‘I’m not lazy, I’m autistic’: Young woman says she ‘thrived’ in special school

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

A young woman who is autistic has described how she “thrived” in a special school and how difficult it was to learn in a mainstream setting.

Kate Raftery, 19, from Ashbourne in Dublin, was speaking at a 24-hour sleep out outside the Department of Education on Friday, where parents criticised the lack of special school places available for families.

Ms Raftery, who has also been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia, hypermobility, anxiety and depression, said she spent most of her life “hating” the school system because she was not was not given a proper school placement.

She said that before she got her autism diagnosis at age 17, she never understood why she struggled at school.

She tried attending four schools, and only at a school for dyslexic children did she feel she got a “proper” education, where she learned to read and write.

She said: “It was absolutely soul destroying to go from such an amazing school that met my needs, with only 10 in my class, to then be thrown into mainstream classes.

“In mainstream there is so much more going on other than a lesson. There is the clock ticking on the wall going, tick, tick, tick.

“There is the whispers from the popular kids in the back. There is a girl clicking her pen over and over.

“There is someone with a case of the sniffles, and there are the markers on the whiteboard screeching.

“Someone is tapping their foot, and someone is yawning, and all while the teacher is rambling about a subject I don’t know about, and all makes me just want to say ‘shut up’.

“But instead, I have to sit like nothing is happening. I have to sit still and look like I’m listening.

“I have to pay attention all day ’til I go home and I can finally be myself. I can finally feel my discomfort, and I can finally scream.

“How do you expect anything to go in when you’re teaching me when I have everything else going on in my brain?

“The only thing I’m thinking in your lesson is ‘help’. I’ve actually had a class where I just wrote a full page with the words ‘help me’.”

She said that after she received her autism diagnosis, it was “the most amazing feeling to get validated”.

“I’m not lazy, I’m not weak, and I’m not weird,” she said. “I am autistic.”

Ms Raftery said she was let down when initially told there was an autism class place for her, only to find out that she was being put in a mainstream class with a room where she could go if she felt “overwhelmed”.

“I hear that further education is easier for neurodivergent people, and I’m really hoping that’s true,” she added.

“To every kid out there now struggling to get into a school, who can’t work up the courage to get into a school building, who can’t sit in a mainstream class, I am with you.

“I understand, and please know you are not alone, and this is not your fault. You have been so wronged and let down by our governments, by our schools and by nasty people in general.

“It’s never you and always them.”