DOI: 10.3726/9781916704664.003.0003
1. To question the role schools have and how fit-for-purpose they are for today’s young people and today’s community.
2. Reflect on the role of direct teaching experience on the choice of homeschooling.
3. Consider how the choice of homeschooling has been theorised in the past.
4. Reflect on your own beliefs about homeschooling, who does it and why, and how that impacts your beliefs about the practice, and the young people who experience it.
The New York Times published a piece in early 2024 (Mervosh & Paris, 2024) titled “School absences have exploded everywhere.” They subtitled their piece “our relationship with school [has] become optional.” The idea that schooling is optional explains, in some broad sense, why homeschooling is growing rapidly, particularly among teachers who have the greatest exposure to schools. Interestingly, the growth is not confined just to Queensland, but is being experienced across the whole of Australia, where there are around 45,000 legally registered homeschoolers (Payne, 2024).
In the last chapters, we introduced you to our teachers, and the pull and push factors affecting their choices. We shared Rebecca’s story of homeschooling choice as a teacher and teacher educator with school-refusing children who were homeschooling. We looked at the styles of homeschooling, the legislative framework in Australia and the numbers in the country, and in particular in Queensland, where we (and many of our participant parents) are located. As we noted, there is no research on how teachers who choose to homeschool experience their choice. While there is some government data (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2023) that shows teachers are highly represented in the homeschooling population, and that this group is growing, we do not know enough about this group. The interest in teachers is, in part, because they should be highly motivated to school their own children, having their professional identity defined by schooling. In addition, they have a posteriori experience of schooling, having actively participated in classrooms. As such, it appears that this group choosing homeschooling in increasing numbers communicates something about mainstream education and schooling. We are also both teachers, so we have a natural interest in what our peers choose to do.
When looking at the data, we were particularly interested in what teachers might bring to their homeschools that the other families who homeschool, those who are not teachers, might not. We also wondered if they used a particular style of homeschooling, whether they were more likely to be more structured, more eclectic, more project-based, more philosophical (Montessori or Steiner), or more likely to choose unschooling. We also wanted to know if the style changed over time, as most families who are not teachers say they changed and became more relaxed and child-led over the time they homeschooled. We wanted to know if the teachers became less rigid, less structured, and more child-led as the time went on. We also, during the interview process, began to wonder if they were more likely to keep homeschooling or were just doing it for a short time, as the current research suggests happens.
In what follows in this chapter, we address these key points.
We expected that many teachers would, through their experiences of schooling in their work, have different views on school choice than non-teachers. We were looking at these teachers as a group who are, as a recent article in the media suggested (Jackson, 2024), “canaries in the coal mine.” While writing this book, there was a statewide effort by the government to change legislation that would have required all homeschooling families to implement formal, standardised, school like curriculum in their homeschool settings, and it would have mandated reporting that would have mirrored school. Our teachers noted how the curriculum and reporting requirements in schools weren’t working for actual school children, so it would never work in homeschooling. Some of the most full-throated opposition to the government’s reform was from teachers.
While writing this book, the media in Australia started to get very interested in teachers who homeschool. For example, a national piece was published that described a teacher who had a popular Vlog on TikTok and was vocal about her choice to homeschool her own children. In this piece, published by Channel 9’s online web-based outlet, the journalist reported, as we’ve noted above, that around 20 per cent of the Queensland homeschooling population are teachers. The article noted that the number of teachers who were quitting/dropping back to casual teaching/choosing to stop full-time work and work part-time had increased all around the world. The journalist identified a case study of one teacher from Perth (Western Australia).
When Warwick’s “quirky and creative” daughter – who is now nine – was born, she also began to wonder how well that “inflexible” education system would suit her.
Warwick’s daughter also had some special needs, with a speech impediment. On a limited budget, Warwick and her husband couldn’t find a local school which they felt was right for her.
They decided to see if homeschooling would be a good fit.
Warwick’s daughter began her education by attending a small homeschool co-op with eight students part-time, with Warwick also doing some of her homeschooling on days off and weekends.
