14. The Child Trap: ASN in Scottish Schools with Jules Sandilands

The Pink Elephant

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In this podcast I speak to Jules Sandilands, education correspondent for the Scottish Union for Education . Jules has written three pieces for SUE related to the exponential increase of children being diagnosed with ‘Additional Support Needs’ in Scottish Schools. Sitting at 40.5% of children in Scottish schools, a rapid increase in the past ten years Jules wonders ‘are we seeing autism socialisation’?

Three pieces on ASN Here:
SUE NEWSLETTER NUMBER 9
SUE NEWSLETTER 63
SUE NEWSLETTER 98...

As the parameters of diagnoses are so broad to be meaningless - are we wrongly labelling many children who require other kinds of support? Is there a case to be made that it’s the school system itself which is creating the problem?

In the 1990s Ritalin became a popular go-to medication to ‘calm children down’ who had ‘behaviour problems’ in schools. In hindsight we can see how this became largely a medicalising of boyhood, as boys - more often boisterous were called out for ‘not sitting properly’. Yet experts promoted this and damaged a lot of kids. In 2025 the rise in prescription SSRIs has increased manifold for under 16s for behavioural issues, and depression. Is history repeating itself?

What becomes apparent to me is that this program cannot sustain itself. As we prime children to be medicalised, we prime them for state dependence, we prime them for a system that will manage them for the rest of their lives. This trap depresses children which in turn depresses society which in turn destabilises the very ground we stand on.

We must do better.

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Scottish Union for Education (https://scottishunionforeducation.substack.com/)

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