Written by Lesley Taylor, Clinical Psychologist and Co-founder | Spectrum North West | HCPC Registered
One of the most harmful things said to children who struggle with school is this:
“You won’t get away with that in the real world.”
It is usually aimed at children who cannot manage the school day, cannot maintain the attendance expected of them, cannot tolerate the sensory, social or emotional demands placed upon them, or cannot keep producing what the system recognises as success.
For children with special educational needs, that message lands with particular force.
- It tells them that if they cannot cope with school, they cannot cope with life.
- It tells them that their difficulty is moral, not contextual.
- It tells them that distress is defiance and incapacity is excuse-making.
But history tells us something very different. School, at least in the form we now recognise it, is not the same thing as the real world. It is one particular social arrangement, built at a particular point in history, shaped by particular economic, political and cultural priorities. Once we understand that, it becomes much harder to keep pretending that children are failing simply because they cannot thrive within it.
School has not always existed in this form
There has long been some form of organised teaching in England, particularly through church and cathedral schools, but there was no national system of education before the nineteenth century. Schooling was patchy, uneven and heavily shaped by class, money, religion and geography. Many children had no formal education at all. Others learned in grammar schools, charity schools or dame schools, but these were limited, local and inconsistent.
For many children, especially poorer children, learning happened through family life, work, local community, practical participation and religious instruction rather than through a daily, universal institution. In other words, childhood was not automatically equated with school. It was possible to grow, learn, contribute and belong without spending nearly all of one’s formative years inside a standardised system.
This matters because it reminds us that human learning has never naturally been one-size-fits-all.
Children have always learned in different ways, at different paces, in different settings, through different relationships and different forms of participation. The idea that the proper place for all children is to sit in one kind of institution, under one set of routines, judged against one set of norms, is historically recent. It is not the inevitable shape of education. It is a choice societies made.
The Industrial Revolution did not invent education, but it helped build the modern school system
Schools existed long before the Industrial Revolution, but the nineteenth century transformed schooling into something far more recognisable to us today: mass, compulsory, standardised and increasingly tied to state administration.
As Britain became more urban and industrial, there was growing pressure for a population that could read basic instructions, keep time, follow routines and fit the demands of an industrial society.
The 1833 Factory Act required limited schooling for some child workers, and the 1870 Education Act marked the first national commitment to elementary education in England and Wales. By 1880, attendance had become compulsory for children of certain ages.
These reforms were often presented as moral and progressive, and in some ways they were, but they also served economic and administrative purposes. Schooling helped create a more regulated population, one more legible to the state and more suited to the rhythms of industrial life.
This is why so many features of school still feel industrial in character: age-batching, bells, timetables, attendance registers, year-on-year standardisation, measurable outputs and the constant pressure to keep pace. Even where individual schools are compassionate, the architecture of the system still carries the logic of compliance, productivity and norming. It rewards children who can endure, adapt and perform within those terms. It struggles with children whose bodies, minds or nervous systems do not.
What this means for children with SEN
Once we stop treating school as a timeless fact of life, the way many children with SEN are spoken to begins to look even more unjust.
A child who cannot manage full-time attendance may be living with acute anxiety, sensory overwhelm, chronic health difficulties, trauma, unmet need, demand avoidance, autistic burnout, communication differences or a level of dysregulation that makes the school environment feel unmanageable or unsafe. Yet the language around them often reduces all of this to a question of resilience, effort or attitude.
- They are told they must get used to it.
- They are told the real world will not bend for them.
- They are told that everyone has to do things they do not want to do.
And this is where attendance becomes more than an administrative measure.
It becomes a moral one.
A figure such as 97% attendance is treated not merely as a target but as evidence of good parenting, good character, good schools and good children.
Falling below that threshold can trigger alarm, scrutiny and shame. For some children, especially those with SEN, that can mean being repeatedly exposed to a system that does not fit them and then being blamed for the harm that follows. The child who cannot attend is too often framed as refusing life itself, rather than struggling within one very narrow version of it.
But school is not the whole of life, and it is not the only legitimate preparation for adulthood.
The real world contains homes, relationships, communities, workplaces, creative lives, practical skills, care responsibilities, different forms of communication, different rhythms of living and many different ways of contributing. Plenty of adults do not thrive in crowded, noisy, highly social, tightly scheduled environments with little autonomy and no sensory escape. Many work flexibly, remotely, independently or in specialist roles that suit the way they think and function.
The suggestion that a child must prove their fitness for adult life by enduring a rigid school structure is not realism. It is ideology.
When systems are rigid, children internalise failure
One of the most damaging consequences of rigid systems is that they teach children the wrong lesson about themselves.
Instead of learning, “This environment is not meeting my needs,” they learn, “I am the problem.”
Instead of hearing, “There may be another way,” they hear, “You are not coping because you are weak, difficult or unwilling.”
Instead of being helped to understand their neurology, disability, distress or difference, they absorb the idea that success belongs to those who can suppress discomfort and keep going regardless.
For children with SEN, this can become a devastating false binary: attend and suffer, or fail and be judged. Families are often left trying to protect a child’s wellbeing while also defending themselves against accusations of poor boundaries, low expectations or avoidance.
Yet the deeper question is rarely asked:
What if the problem is not that the child cannot cope with the real world, but that our school system still reflects an old model of standardisation that was never designed for the full range of human minds and bodies in the first place?
We need a more honest and humane conversation
Understanding the history of schooling does not mean dismissing education or claiming that school has no value. It means being honest about what school is: a human system, built for certain purposes, carrying certain assumptions, and therefore capable of excluding those who do not fit its dominant model.
Once we recognise that, we can stop using the language of the “real world” as a weapon against children who are already struggling.
Children with SEN do not need to be frightened into conformity by warnings about adulthood.
- They need understanding, flexibility, respect and provision that starts from who they are.
- They need adults willing to question whether high attendance at any cost is always evidence of success.
- And they need systems that recognise a simple truth: a child is not a failure because a rigid institution cannot accommodate them.
If anything, history suggests the opposite.
The failure lies in mistaking one narrow model of education for life itself.
About the author
Lesley Taylor is a Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of Spectrum North West, based in Warrington. She is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). As a clinician and a parent of neurodivergent children, she writes and speaks on neurodevelopmental assessment, education and advocacy. She also co-hosts the podcast Masking For It, which explores these topics with honesty and insight.