Encouraged by how well her daughter was thriving, Warwick resigned from her permanent teaching position at the beginning of 2023 to homeschool her daughter, and now also her four-year-old son, full time.
Warwick, who still does some relief teaching and casual work at a local university to help boost the family’s income, said she had no regrets.
“It has given me the space to de-school, and to recover from the stress of teaching,” she said.
Educating her children at home had also allowed her to re-discover her passion for teaching in a creative way, Warwick said.
This piece suggested that there were major issues in mainstream education that would have been more immediately obvious to a teacher than to a parent. Some of the issues identified in this piece were about the child not being a good fit with the schooling system. As a teacher, this former teacher, mother and homeschooler was in a different position to note the issues, to guess where these issues would lead for her daughter, and she chose to change her child’s educational setting in anticipation of what she perceived to be flaws in the education system for children like hers.
In the news piece, the system was described as inflexible, and it was not able to accommodate the needs of a child with a speech impediment. This issue was evident in other stories too. Interestingly, and significantly, this point was repeated in responses from parents who responded to an inquiry into a new law covering homeschooling and listed similar issues. Around 2,000 submissions were submitted. Of the families who submitted to the review, 10% identified themselves as teachers. Their submissions were interesting and gave us a series of themes to look at in our own data. To start, let’s look at some data from submissions to an inquiry into homeschooling.
There’s a strong relationship between the choice and school refusal/school can’t/school distress/school trauma. The growth is being driven by accidental homeschoolers. “Accidental homeschoolers” is a term used to refer to a group of homeschoolers who did not set out to homeschool but were forced, by circumstance in school (such as severe bullying) or outside of the school (the child refusing to go to school) or a combination of factors, into homeschooling.
In addition to the teacher data, we also collected all the teacher submissions that were tendered to this inquiry. The submissions to the legislative review were revealing. There were 192 (10 per cent) submissions from teachers. Of these, 62 (32 per cent) submission authors cited school refusal as a reason these teachers were unwilling to send their children back to school and were homeschooling. The reasons were reflected in the Channel 9 piece identified above. Most of them noted:
• Struggling with their child’s neurodivergence in schools (a finding reflected in our data, which will be reported in the following chapters);
• School refusal was a co-condition listed as a reason for homeschooling among the cohort who identified themselves as teachers (9 per cent), and the stories were harrowing.
• Of these school-refusing families, anxiety was identified as the main neurodiversity that impacted their child’s school attendance (60 per cent).
• In addition, our data, which will be reported in the following chapters, found Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) (see Cathy), anxiety and Autism (see Steph) as reasons they had chosen to homeschool.
As such, it may be that 20 per cent of the population of teachers who choose to homeschool their children do so because the child has a diagnosis, a suspicion, or identifies as Autistic, including the increasingly prevalent PDA profile. Further, it may be that teacher parents who homeschool are doing so because their child is among the 60 per cent who feel anxious at school and are refusing (from the 32 per cent who were homeschooling because of school refusal).
School refusal is a pervasive issue that is increasingly impacting children’s capacity to attend school, driving the growth in homeschooling (English, 2021). This finding, that around 32 per cent of homeschool enrolments are driven by anxiety, accords with research into school refusal. As Connolly, Patterson, Hockey & Mullally (2022, p. 16) have noted, the main feature of the experiences of children who school refuse is not “a “refusal” to attend school, but rather the severe emotional distress experienced when attempting to do so.” As such, they argue that the label of school refusal is inappropriate; it is, instead, more accurate to describe the situation as School Distress, as it more accurately reflects the reality. This label, “school distress,” might explain why these families choose homeschooling, even just for a while, so they can correct the “distress” their child feels.
This argument accords with the data collected in the submissions we read. Teacher homeschoolers revealed, in the review submissions, stories of distress and mental ill-health their children were experiencing as a result of being at school. Some of the issues identified in the submissions included:
· Behavioural concerns through childhood that the family found difficult to understand/manage, and were affecting home life more so than school life.
