La diagnosi eccessiva di bambini si affaccia sul fatto che crescere è “disordinato e irregolare”, afferma Jeremy Hunt | Bisogni educativi speciali
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/aug/27/overdiagnosis-of-children-overlooks-that-growing-up-is-messy-and-uneven-says-jeremy-hunt
di SomniaStellae
19 commenti
The think tank report is here:
https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/out-of-control/
https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Out-of-Control_.pdf
The alternative is under diagnosis, like when I was growing up, where some kids get no support and just have to go along thinking they’re broken and nobody cares about them.
Jeremy *unt the man who destroyed the NHS. Why would we listen to you?
I, to some extent as a GP agree with what is said. I have over the last few years witnessed many poor parenting skills, parents bringing their child to the GP wondering if they have ADHD or autism as they cannot focus or aren’t interacting. When enquiring, they are often spending 2-3-4-5 hours per day staring at a tablet screen watching moving images, nothing educational.
I once had a mum come to see me concerned her 2 year old wasn’t yet speaking, on enquiring nobody had actually ever tried speaking to the child, letting it watch people speak on TV, the mum just assumed the child would learn English out of thin air.
Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly more and more correct cases of ADHD/Autism/SEND being diagnosed due to increased awareness, but I feel that since COVID and the iPad kid era, some of these problems are just related to poor parenting practices and expecting healthcare to pick up the slack with their undernourished/non-interacted with child.
Altogether now:
🎶Jeremy Hunt. He’s a C U Next Tuesday 🎶
That is all.
Thank you.
I actually agrees to an extent, and also some people grown up to use whatever ism to justify bad behaviour, i work in the photography industry, you wont believe how many photographers doing SH, then justify saying is autism or whatever.
Just because a child is diagnosed with a SEN need does not mean they automatically are entitled for additional support such as EHCP
The issue with restricting EHCPs to just additional need schools is that even for children who whole heartedly qualify for the support, there is often not enough spaces, even for those who are unable to have their needs met in a mainstream school, meaning they would be left to fend in a mainstream environment with no additional support and would somehow just expect the schools to cope with this?
Then why do we expect kids to thrive in crowded classrooms with the same resources, curricula and punish schools if kids don’t achieve identical learning outcomes based on standardized scores.
Hot take: the governments job is to try and make sure that growing up is not messy and uneven as much as possible.
No offence, Jeremy, but then if I take your words at face value, I believe successive governments (including the one of which **you** were part!) should also have been providing greater funding for greater diversity of types of education in our education system to help accommodate the “uneven” nature of how kids grow up.
But somehow, I don’t think your words are about trying to make a progressive improvement to the world. I think they’re about telling a group of uninformed ignorant people what they want to hear, irrespective of how correct or incorrect it is, while the current government’s popularity is waning.
He was part of a government that devastated public services including mental health support, education, early years support, youth services, and just about anything else that ordinary people might need. Why is anyone listening to a word he says?
Doesn’t seem to contain any actual research showing that these conditions are overdiagnosed, just assumes that they must be.
im no fan of jeremy hunt. but as people have got more aware, diagnosis has massively increased.
when i was at school sen support like having an assistant with them + dla payments was usually for the worst cases.
no doubt if i was in school now i would have been tagged with something. lol.
as to whether the criteria for diagnosis needs raising i dont think so, awareness is fine. just dont incentivise it.
maybe raise the criteria for the expensive support and dla payments so it only covers the cases that really need it. that way it would still be sustainable.
Policy Exchange are consistently rated one of the least transparent think tanks in terms of keeping their funding secret. The small amount we do know about from whistleblowers etc suggests it’s mostly fossil fuel lobby groups and hard-right American billionaires.
SEND isn’t behavioural issues. It’s just lots of those kids act out because they become frustrated when they don’t understand the world around them.
These kids aren’t getting diagnosed because of behaviour. Those on the spectrum think in a fundamentally different way to people who are neurotypical. That’s without the inability to read facial expressions, body language and the other things that often come with it like sensory processing disorder, hyper mobility and visual problems (Irlens) and mental health issues.
I’m normally accused of being pretty woke but I tend to agree as well in this instance. My wife is a teacher and I just feel in general, from anecdotal evidence admittedly, that kids are mollycoddled a lot more than they should be. They don’t learn the skills and resilience needed to function in the real world. They go through their entire school life being treated with kids gloves then have a massive culture shock when they realise the real world isn’t like that. There’s also the overly used talking point of parents now expecting schools to essentially be substitute parents and the parents either not wanting to or not having the time to actually fulfil their parental responsibilities at home.
I will heavily caveat that’s not to say there aren’t kids who are being let down by the school system. There absolutely are and those who genuinely need additional support should get it and don’t. But a big part of that is spurious claims for parents of kids that just need to learn getting out of their comfort zone isn’t a bad thing despite being uncomfortable.
Even **if** ADHD is real, it’s overdiagnosed by 99 per cent. Most people who are claimed to have ADHD don’t have anything of the sort. They’re kids who are angry at parental breakups and resentful of the presence of step-parents and siblings. They’re kids who are badly brought up, or have a diet of E numbers or who are driven to madness by boring lessons and incompetent teachers.
Instead of dealing with these issues and taking responsibility, doctors call it ADHD and call it a day (and satisfy their overlords on big pharma)
Why on earth would anyone want to listen to what that arsehole says ? Was a total oxygen thief as health minister (and generally as a human being).
Ah, right, yeah, so this makes a mockery of standardised testing, right?