How to reform the education and training system to better suit neurodivergent learners

I delivered this speech at an AITD event on tailoring the education system to neurodivergent students. As sweeping changes were required, I decided that a suitably noble title would be required for myself.

Ministerial colleagues, distinguished AITD guests, it is my honour to deliver my maiden speech as Co-Minister for Education tonight. I’d like to begin by extending my gratitude to my constituents and my party faithful for giving me this mandate to create reform. I know my appointment was a controversial one - my views on reforming Australia’s education system have seen me labelled a radical. But in the present environment, I believe radical change is what we need to improve outcomes for neurodivergent and neurotypical learners alike.

Some of you might wonder what my qualifications are. Do I perhaps have a PhD in pedagogy, a masters in adult education or even a humble DipEd? Foolish question - one does not need such qualifications to be a minister! Instead what qualifies me to make sweeping policy recommendations across the entire educational system from primary and secondary education to university, vocational and workplace education is my lived experience of autism and ADHD.

I’d like to take you back to when I was a little tacker. From the outside, my exposure to formal education was positive. I was in gifted and talented programs and was elected school captain in primary school. I got into a selective entry high school and attained an ENTER (aka ATAR) of 98.5. At university, I graduated with first class honours in environmental science and was offered a PhD scholarship. Notwithstanding the fact that I didn’t finish the PhD, I’d say that’s a pretty good run at education.

However, the internal experience was quite different. Primary school was fine. I was bookish but the other kids didn’t mind. At high school though, I copped a bit of bullying. It wasn’t particularly intense but being a sensitive soul I was rather averse to going to school as a result and missed close to 50 days of school in years 7 and 8. When I changed schools to Melbourne High the bullying went away but I found the high pressure academic environment exceedingly anxiety provoking. I spent many of my afternoons and evenings playing video games instead of studying. Those distractions felt quite involuntary. It was only the pressure of year 12 that actually got me to knuckle down. I got through it and did well in the end but looking back on my time I wonder what the point of it all was? I can’t remember much of what I learned during years 11 and 12.

You’d think it might be better for university - after all I chose the subjects? Sadly despite achieving good marks and spending $40k, I have not retained much of the content. Nor do I remember anything from mandatory OHS training I’ve done at various workplaces.

However, I do have some positive stories to share. I’ve worked as a software developer for 10 years and the way I learned to code is an interesting model to consider. It wasn’t from classes at school or university: I cut my teeth on Java through being immersed in computer games. There was a game I loved, Runescape, and I found a community of other players who figured out how to automate their characters by writing code. I was highly motivated to make my character level up and devoted hundreds of hours to refining the code for my chicken killer bot. When I later did coding assignments in year 12 and university, it was easy.?

The other positive story I’ll share is from TAFE. A few years ago, I decided to enrol in a Certificate II in Carpentry at my local TAFE. I went down to 4 days per week at work and joined a group of first year apprentices as we learned how to build a house from the foundations up. What I found fascinating was the way they taught trigonometry. I had learned trig back in high school and remember it being a very boring, rote experience. At TAFE, it was immediately applicable: the workbook didn’t ask us to calculate the lengths of triangles in the abstract, it asked us to calculate how long a rafter was for a roof.

When we did the work health and safety units, it wasn’t boring either. Our teacher explained the importance of fatigue management by telling us about a friend of his who chopped off a thumb after prolonged overtime.

The other standout experience was my honours year. I worked much harder than I did for the rest of my university studies. It wasn’t just that I was way out of my depth, it was that I had a real project that I cared deeply about.

Having regaled you with my anecdotes, let me tell you about the policy changes I will be rolling out. Due to the powers vested in me by the Australian people, I will be making sweeping alterations to the entire education system but given the present audience I’ll just share the recommendations for tertiary and workplace education.

First of all: no more boring lectures, no more fake assignments and no more exams. Non-interactive, dull lectures are an effective sleep aid but not a useful way to learn. Put them online and let students listen to them at 3x speed if they prefer. Make sure the lecturers actually have direct experience with the subject matter so they can throw in juicy anecdotes to make it real. Set up tutorials for students who prefer real time collaboration and accountability but make sure there are quiet zones for people who struggle with background noise.

As for assignments: most of them are a massive waste of time. Instead of asking business students to write a fake policy document for a fake organisation, make it real. Find an actual organisation that has a real policy that needs to be drafted and get the students to have a go. Rather than asking biology students to rehash a pointless experiment that has been done hundreds of times before, get them to aid in the replication crisis by replicating an intriguing experimental result. It takes more effort from the teaching staff but it would radically boost student engagement and mean that their toil is actually having a tangible impact. They’d also be able to showcase it in their portfolio and discuss it in interviews.?

How about exams? They’re convenient for the university or certification body but how representative are they of the real world? What type of job involves high stakes, extremely urgent, non collaborative work where you can't consult any outside sources? Do we really think that humans are going to be able to compete with AI on memory challenges? We need to find better ways to assess mastery of a subject whilst preserving academic integrity. How about we assess based on the work products that are representative of the real world? A combination of a portfolio and reflective assignments are my pick. Ask the student to reflect on the experience: what did they achieve, how does it relate to other literature, what would they improve? They can’t cheat and pay someone to write it for them or use ChatGPT because the experiential part of it doesn’t exist anywhere online.

These changes may not be easy to implement but I reckon they will make education and training more engaging and more meaningful. We also need to make sure that the learning spaces are neuroinclusive - preserve the quiet spaces on campus, make sure that lighting isn’t too harsh and let people use whatever learning aids they need to thrive.

As for the details, I’m a lowly co-minister so will leave that up to you to implement.