· Very poor engagement with education from Prep Year onwards, including not doing work in class, not being able to engage with the teachers’ requests, hiding in the classroom or outside the classroom, refusing to enter the classroom and refusing to leave the car.
· Cognitive and language impairments (intellectual disability and speech and language disorders) – late recognition of the same by the schools.
One teacher–parent-reported behavioural concerns:
At times my child is unable to engage with a particular requirement so becomes at risk of disengaging and failing. This problem would increase tenfold in an under‐resourced classroom environment, especially while [child] is unable to communicate and advocate for [child’s] needs (communication deficits remain a lifelong challenge for autistic people).
Another teacher–parent-reported cognitive and language impairments improved at home when the child left formal or institutional education for homeschooling. They said:
We have gone from once disengaged and struggling to keep up at school, to now thriving and happy children, children whose confidence is now slowly increasing and anxiety decreasing.
Another teacher who had chosen homeschooling stated:
We started homeschooling in 2022 after our [child] stopped eating and going to the toilet at school, after [child’s] mental health had deteriorated. [Child is] autistic and has ADHD, the school could not support [child’s] learning needs let alone get [child] to a point where [child] felt safe, happy and ready to learn at school.
These data showed that, if a teacher identified anxiety as a reason to homeschool, or mentioned anxiety in the submission, there was a 22 per cent likelihood they would also mention that their child had a diagnosis or suspicion of autism, and a 21 per cent likelihood the submission would also mention both Autism and ADHD. As such, there are compounding factors supporting Connelly et al.’s (2022) analysis on school refusal. Connelly et al. noted that Autism was seen in as many as 42.6 per cent of school-refusing students, compared with reports of 7.1 per cent among neurotypical students who refused school. As Connolly et al. (2022) note, citing the work of Roman-Urrestarazu, van Kessel, Allison, Matthews et al. (2021), Autism is prevalent in just 1–2 per cent of the actual school population.
We found the same in our teacher data. In what follows, our teachers’ stories of school distress are reported.
School distress, school refusal, and school trauma seem to be the biggest drivers of a push to the homeschooling movement. Among teachers, among the general public and in the media, the issue is pervasive. Families say they find their children are either being severely harmed in schools or are refusing to go. One of our authors, Gemma, was in that boat. Her story is instructive.
We (my husband, child) and I decided to homeschool after a significant negative response to traditional mainstream school. We tried numerous ways to improve the response from our child to traditional schooling and were concerned of a possible long-term or permanent trauma impact our child would have if we continued to push mainstream schooling. As parents, we knew we needed to make a change to the way we approached our child’s educational future, and initially, we did not know what that change would be. We had a family member (without a teaching background) already homeschooling after trying mainstream, and while he had never considered it, he had seen the positive changes occur to those children. Therefore, my child knew the concept of homeschooling existed and what it meant due to this connection.
There was no big marker or tipping point to make our final decision, but once made, we enacted fairly quickly. The decision could be likened to a pot on the stove that continually had things added to it until it became too full. There were consultations with external health professionals who worked with us and agreed with us that change was necessary. We had begun another school year at that point and had agreed to one more term, and allowed those ten weeks to be the major indicator of our choices. We tracked the days and gathered data for ourselves, and talked endlessly about our limited choices.
The biggest surprise to our homeschooling choice is the connection between us all; it is so much stronger. I now authentically know how my child learns best, her strengths and weaknesses. We have also developed open honesty around emotions and feelings. As a teacher, homeschooling was never a choice we considered, but it became one out of necessity, and while that has some initial choice removed from us in terms of educational choice, we wouldn’t want to do it any other way now. The choices are now endless in terms of opportunities and have been easy to find and navigate. While the common myth of socialisation is an easy one to bust, for me as a teacher, there are a few myths that were indoctrinated as a mainstream educator around learning.
1. Learning does not have to be done 9–3 and 5 days a week.
a. This is where we initially started as a family unit. All of us in the household had similar ideals of how we both thought (as parent and child) of how education “should” look. In summer, we often start as early as seven and can be done before morning tea; some days, we learn academics for longer. It can ebb and flow as your family unit needs it to. Working with a small group of children or one child means the amount of work completed in a short frame of time is vastly different to mainstream school. Using my classroom experience, something that would take a whole class 40 minutes to complete takes us in the home environment perhaps ten minutes to complete.
