The staffroom neurodivergence problem school leaders don't see

When Chris Benson spoke publicly about his ADHD as a headteacher, more than 100 colleagues contacted him privately. To say ‘me too.’

'Those 100 people were already in schools,' he says. 'They were already teaching, leading, supporting children every day. Many had never disclosed to anyone in their workplace. Some were awaiting assessment. Others had been managing undiagnosed for decades.'

A striking image emerges: a profession full of people quietly carrying something they feel unable to name. And for Benson, it points to something HR leads and school business managers need to hear clearly: 'The silence in your staffroom is not the same as the absence of need.'

Managing by not being seen

Benson's vantage point is unusual. During over 15 years in school leadership, he watched neurodivergent teachers navigate a system that was not designed with them in mind.

'Mostly, they were managing by not being seen,' he says. 'Some of the most talented teachers I worked with were neurodivergent: deeply valued by pupils, parents and colleagues, yet frequently overlooked when it came to promotion or professional recognition. Their strengths were visible to everyone around them. The systems designed to identify and develop talent were not built in ways that captured those strengths effectively.'

What determined whether those teachers thrived had little to do with the difficulty of the school or the behaviour of its pupils. 'The decisive factor was whether the leadership around them created the conditions to grow or required them to shrink. The same person could thrive in one environment and struggle in another, not because they had changed, but because one culture made space for them and another did not.'

His own experience bore this out. He described a pattern familiar to many neurodivergent professionals: 'In the right environment, with the right leadership around me, I excelled. In the wrong one, I shrank to fit in. The difference was never about my capability. It was always about whether the culture created space for me to work in ways that played to my strengths.'

A systemic design problem

As for where the profession is going wrong, Benson notes the Teachers’ Standards (the framework against which competence is assessed throughout a teaching career) are not the primary problem. How they are applied forms the deeper issue.

'Demonstrating competence against the Teachers' Standards relies heavily on particular forms of evidence: lesson observations, written reflections, verbal articulation of practice, professional portfolios. These are familiar and well established. They are also, whether intentionally or not, tilted towards particular ways of thinking, communicating and processing information.'

Other regulated professions, he points out, have begun to address this. Medicine, law and policing increasingly recognise that competence can be demonstrated in multiple ways, and that flexibility in evidencing a standard does not mean lowering it. Teaching has been slow to make the same distinction.

'The result is that neurodivergent teachers can be assessed as less capable, not because they are less capable, but because the mechanism of assessment does not accommodate how they work best. That is a systemic design problem, not an individual failing.'

What good appraisal looks like

So what would it look like in practice for a school to do this differently? Benson's answer is simple.

'It starts with a conversation rather than a form. Before any appraisal cycle begins, a line manager or HR lead should be asking: how do you work best, and how can we structure this process so it gives you the best opportunity to demonstrate what you actually do?'

In practice, that might mean offering written reflection as an alternative to verbal discussion – or the reverse. It might mean sharing appraisal questions in advance rather than expecting someone to articulate complex professional judgements on the spot. It might mean recognising that a teacher who struggles with written planning documentation may nonetheless be delivering exceptional lessons, and finding ways to capture that evidence rather than defaulting to paperwork as proxy for quality.

'None of this requires different standards,' he says. 'It requires a willingness to ask rather than assume, and to design processes that are genuinely flexible rather than nominally inclusive.'

The retention crisis

The workforce implications of getting this wrong are significant, and increasingly evidenced. Teacher Tapp's survey of over 9,500 teachers found that one in four self-identify as neurodivergent, with a further significant proportion saying they were unsure.

'That is not a marginal issue,’ says Benson. ‘Most schools will have multiple members of staff quietly navigating neurodivergent profiles without any formal support, reasonable adjustments or workplace acknowledgement.'

Retention is where the pressure is most visible. Teacher Tapp's data shows that neurodivergent teachers in their thirties are significantly more likely to say they are considering leaving the profession than their neurotypical peers. These are educators at a critical point in their development, signalling an intention to go.

'Teaching is a high demand environment with significant sensory load, constant social performance requirements, unpredictable schedules and a volume of administrative expectation that falls disproportionately hard on people whose neurological profiles make those specific tasks costly,’ explains Benson. ‘Add to that the energy required to navigate a workplace that does not fully understand you, and the cumulative toll becomes significant.'

He also identifies nuance and disparate experiences throughout the sector: 'We talk about teacher workload as though it affects everyone equally. It does not. For many neurodivergent teachers, the hidden workload of adapting, compensating and performing neurotypicality is substantial. Addressing retention without understanding that dynamic means treating the symptom rather than the cause.'

Data, inspection and the gaps that remain

At a structural level, Benson argues the profession is working largely in the dark. The DfE's School Workforce Census captures disability status but not neurodivergence specifically: meaning there is no reliable baseline from which to measure progress or identify patterns.

A meaningful study would need to go beyond self-identification to understand disclosure rates, the relationship between neurodivergent profiles and retention at different career stages, and whether neurodivergent teachers are progressing into leadership at the same rate as their neurotypical peers. Teacher Tapp's data already suggests they are not: even when controlling for age, senior leaders are significantly less likely to identify as neurodivergent than classroom teachers in the same age group.

'Data would not solve the problem,' he acknowledges, 'but it would make it considerably harder to ignore.'

On inspection, his view is equally direct. Ofsted’s current position is that inspectors consider whether staff feel valued and supported as part of the leadership and governance judgement. This is ‘so broad as to be almost meaningless in practice. A school can score well on staff wellbeing measures while a significant proportion of its workforce is quietly struggling.'

What he would want an inspection framework to look for is evidence of actual workforce inclusion rather than performative policy: whether reasonable adjustments are normalised rather than treated as exceptional, and whether the school's professional culture is designed to work for a cognitively diverse staff body.

'Inspection frameworks shape behaviour,' he says. 'If neurodivergent workforce inclusion is never inspected, it will never be prioritised.'

Where to start

For HR leads or school business managers, Benson's advice is consistent: start with a conversation, not a policy.

'The instinct in HR is often to reach for a framework: a neurodiversity policy, a reasonable adjustments procedure, a staff survey. Those things have their place, but they come second. They come after you have created the conditions in which people actually feel safe enough to tell you what they need.'

Visible leadership matters. If nobody senior in a school has ever spoken openly about neurodivergence as a lived experience for staff, the silence communicates something. 'It communicates that this is not a safe conversation to have. Changing that does not require a grand gesture. It might be a line in a staff briefing, a CPD session that includes adults as well as pupils, or simply a line manager who asks rather than assumes.'

After that, he advises an honest assessment of processes: appraisal cycles, recruitment practices, meeting structures, written communication expectations. 'Ask honestly: are these designed for a cognitively diverse workforce, or do they assume a neurotypical default? Most will assume the latter, not through malice but through habit. Changing that habit is where genuine neuroinclusion begins — not in the policy document, but in the daily design of how work actually gets done.'

Chris Benson is founder of Head First Consulting.

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