What has lockdown and school return been like for autistic children or young people who attend mainstream school and their families?
A research project set out to understand more about the experiences of autistic young people and their parents during the 2020 school closure, lockdown, and return to school. The researchers were interested in discussing the educational, social, and emotional aspects of these events with families.
The research team comprised IOE academics, Professor Caroline Oliver, Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou and Professor Carol Vincent.
The research was funded by the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and ran for seven months (October 2020 – April 2021).
Background
Survey research by Pavlopoulou et al (2020) shows that while lockdown may potentially have increased pressures for some autistic young people, others benefitted from less social pressure, lesser sensory challenges, and more time spent on their own interests.
Our research built on these survey findings by speaking directly to parents and young people (aged between 10 and 18 years old).
Our research considered how changes to routine and transitioning back to school was experienced, especially since this may have caused anxiety for children and young people as they adjusted to a new set of requirements to maintain social distancing. However, we also considered that others may have welcomed the tighter regulations organising the school environment.
We also considered how families’ relationships with schools were crucial in this period. The research team were interested in understanding more about how different families and schools were trying to secure the emotional stability and educational progress of the young people, as the effects of the pandemic continue.
Methodology
The research team worked with parents and where possible, autistic children and young people (aged between 10 and 18 years old) who attend mainstream school/college.
The research with parents was interview-based (either online or face to face, depending on government restrictions). Children who also wanted to take part could also choose to create photos/drawings/models as a prompt to talk about their experiences.
The research team also worked with a co-production parents’ advisory group to include their feedback into the project’s approach, design and communications.
Team
- Professor Caroline Oliver
- Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou
- Professor Carol Vincent
2020 was highly unpredictable, and our research highlighted that more needs to be done in understanding the vastly different experiences of the pandemic for autistic children, young people and their families. Our team was proud to be working closely with families in a collaborative venture to gain insight into their unique experiences.
We hope that sharing families’ stories can help inform wider strategies to improve their experiences of education, as well as families’ relationships with educators in mainstream schools.
Children on the autism spectrum are particularly vulnerable to being excluded from school. Research has shown that mainstream schools are not always fully sensitised nor equipped to respond to the needs of autistic students. Our research shows that lockdown and transitioning back to school can be difficult, especially when children must work in unfamiliar spaces in uncertain times.
These conditions may affect family decision-making and autistic children’s desire for participation in mainstream schooling, leading to potential further exclusions. We must ensure that disruptions caused by the COVID-19 crisis do not result in rollbacks of the rights they have worked so hard to advance.
We would like to invite you to take in part in a research project, that examines the experiences of parents and children and young autistic people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are particularly interested in families’ experiences of the closure of mainstream schools, lockdown, and the re-opening of schools in September. The research is funded by BERA (the British Educational Research Association). It will run for seven months, from October 2020 to April 2021.
Caroline, Georgia and Carol are a team of experienced researchers from the UCL Institute of Education. We have backgrounds in research with autistic children and young people with autism (Georgia) and research with parents (Carol and Caroline). Caroline has autistic children who attend mainstream schools.
We think that the topic of this research is particularly important because autistic children and young people will have their own, distinctive experiences of this period.
They may find that changes to routine cause considerable anxiety. Lockdown and transitioning back to school may be difficult, especially when children must maintain social distancing and potentially work in unfamiliar spaces/with unfamiliar teachers. Some children may have benefitted from staying at home, experiencing less social pressure, fewer sensory challenges and more time spent on activities they chose.
We would like to increase our knowledge about the experiences of families, by speaking with parents and children directly. We believe our findings from these conversations will provide schools and policy makers with useful information about how to make the return to school, and school life in general, easier and more productive for autistic children and young people.
This is a first-step, small-scale study. We wish to talk to 15 mothers or fathers who have an autistic child at a mainstream school. We would like also to talk to some children and young people (between the ages of 10 and 18), but we appreciate that not all will want to take part (if you are happy with your child potentially participating, we will provide separate information for them to help them decide).
We are contacting parents through social media groups and organisations that support families with autistic children. We hope to make our sample of families diverse in terms of background and ethnicity.
We will arrange a meeting with you at a date and time that suits you. If you would prefer a face to face conversation, we can visit you in your home, or if you would prefer an online meeting, we will arrange a zoom/skype call, again at a time and date that suits you.
We envisage our conversation would take about 45-60 minutes. Some of the issues we would like to talk about include:
- your family’s experiences of lockdown and home-schooling
- decision-making on returning to school
- support offered by the school
- experiences of returning to school in September.
We will give you a £15 supermarket voucher to thank you for your time.
If both you and your child are happy for them to take part, then we would like to ask them to represent their experiences of lockdown and return to school, choosing from materials which we will supply (such as a camera, drawing materials, modelling clay, lego).
We will let these models/pictures guide our conversation with them. However, if they would prefer to just talk, that too is fine with us. We will discuss the best way to work with your children, and tailor our approach.
We don’t believe so. All the conversations will be confidential, and we will not use the real names of anyone in your family, the children’s schools, your workplaces or your locality in anything we write about the research. All the information we collect will be anonymised and stored securely on our university password protected sites. It will be destroyed after 5 years.
We are very aware that the pandemic, lockdown and the easing of lockdown have been and remain challenging situations for many of us and can generate considerable anxiety.
If you or your child were to become distressed or feel uncomfortable during our conversation, we will immediately pause the interview and ask if you wish to stop. Similarly, you and/or your child can withdraw from the research at any time without needing to give a reason.
This project has been reviewed and approved by the UCL IOE Research Ethics Committee.
We will produce separate briefings to share the findings with:
- families
- young autistic people
- schools
- relevant government departments (Department for Education, Cabinet Office on Disability).
We will also produce a report and write blogs for BERA (the research funders) and UCL. As we said above, no individual participant will be identifiable in these reports.
The research promises to have policy impact by identifying ways in which mainstream schools can change after the lockdown to improve the experiences and outcomes of autistic children and young people, as well as their teachers and parents.
No. It is entirely up to you whether or not you choose to take part. We hope that if you do choose to be involved then you will find it a valuable experience.
Thank you for reading our information sheet. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if there is anything else you would like to know.
Professor Caroline Oliver: c.oliver@ucl.ac.uk
Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou: georgia.pavlopoulou@ucl.ac.uk
Prof Carol Vincent: carol.vincent@ucl.ac.uk
The controller for this project will be UCL. The UCL Data Protection Officer provides oversight of UCL activities involving the processing of personal data, and can be contacted at data-protection@ucl.ac.uk
This ‘local’ privacy notice sets out the information that applies to this particular study. Further information on how UCL uses participant information from research studies can be found in our ‘general’ privacy notice for participants in research studies here.
For participants in health and care research studies, see UCL General Privacy Notice for Participants and Researchers in Health and Care Research Studies.
The information that is required to be provided to participants under data protection legislation (GDPR and DPA 2018) is provided across both the ‘local’ and ‘general’ privacy notices. The lawful basis that will be used to process any personal data is: ‘Public task’ for personal data and ’Research purposes’ for special category data. We will be collecting personal data such as: parents’ occupation, names of schools used, ethnicity of children and parents.
Your personal data will be processed so long as it is required for the research project. We will anonymise or pseudonymise the personal data you provide and will endeavour to minimise the processing of personal data wherever possible.
If you are concerned about how your personal data is being processed, or if you would like to contact us about your rights, please contact UCL in the first instance at data-protection@ucl.ac.uk
Contact us
Centre for Sociology of Education and Equity (CSEE)
Department of Education, Practice and Society
UCL Institute of Education
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
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