2. Learning does not have to be done at a desk, sitting up straight.
a. We have done our academic learning from a desk, the couch, from the bed, outside and in the car on the way to homeschool gatherings. Our child still learns and still completes the required work; however, they are now able to meet their emotional needs as well and adapt their learning space to suit. Yesterday’s work was completed by 10:10 a.m., and they then moved to working on a crochet project.
3. Children have the capacity to have a voice in their learning and what they would like to learn
a. We are now at a stage where my child will request to learn something for the upcoming term independently (for example, robotics, oceanography). Initially, I chose the inquiry of learning and talked to her about it. We then worked on choosing inquiries for learning together, and they will now independently bring an inquiry request to me. This provides my child with a deep intrinsic motivation to learn, and through inquiries of learning, they access a depth and breadth to the area that could not be achieved in mainstream. We conduct either full-term inquiries or shorter half-term cycles, depending on the topic, subject connections and timeframes.
4. Lengthy or extended play is integral to a child’s learning and should be considered part of their formal education beyond the early years.
I initially began my journey like many other parents wanting to homeschool, by trawling through the regulations on my state’s website. I downloaded whatever I could and got to completing the proforma. Whether it is my background in teaching or just simply my own way of thinking, I can only describe the provided proforma as overbearing. After realising I can provide my own proforma as long as I am still showing a high-quality education. I utilised my knowledge of the Australian Curriculum (developed from years of training and experience) to develop a plan. As a family, we prefer to work with inquiries where we can. Therefore, I (as the formal educator) spend the time connecting the Australian Curriculum content descriptors for the appropriate year level together where they seem they would most likely fit together for each term.
It should be noted that submitting a year-long learning plan does come with a disadvantage. An annual plan leaves very little creative space for change as a child shows interest in an inquiry or a unique opportunity comes up. How this is overcome is by using the end-of-year report to reflect those changes that occurred. When submitting a plan to the department, I consider it a small “p’ plan, changeable. Reporting these changes is simple to include with the reporting process, where necessary. There are some subjects where I know what resources I will use, such as math, and these can easily be included in the outlined plan for the year ahead. I then include other resources that I am fairly confident we will be using and how they apply. Again, I can use the end-of-year report to note any changes we made.
When deciding on resources and paid packages, we have a mix of materials depending on time and inquiry. We commit to a bought maths curriculum as this often has the biggest impact in terms of needing resources; however, I did not commit to this when we were still learning in the early years, as we required a different approach to learning. I make these decisions with a measurement of “time or money.” If I have the time to sit and create something (such as a travel journal), I will create it myself using the cost of time. However, if other commitments have stretched on time and I need an inquiry such as oceanography, then I buy it and then dissect it to something more personalised; however, the research and main body of work is done, and I have saved time by using money to buy something somebody else has done. I do acknowledge the advantage that having a teacher background brings to our homeschool experience in terms of understanding the curriculum and other documents easily; however, homeschool is not just for teachers (see ch.7).
