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A study of more than 8,000 adolescents in the UK has examined why autistic pupils may report feeling less happy at school than their non-autistic peers.
The findings suggest that academic confidence, bullying and difficulties with other pupils may be important parts of the picture. However, the research cannot show that these factors caused lower well-being, or that changing them would necessarily remove the difference.
What the study found
Greer and colleagues analysed self-reported information from wave six of the UK Millennium Cohort Study. The data were collected in 2015 and 2016, when participants were around 14 years old.
The analysis included 271 autistic young people and 8,077 non-autistic young people. Autism was identified through a parent-reported professional diagnosis.
School well-being was assessed in two ways: positive affect, meaning feeling happy at school, and negative affect, meaning feeling unhappy at school.
Before other factors were taken into account, autistic pupils had a lower average happiness score: 4.03 compared with 4.40 among non-autistic pupils on a scale from 0 to 6. Around 27% of autistic participants said they felt unhappy at school most or all of the time, compared with around 14% of non-autistic participants.
In this unadjusted comparison, autistic pupils had more than twice the odds of reporting high negative affect at school.
Why the difference became less clear
The researchers then accounted for several measured factors, including academic self-concept, bullying, problems with peer relationships, social support, closeness and conflict with mothers, and socioeconomic factors.
After this adjustment, the difference in reported school well-being between autistic and non-autistic pupils disappeared. This does not prove that any one factor caused the original difference. It suggests that the measured academic, social, family and socioeconomic factors may help explain it.
Among autistic pupils, confidence in schoolwork was linked to school well-being. Those who felt capable in maths, English and science were more likely to report feeling happy about school and less likely to report often feeling unhappy there.
Feeling unhappy at school was also linked to being bullied and having more difficulty getting on with other pupils. In the analyses described, support from family and friends, closeness to mothers, and having friends at the same school were not clearly linked to reported happiness or unhappiness.
What the findings do not tell us
The study was a snapshot in time, so it cannot establish which came first: poorer well-being or the difficulties associated with it. The adjusted results should therefore not be read as proof that improving academic confidence or peer relationships would close the well-being gap.
The measures of well-being were brief and were not designed specifically with autistic pupils in mind. The study also did not assess sensory experiences, how well schools met pupils’ needs, or whether pupils attended mainstream or special schools.
The sample was predominantly White, at approximately 85% to 87%, and about three in four autistic participants were male. These characteristics may limit how well the findings represent autistic girls, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and autistic young people who are underrepresented in diagnosis or population cohorts.
Why this matters
The results place school feelings in a wider context than autism diagnosis alone. Academic self-confidence, bullying and relationships with peers were among the factors most closely connected with how autistic pupils described their school experience in this analysis.
At the same time, the data are now around 10 years old, and the study did not capture every aspect of school life. Current decisions about support should therefore consider more recent and more representative research, as well as the individual pupil’s own account of what helps or makes school difficult.
AI tools were used to assist with the preparation of this article.
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