2026 Runner-Up essay - "ADHD and Discrimination in School Discipline"
- LSE Pro Bono
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
Congratulations to Liam Conte, from the Fortismere School on achieving second place on the 2026 Justice Pathways Programme 'Justice Brief' Competition!
Prompt: "Studies suggest that some groups of students are more likely to receive exclusions or serious disciplinary sanctions. Focus on one protected characteristic (such as race, disability, or special educational needs) and explain how discrimination law is meant to protect students in schools. Then assess whether current rules and school practices do enough to prevent unfair treatment, and propose one change that could improve fairness in disciplinary decisions."
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects 3-5% of school-aged children between 5 and 17 in the UK. The NHS defines ADHD as a neurodevelopmental condition where “the brain works differently compared to other people”, resulting in inattentivity, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. This can have a significant impact in the classroom, including disruptions or lack of concentration during lessons. (Commons Library, 2023; NHS, 2025) Despite the prevalence, these behaviours are often treated as deliberate misconduct, leading to disproportionate disciplinary action, which can be harmful to students’ mental health as well as to their education. This can undermine principles of legal and social fairness, which this justice brief seeks to correct by establishing a solution to the issue in order to engage and encourage ADHD-affected students to learn in a productive manner that would not only benefit them, but the class as a whole.
Discrimination law protects individuals against unfair treatment because of a particular characteristic. Under the 2010 Equality Act, schools have legal duties to avoid discrimination and to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils, with ADHD classifying as a disability accordingly. This means that ADHD qualifies for protections, so employers and educational institutions must make reasonable adjustments to accommodate these students. However, current disciplinary practices often fail to fully account for ADHD-related behaviour, which means that discrimination law is not fulfilling its required role in protecting those with ADHD. A notable demonstration of this indirect discrimination is that approximately 10,900 children were permanently excluded from English state schools in the 2023-24 academic year, with over half having special education needs. (The Guardian, 2024) This reveals a structural failure to integrate the requirements of children with special needs, particularly those with ADHD, and that current discrimination laws are, in this sense, inadequate.
In order to reduce disciplinary issues affecting students with ADHD, schools should be legally required to have a standardised ADHD accommodation framework, which can be split into 2 sections: preventative and corrective measures, rather than harsh rebukes that can damage the confidence of said students.
The ‘antiquated’ school system often overlooks the importance of ADHD support, as it is often less obvious, with other conditions prioritised over it, leading to a large minority of students who struggle to adapt to the school system. It is only just that the school system adapts to meet their needs in order to uphold the principle of equality of opportunity; students should not be disadvantaged because of a certain characteristic that they cannot control or suppress.
While the cause of misconduct in lessons can be divided between two factors -- hyperactivity and attention deficit -- they can be corrected with similar solutions. The first proposal should act as a preventative approach and substitute for disciplinary measures: increased interactivity in lessons. The ‘gamification of learning’ has been proven to enhance the learning experience of pupils with ADHD by increasing motivation and focus by avoiding cognitive overload, and rather splitting content into mini-tasks with a clear goal at the end. A 2025 study of 72 students aged between 12 and 16 revealed that implementing these ‘gamified’ methods increased the mean task completion rate from 63% to 87%, and increased the mean focus duration from 18.5 to 28.7 minutes, in turn drastically growing the students’ average learning confidence by over 40%. (Gamified Hybrid Learning for Neurodiverse Students, 2025, Journal Neosantara Hybrid Learning) This highlights that more dynamic and participatory methods, such as tasks based on games, projects, discussions and other active learning activities, should be implemented in the UK’s education system, as a tool to engage students with ADHD and prevent them from being distracted or disrupting others in lessons, which is likely to improve scholastic performance.
The second section of the alteration seeks to address the issues with current disciplinary methods and will propose alternative corrective strategies for teachers when faced with a disruptive student with ADHD. Teachers often correct a student who is not paying attention in class by publicly correcting them, which may be considered as indirect discrimination if reprimanding is disproportionate in number and consequence is unfair. Studies reveal that adolescents with ADHD generally express negative feelings towards teachers due to “feeling humiliated after being shouted at” in class, often feeling alienated and excluded as a result. (Understanding the experiences of students and teachers of students diagnosed with ADHD: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the ADHD label in schools, 2017, University of Birmingham, p.20) This is a clear indicator for why over a third of children with ADHD are likely to have depression or anxiety, 5 times more likely than in children without ADHD. (Mental health in children with and without ADHD, 2025, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health) This therefore poses a major risk to the mental health of children and adolescents with ADHD in the UK, and therefore a systematic change to education must urgently be made in order to combat this. Furthermore, detention, suspension and expulsion criteria should be wholly reviewed to ensure that students with ADHD are not disproportionately affected, as these can have a negative effect on self-esteem, potentially leaving a sense of rejection over a disorder they are unable to control. It must be clarified that, fortunately, this should not be considered as deliberate discrimination, as teachers generally target behavioural issues. Nevertheless, a change should be implemented to improve student-teacher relationships and improve the overall school experience and academic performance. One such minor change could be the prioritisation of private constructive feedback instead of public correction, which can be perceived as critical and embarrassing.
Critics of such a measure may argue that the rest of the classroom should not have to change in order to serve the needs of a minority of students. However, it seems rather clear that a reduction in disruptions during class, including repeated reprimandings or distractions to other students, will subsequently lead to an increase in learning time which will ultimately serve in favour of the class as a whole.
If implemented, this new legally-required framework would act as a drastic change to serve justice to pupils with ADHD by increasing their opportunities and reducing indirect discrimination, which challenges many students with ADHD across the UK today. The preventative techniques would act as a barrier against interruptions while simultaneously engaging neurodivergent students who may have otherwise been distracted, and the corrective strategies would aim to limit the extent of disturbance while preserving their self-esteem and mental health, which are already vulnerable from the outset. Ultimately, these measures will support and strengthen students with ADHD, advancing fairness and inclusivity of learners with disabilities within the school system, ensuring they have the maximum capability to fulfil their academic and personal potential.
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