While I noted my teaching background above as an advantage in one area, I acknowledge its disadvantage in another. The way I teach is quite different these days. I underwent a dramatic phase of unlearning (or deschooling) of what I thought to be true about education in the way one should learn. I have spoken above about the 5 days a week, 9–3 relearning. I now know one can learn at one’s own pace, and I have complete faith that we will always complete the work, even if we take some time to rest. Initially, I had timetabled the weeks, the days, the hours and felt concerned when we deviated. Thoughts of “but we must…,” “this was on the schedule…,” “this is behind schedule now” raced through my mind, and I constantly considered where we would catch up. Now I know we have the grace and time to catch up, and it is unnecessary to plan to that degree (it is completely necessary to plan to this detail in a school setting). We have naturally begun moving to include more elements of an unschooling approach to learning. Although I think we are still very much eclectic at this point, a melting pot of pedagogies and ideas that work for us, which has been organic and unplanned, it seems to be how my child approaches a love of learning. As I write this, they are making a board game that they thought of in their mind, and they are considering the rules and objectives and characters in the game, the layout, the artwork, the size of markers in comparison to the board, the storyline, and the purpose. Neither parent asked them to do this or encouraged it; they had begun this task on their own, taking over the dining table with craft items and note paper. As a teacher, I can see they are applying and developing skills in English, visual arts, math, tech, and science. The more I let go of the rigidity of the mainstream classroom, the more they pick up moments of these unschooled learning moments. As Dr Gina Riley’s quote from the unschooling section above applies here, I am becoming the librarian to my child’s mind. I want my child to love to learn, and it has taken some time for this to develop after our experience in the mainstream system, but we are moving into this space. The more time I spend away from the mainstream system, the more I see the flaws, and that makes me want better for my child. I want them to have the confidence to voice their needs (emotional and physical) in a workplace or higher learning, and socially. I believe that giving her a strong, supportive environment now, they have a good chance of this in adulthood.
Like Gemma, all our participating teacher parents challenged the idea of school refusal as misbehaviour and as a choice. None of our teacher participants suggested that their child was being naughty or was misbehaving if they refused to go to school. Instead, all participants described school refusers as children who were experiencing schooling as damaging to the child. As can be seen in the story that follows, school refusal began for Catherine’s family during the COVID-19 pandemic. Significantly, this refusal was also the case for Gemma. Other parents talked about school refusal as an important element of the experience of choosing to homeschool. For example, Tara (a pseudonym) noted, in much the same terms as other parents:
Over the past four years we have gone in and out of homeschooling with our last removal from school being our final decision – we will not be going back. Our eldest child has severe school can’t and we can finally see that it is not his fault, and that school cannot meet his needs. It initially started 6 weeks into prep at a state school where he attended the school my husband taught at. He began asking not to go and within days he was going to extreme lengths to not go to school – laying in front of the car so we couldn’t drive away, hiding his bag, climbing on the roof and even jumping out of the car. We removed him from school after a term and homeschooled. We have over the years attempted non-traditional schools and another state school but in all cases my son suffered severe school can’t and the schools answer to it was always to pop him on an iPad, so he is out of the way and not taking up time and valuable resources (staff). This year he attended his last school. He lasted less than a term before the familiar refusal set in. Initially the school was really supportive but essentially, he did not meet their timeline for improving and support was withdrawn. My normally very happy, social child was spending all his lunch breaks hiding out in a room with whatever teacher was available to babysit, he was constantly put on the iPad so he wouldn’t bother the class teacher, and he wasn’t learning much or making any friends. He absolutely hated it, was overwhelmed by the huge class sizes, the misbehaviour from other kids and the constant feeling that he wasn’t safe.
Tara’s story mirrored those of other parents. There is the familiar story of self-harm, of dangerous behaviour to avoid school and of trying multiple schools, aligning with Gemma’s story. This situation of trying multiple schools is mirrored by Steph and by Aeleth. For example, Steph’s daughter had severe school refusal.
She started off education at a private school, a girl’s private school here, and which, weirdly enough, was the school I went to for my whole education, but I had never intended to send her there. We just when we moved – When we moved from England. We were sort of looking around, and it was the last one on my list, but we went to look and they – they really sold me on their kind of child led environment. So, I was – I was all in, and the Prep and one was great and in grade two she had the same teacher that she’d had in grade one who was amazing. She was such a good teacher. And we’re still in contact with her. But yeah, by the end of grade two we were seeing the beginnings of the neurodivergence in that classroom was really not working out. The environment was just not suited to her. She was basically one of two kids in the entire cohort that had any kind of learning or attention issues. Or, you know, emotional regulation issues. So, she really stood out at that school, and they didn’t – as much as they tried to support, they kind of weren’t set up for it. And their academic expectations! Halfway through grade two it just went through the roof. It was like “Oh, your assessment for English this term is to sit at a table and write for 45 minutes,” in grade two! So, I was like, oh, she’s not gonna do that. And so, she was finding it very stressful. She was underneath the tables, running off. It even got to the point where she was, you know, putting her fingers in pencil sharpness and stuff like that, like we were really worried.
