School and education

This topic covers what school did to autistic people and what it offers now: how often pupils are excluded, restrained or kept away from school; what school days are like, from placement and participation to bullying and belonging; and university and college. Three entries are here now.

In England, the Department for Education published the white paper Every child achieving and thriving on 23 February 2026, with a correction slip added on 27 April 2026.¹ It sets a statutory duty on nurseries, schools and colleges to record and monitor special educational needs in an Individual Support Plan, while education, health and care plans (EHCPs) keep setting the statutory entitlement to support.¹ The white paper says the proportion of school children with an EHCP was 5.3% when it was published, and that it expects the number to return to around that level by 2035 as more children are supported in mainstream settings.¹

In the United States, the Department of Education transferred the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to the Department of Health and Human Services on 16 June 2026.² PACER Center, a parent advocacy organization, said the move broke with the federal promise of a free appropriate public education and asked the departments to halt it.²

In Australia, the Thriving Kids program began in October 2026, funding support for children aged 8 and under with developmental delay or autism with low to moderate support needs, with all supports in place by 1 January 2028, the same date the NDIS access changes take effect.³

Autistic pupils are excluded from school more often than their peers. In a total-population study in Wales, children with an autism diagnosis were about two and a half times as likely to be excluded as children with no recorded diagnosis.⁴ A UK cohort found that 25% of autistic 14-year-olds had been excluded at least once, when parents reported informal as well as formal exclusions; school-record studies that count formal exclusion only give lower figures.⁵ Attendance is lower than for peers and persistent absence higher, and school avoidance rather than truancy is the most common reason.^6,7 In the United States, the 2023-24 Civil Rights Data Collection recorded 61,146 students with disabilities physically restrained and 21,868 secluded; students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were 14.5% of enrollment but 72.5% of those restrained, and the collection does not report autism separately.⁸ Exclusion and absence go with worse mental health later, and one UK cohort found that exclusion partly explained the link between autism and behavioral difficulties at 17.⁹

Bullying is the best-established finding about autistic pupils' school life: a meta-analysis of 17 studies put victimization at 44%, and a UK cohort followed from age 5 to 14 found 74% of the autistic group in a bullying trajectory at some point, against 38% of the non-autistic group.^10,11 Whether a pupil is taught in a mainstream class, a resource center inside a mainstream school, or a separate school matters less than the support around them; a three-year study of 119 autistic pupils found that placement on its own made no difference to their social and emotional outcomes, while feeling supported by teachers and by other pupils was the strongest predictor of doing well.¹² A review of 233 studies found that research on inclusion more often asked the autistic pupil to adapt to the school than it adapted the school to the pupil.¹³ Autistic pupils take part less in peer groups and report fewer positive features in their friendships, and in one survey camouflaging carried the statistical link between a sense of belonging and anxiety.¹⁴

Autistic students are in higher education in growing numbers, and the support they receive is uneven. In a national census, 125 of 142 publicly funded UK universities answered: half kept records on formally diagnosed autistic students, 16% on students seeking a diagnosis and 7% on self-identifying students, and only 2% had a policy for undiagnosed students, so staff judgment and proof of diagnosis often decided who got help.¹⁵ In one large comparative survey, autistic students reported anxiety at 64.5% and depression at 48.2%, against 9.4% and 7.6% for non-autistic students.¹⁶ Records from one US university found more failing grades and lower average grades among autistic students.¹⁷ A review of 37 wellbeing interventions found wide variation and little use of students' strengths,¹⁸ and a second review found mentoring the most common approach among the support programs it pooled.¹⁹