It’s not difficult to support autistic students. They’re usually the ones who’ve done the reading – and probably a bit extra, too. They’re great at working independently. They’re tough and resilient – they had to be, to make it through the gauntlet of school.
So why, then, do autistic students have the highest dropout rate of any disability group in UK universities – with 36 per cent leaving their course early, compared with 29 per cent of the general student population, according to the North East Autism Society? Perhaps it’s because only 21 per cent report receiving adequate help during their studies.
The higher education sector is failing autistic students. To turn things around, we all need to innovate. And the good news is that most innovations that support autistic students require very minor adjustments to your teaching practice.
Here are three simple tips to make your classroom more autism-friendly, drawn from years of supporting autistic students – and from a lifetime of being autistic myself!
1. Welcome quiet students
Autistic students are often the quiet ones in the room – and it might surprise you to know that many of them are deeply ashamed of that. Teachers may have been telling them throughout their school careers that they should contribute in class, but they just can’t. For some students, quietness is a response to past trauma; for others, it’s what is known as “situational mutism”. Whatever the cause, the shame is pervasive and builds up over time.
You can do a lot for those students just by welcoming them. Something as simple as a line in your introductory email or slides, stating that students who learn quietly are just as welcome in your class as people who learn by speaking and doing, can make a huge difference to your autistic students.
Another form of welcoming quietness is making use of text to supplement speech wherever possible. Autistic students don’t always pick up on spoken instructions, often because of sensory distractions, and can be too ashamed to ask for them to be repeated. If you always follow up verbal instructions with written ones, you can avoid the problem.
- Stop placing the onus on neurodivergent students to ‘fit in’
- Spotlight guide: Making your campus neurodivergent friendly
- The 10 steps towards inclusivity in universities
2. Explain how things work
Autistic students tend to be very independent when it comes to their studies but can be tripped up by an unfamiliar administrative process, such as sending forms to a different office.
You can help with that by giving step-by-step explanations for any new processes. Your non-autistic students are likely to benefit from the clarity, too. Disability activists refer to this as the “kerb-cut effect”, after the dropped kerbs, which were invented for wheelchairs, also proved useful for prams, suitcases and skateboards. When you innovate to meet the needs of one disabled group, you often end up helping other people in the process.
You can also help by rephrasing your assignment questions in different ways to show the big picture. Autistic students may become very hung up on exact wording and miss the point of the question through focusing too closely on the details. The more clearly you can explain what your question is supposed to achieve, the better.
3. Assume neurodiversity
You might have a couple of students who are registered as autistic and have formal accommodations and adjustments, but it’s very likely there are more in your class that you don’t know about. The same goes for those with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and other neurodivergences.
It would be nice to think that increasing rates of diagnosis mean that we’ve now “caught” all autistic people before they reach university age and have put in place proper supports. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Diagnosis isn’t accessible in many places, and access issues are compounded by other axes of inequality, such as race, class and gender. Diagnosis also tends to follow a crisis. It’s not at all unusual for a young person to cope well in a familiar environment surrounded by family and friends, but hit a crisis point when they leave home for the first time. They may then find themselves caught in a diagnostic process that could take years and stretch across their whole time at university.
If you assume that your students are all neurodivergent, instead of assuming the reverse, you can build in the understanding and acceptance that your undiagnosed students might need, right from the start of their course.
When you welcome, accept and support autistic students, your efforts matter more than you’ll ever see, because your autistic graduates will face even greater challenges once they leave your classroom. According to last year’s Buckland Review, autistic graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed after 15 months as non-autistic graduates, most likely to be on zero-hours contracts, and least likely to be in permanent roles. Often, they give up trying. The most common reason given for not looking for work was lack of confidence, which the Buckland Review sees as a result of “negative educational or life experiences”.
We can all play a part in turning those negative experiences into positives.
Cora Beth Fraser is associate lecturer at The Open University. She was shortlisted for Most Innovative Teacher of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards 2025. A full list of shortlisted candidates can be found here.
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