The behaviours, running away, hiding, and self-harming, were all classic school trauma or school distress behaviours identified in previous studies (such as in Connolley et al., 2021). These behaviours were also strongly correlated with neurodivergence, which previous studies have shown is strongly correlated with school refusal (Fisher, 2023). Parents in the present study linked their child’s school refusal to neurodivergence.
Aeleth was in a similar situation with her son, who had a diagnosis of dyslexia. She stated:
I have 2 children. The oldest went through school all the way from year one to year 12, without any major hiccups. Number two, though, he struggled with academic learning, struggled with learning to read, learning to spell, learning to write. And initially we – we – Oh! And he hated – this noise at school, too, the frenetic noise. So, we tried changing schools. We changed schools twice and that initially helped. We went to a little alternate school that initially helped. But then eventually, around year four he fell into a hole because he still couldn’t read, and he was being bullied by this stage. So, there was bullying happening and he was extremely unhappy. Suicidal ideation. And then – then, finally, school refusal. He just refused to get in the car to go to school. So – I would not have known that even that homeschool existed, except that my sister homeschooled her children, so I thought it looks like that’s the only option left. So that’s how we came to it.
This story shows the role of school refusal and its connection to, as with Steph, neurodivergence. Aeleth’s son was dyslexic, bullied for dyslexia, not engaged or fitting in, and that created the conditions of possibility for school refusal. The school refusal was what pushed Aeleth and her husband to homeschooling, even though their other son was fine in school and was able to successfully complete his studies.
Claire’s daughter also experienced serious school refusal. She was enrolled in a pre-school in the large city centre near her before Claire and her family moved to a very remote location. In that remote location, her daughter’s school refusal started and radically changed her daughter’s life. The school refusal was very pointed and marked, and included self-harm. The child, Theodora (a pseudonym), was in preschool so would only have been five or six years of age. Claire stated:
Obviously, it was in my heart that I really wanted to homeschool. Our eldest started school started preschool, and she did. 6 months of preschool in [town] loved it was well balanced and happy, and everything was going well. We moved to [rural area] halfway through the year and she ended up experiencing quite severe school refusal. Things were very different at the preschool there [than they had been in the town], and she was very unhappy. She ended up with like – medical conditions related to, you know, the permanent, sore tummy, and feeling sick, depressed, and I still kept persisting. I still kept trying to push her. We got to the stage where the Prep. Teacher would have to hold [Theodora] while I tried to get back in the car and I literally couldn’t get the car started before she would be sitting there in the seat next to me. She’d managed to bite, struggle, kick her way free and back onto the seat. Yep, and even still I persisted, I don’t know why, but at the very end of the year we came back down to [town], and it was the very last week of school, and we went to visit her old pre preschool and the teacher asked could [Theodora] stay for the day? We’d love [Theodora] to stay for the day. Can she stay? And I said, Yeah, sure if that’s all right, like that’s fine. And when I picked her up and I remember the exact words the preschool teacher said, I can’t believe how much confidence she’s lost in the short time you’ve been away. And that broke me – That just broke me. It’s like if one thing I wanted was to build confident self, confident, happy kids. And that one thing just broke me. So yep, I went. I went home from there with [Theodora] and rang that started ringing around the department to find out what I had to do to homeschool that afternoon.
As this story illustrates, in line with much of the research (see Connolley et al., 2023) on school refusal, the child can be seriously and severely affected by the experience. In addition, as Fisher (2023) noted, there is no evidence that the interventions put in place by schools have any success. In the case of Theodora (and her mum, Claire), there was no success; homeschooling was the only option. Interestingly, Claire had a son whom she also homeschooled. When Theodora was in high school, she enrolled both her children in schools, but only her son stayed. Theodora lasted two and a half years before withdrawing and finishing her schooling years through college.
