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Exam season through a neurodivergent lens


Dr FREYA SPICER-WHITE, Chief Clinical Officer at Outcomes First Group, shares her insights.


The exam season is a complex interaction of cognitive load, new sensory environments, emotional regulation, executive functioning, and expectations around performance. For many neurodivergent students, this combination of stressors can significantly increase the demands placed upon them.


One key factor is executive functioning. Revision requires planning, prioritising, initiating tasks, sustaining attention, and shifting between topics, all skills that


can be effortful for neurodivergent learners. What may appear as “avoidance” is often a reflection of the genuine difficulty they are experiencing of knowing where to start, how to structure time, or how to maintain focus over extended periods. This can lead to a cycle of overwhelm, procrastination, and self-criticism.


Cognitive load and processing differences can also play a role. Many neurodivergent students expend more mental energy decoding information, organising thoughts, or maintaining working memory. During exams, where time pressure is high, this can reduce the cognitive capacity available for demonstrating knowledge, even when their understanding is sound.


The sensory and environmental demands of exam settings can further compound this. Bright lights, the sound of pens, large halls, or even the presence of others can be distracting or distressing. This background level of sensory stress that competes with the task at hand.


Exam periods often amplify anxiety and uncertainty. Neurodivergent students may have a history of feeling misunderstood within education, which can heighten pressure. Additionally, many experience rejection sensitivity or perfectionism, making the stakes feel particularly high.


To give effective support, schools can:


• Encourage students to externalise their revision structure: support students to use visual timetables, chunked plans, and set themselves clear realistic revision goals.


• Support students to work in short bursts of focus, talk about incorporating movement breaks and focus on interest-based learning where possible.


• Use multi-sensory approaches e.g. diagrams, mind maps, audio recordings, and verbal rehearsal.


• Reduce initiation barriers: encourage students to start with the easiest or most familiar task to build their momentum and confidence.


Emotional and physiological support is equally important. Normalise exam stress response and offer co-regulation where needed; incorporate the teaching of grounding strategies for students (e.g. paced breathing, sensory tools) to support nervous system regulation; reframe revision as a practice, not performance, to reduce pressure.


At a systems level, schools can offer reasonable adjustments such as extra time, rest breaks, smaller rooms, or assistive technology enabling equitable access.


It is also crucial to hold a balanced perspective. While many neurodivergent students find exams challenging, others thrive in exam conditions. The clarity of expectations, defined structure, and opportunity to work independently can align well with some neurodivergent profiles, enabling them to demonstrate their knowledge effectively.


During this up-coming exam season, schools can move away from assumptions and pressure, and instead move towards how understanding each student’s unique profile of strengths and needs will support their performance and wellbeing as they sit their exams.


May 2026


Breaking down the anxiety barrier: effective


support for EBSNA We hear from Dr DUNCAN GILLARD, Lead Psychologist at Enable Trust


Whilst the most recent Government figures show a very slight improvement in terms of overall absences and the percentage of persistent absentees in the 2024-25 school year, severe absenteeism is still very much on the rise, at nearly 2.3% of the total student population. This has led some contributors to the literature to characterise the current situation as a national school attendance crisis, caused by multiple factors including anxiety and mental health issues.


We also know that one of the major issues to providing effective support to students who feel too anxious to attend school is actually getting to them in the first place. By definition, severely absent students are accessing a very restricted proportion of the school week, if they are managing to get into school at all. And many professionals and teams – both from specialist external services and from within schools’ own pastoral staff – are only set up to work in specific spaces, to which these students often feel unable to come.


Some educational services across the country are beginning to break down such barriers to effective support. As part of Enable Trust, a Multi- Academy Trust of special schools, Enable Inclusion Team (EIT) is a specialist educational outreach service, offering evidence-based therapeutic support to students presenting with what is commonly referred to as Emotionally- Based School Non-Attendance (EBSNA).


The team’s work is underpinned by eight core principles of practice: • Principle One: The Application of Evidence-Base Therapeutic Processes. Only well-evidenced therapeutic processes are applied. This means at least two Randomised Controlled Trial studies have been published showing clear and positive impact from the processes being applied.


• Principle Two: Community-Based. Young people are met where they are at, geographically speaking.


• Principle Three: Holistic. The young person is treated as a whole person, not just as a student. This means focusing the work, and the conversations, on what matters most to the young person, at that moment.


• Principle Four: Relationships as a Foundation for Change. Positive and trusting relationships are the foundation upon which good wellbeing i ntervention work is built.


• Principle Five: Pragmatic and Data-Led. Good data is good feedback, through which we can learn. It’s essential to gather data that is clearly related to the purpose of the work.


• Principle Six: Outcomes Focused. Too many intervention teams and services these days focus mainly – or even entirely – on outputs, instead of on outcomes.


• Principle Seven: Person- and Family-Centred. Planning with the student and their family, rather than doing to them, is essential.


• Principle Eight: Contextually Focused. The focus of the work can be characterised as creating a context that enables the young person to thrive socially, psychologically and educationally.


So far, the outcomes from working in this way with students presenting as EBSNA include an increase in weekly school sessions attended from less than one per week to nearly six per week, on average. The next step in the journey for Enable Inclusion Team is to support educational organisations in other parts of the country to authentically embed these same eight principles in their own practices.


www.education-today.co.uk 21


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