Blog
Category: <span>Research</span>
October 5, 2026
Nearly 25%: the share of UK teachers and support staff who reported no training at all on supporting neurodivergent pupils, in a 2026 survey of 177 school staff (York St John University, 2026).
Small numbers. Real people.
This is the sister article to our piece on secondary PGCE trainees. If you are neurodivergent and thinking about a primary PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education, the one-year route into teaching, usually leading to Qualified Teacher Status, or QTS), it is for you. It is also for the mentors, tutors and course leaders who support you.
What does “neurodivergent” mean here?
Neurodivergent (having a brain that works differently from what society treats as typical) covers autism, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, Tourette’s and more. Many people have more than one.
October 5, 2026
Many neurodivergent people make excellent teachers. The research suggests the training route, not the person, is often where things go wrong.
The numbers first
• 149: the number of autistic teachers and school staff in the largest UK survey of its kind (Wood and Happé, 2023).
• 9: the number of neurodivergent student teachers in a recent qualitative study, who reported a risk of withdrawing from their programme, especially around placements (“There’s only so much the school can change about itself…”, 2025).
• 4: the number of secondary trainees with dyslexia in the one English study that looked closely at secondary training (Jacobs et al., 2021).
July 19, 2026
Lateral Thinking and Neurodivergent Students: What the Research Actually Says In short: Lateral thinking means solving problems by an indirect route. Edward de Bono coined the term in 1967. His version was never rigorously tested, but a closely related idea, divergent thinking, has a real research literature. The evidence on neurodivergence and creative thinking is […]