The stories of school refusal are mirrored in the literature, but it does not seem that the teachers were any more equipped to deal with the issue when it affected their own children. While Aeleth was aware of homeschooling because of her sister, and Claire knew enough about it to call the department, Steph only chose homeschooling because a friend suggested it to her when they were staying with Steph and their family. While it may have been a stressful choice to make, all parents in the study (n = 12) reported that it was the right choice for their child.
In studies, it appears that school refusal is a consistent, chronic problem that can’t be solved with a few weeks, months or terms here or there of absence, distance schooling or time away. Indeed, Connolly et al. (2022) noted the persistent nature of the absences across the school life of the child, “indicating autistic students are at heightened risk of SAPs (school attendance problems) across their school life” (p. 2). These young people also experience more interruptions to their education than do neurotypical students. The reasons for the absences, “include sensory processing difficulties, feelings of exclusion, lack of teacher understanding, and anxiety” (Connolly et al., 2022, p. 2), all mirrored the stories our teacher parents told us for this book. As such, it is not unexpected that our teacher homeschoolers would have found relief for their child by bringing them home and homeschooling them (see also Fisher, 2023). The issue that leads to the refusal appears to be the environment of the school, including the noises in the classroom, the behaviours of other students, the requirements to be social and to engage with other children all day, and potentially missing social cues as well, as Aeleth and Tara noted. As such, the factors that affect the student with a neurodiverse brain are precisely the ones that make school difficult, leading to school refusal.
Our teacher homeschoolers’ stories also reflect the submission data where anxiety and Autism were significantly co-occurring and where the families experienced many absences from school. What’s missing from Connolly et al.’s (2022) study, but evident in the data here, is the role of schools in enforcing absences. What we mean here is that families were forced to keep their children home from school because the child’s neurodivergence was disruptive in the classroom (see Aeleth).
But what surprised us was the issue of neurodivergence being seen as misbehaviour. All of our teaching in university has included preparing pre-service teachers for the realities of neurodivergence in the classroom and explaining how it is not misbehaviour. The other surprise was the extent of a child being denied a schooling place because of their neurodivergence, seen as misbehaviour, because of how it affected the classroom, and there was no other alternative space for the child to escape to. Submitters included stories of their children who were not allowed to go to school at all because their behaviour was not manageable in the classroom. The persistent, chronic absences led to the child being so far behind the rest of their class that there was no point in going at all, as they were home more because the school refused them entry. In addition to the academic issues, the child experienced bullying because they were not coping in the classroom and frequently, the bullying led to even more disciplinary absences. For example, a submitter suggested the role of the school in failing to support their child’s needs:
[my child] is Autistic, has a sensory processing disorder and severe anxiety with a speech impediment and has trouble processing multiple noises at once, especially whilst trying to concentrate ([child] says the classroom noise is too much for [child] to bear and this has proven true at school with [child] needing to be removed from class multiple times so as not to disrupt the others). [Child’s name] is an energetic child who has trouble sitting still for long periods of time.
As such, the schools appeared to be incapable of meeting children’s needs. And the child’s energetic behaviour made school impossible. The child was unable to stay in class due to their needs and behaviour.
Another stated:
[Child] was suicidal at school and [child’s] behaviours often had me picking [child] up early or [child] being suspended from school [child] has fallen behind in [child’s] learning and we are restarting from earlier year subjects.
This quote shows not only the extent of the distress experienced by young people who identify as having Autism at school, but also the role of the school in failing to support. In both cases, the school did not support the child’s needs, but in the second submission, the school actively sought to remove the child from the classroom.
However, the issues raised here call into question some important issues for the community more broadly and reflect changes to the community since the COVID-19 pandemic school closures increased the number of homeschoolers (English, 2021b). They also suggest that, in an environment where teachers are increasingly choosing to homeschool their children, with up to 50 per cent of parents who engaged with an independent reviewer of the government’s homeschooling management in the education department noting that they were or had been teachers (Dunston, personal correspondence, 12 August 2024), there is a clash between what departments of education see as a suitable education for young people and what parents see as a suitable education.
Canaries in the Coalmine
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