some kids with ASD are quite capable of achieving high GCSE grades at the age of 10 if they are given the support and the opportunity. Others would benefit more from alternative or vocational qualifications instead. Some do not require additional support and services in an exam whilst others do. The NAS is extremely poor when it comes to providing support and advice for qualifications other than GCSEs or taking exams outside of the school system. Their ideology centres around the National Curriculum where GCSEs are taken at 16 at secondary school. I have asked the NAS if they would set up their own GCSE exam centre for kids who struggle badly at school but they refused to.

The 5th aim of Every Child Matters is Achieve economic well-being. How does this fit in with kids with ASD? I was discussing ECM and ASD with people from the business world last year who concluded that if a condition significantly inhibits an individual when it comes to making money (by any legitimate means) then it can only be seen as a crippling disability. These people were not familiar with ASD but are aware of the high rates of unemployment and underemployment of adults with ASD. They asked me whether this is an unfortunate consequence of the condition and changes to the economy in recent years (like offshoring programming jobs to India) or whether it can be rectified through the education system such as schools specifically teaching real world social skills for life as an adult. The businessmen are quite critical of the National Curriculum and mainstream school system. They say that it's too academic and a tad socialist whilst failing to teach about business, entrepreneural skills, and how the real world works. They think it lets too many people down because we have a situation where countless school leavers and graduates cannot find jobs or end up on the minimum wage whilst teenagers who are home educated or school dropouts run their own businesses and are able to buy semi-detached houses outright at the age of 18.

There's actually not all that much in the way of paid employment in autism or AS unless it's heavily combined with something which you may or may not want to do - such as teaching or LA SEN officers. Social work is quite distant to working with people with autism in as much as working with blind people is.

A friend with AS told me that he hated French at secondary school and was hopeless at it. The problem was attributed to the teaching style and curriculum along with a general lack of interest and desire in the subject. After he finished his A Levels he learnt Arabic at evening classes and found the course to be easy going and enjoyable. The French lessons at school were biased towards a social context and everyday situations. The Arabic course was based on grammar and verbs were only introduced in book 2.