This article first appeared on 17 July 2026 in #NDChat, my newsletter on LinkedIn.

Every July, similar school reports are received across the UK. Inside, a paragraph or two that’s meant to sum up a child’s year — and for parents of neurodivergent children, it’s often a familiar frustration and disappointment.

Take this example, shared by ADHD Wise UK back in 2016 and still painfully recognisable a decade later:

“Darren has made pleasing progress throughout the year, although he does need to pay more attention in class. He is often distracted and distracts others. He needs to try to adopt a more mature attitude.”

Four sentences. No detail on what “pleasing progress” actually means, no context, no plan. Just a vague pat on the head followed by three criticisms that could describe almost any child with ADHD, delivered without a shred of insight into why they’re happening or what anyone intends to do about them.

The report that could be about anyone

The core problem isn’t that the report is negative — it’s that it’s generic. Swap “Darren” for any other name and the sentence still reads true for thousands of children. That’s the tell. A report that could apply to nearly every child with the same diagnosis isn’t actually describing the child in front of the teacher — it’s describing the diagnosis, filtered through a template.

For a neurotypical child, a vague report is a missed opportunity. For a neurodivergent child, it’s actively unhelpful, because it gives the child (and their parents) no usable information about what’s driving the behaviour or what “better” would look like.

Where this needs a nuanced take, not just a defence

It would be easy to write this article as a simple takedown of teachers and schools. But there’s a harder, more honest point worth making: it is reasonable to expect a child with ADHD to work on concentration, on reducing distraction, on self-regulation. Lowering the bar entirely isn’t kindness — it’s a quiet way of teaching learned helplessness, and it builds a glass ceiling a child can spend years bumping into without ever being told it’s there.

The issue was never the expectation. Expecting more attention, less distraction, more emotional maturity — these can be legitimate, even necessary, goals. The issue is entirely in how that expectation is set, worked towards, and reported back.

What makes feedback like this useless

🟠 No baseline and no benchmark. “Pleasing progress” compared to what? The start of the year? An expected trajectory? Without a reference point, it’s meaningless praise.

🟠 No agreed strategies. If concentration is the goal, what’s actually being tried — seating changes, movement breaks, chunked tasks, visual timers? A report that names the problem but not the intervention leaves the child carrying the responsibility alone.

🟠 No sense of agency. Was the child involved in setting this goal? Do they know what’s being asked of them in terms they understand, or are they finding out for the first time via a letter addressed to their parents?

🟠 No small wins. Growth for a neurodivergent child is rarely linear or dramatic. If the only things worth reporting are “distracted” and “immature,” every quieter, smaller success — the day he self-corrected, the week he asked for a break instead of melting down — goes unrecorded and uncelebrated.

What a genuinely helpful report looks like instead

🟠 Specific, observed detail. Not “needs to pay more attention” but something like: “Darren’s focus is strongest in the first 20 minutes of a lesson and during hands-on tasks; it drops noticeably during long listening periods.” That’s information a parent and child can actually act on.

🟠 Named strategies, not just named problems. What’s been tried this year, what worked, what didn’t, and what’s planned next term.

🟠 Progress against the child’s own trajectory, not a generic classroom average.

🟠 Language the child could hear without shame. A report is often read aloud to the child, or they overhear it discussed. “Distracts others” lands very differently from “is working on quieter ways to get a friend’s attention.”

🟠 Room for the child’s voice. Even a single line — what the child themselves thought went well, or found hard — signals that they’re a participant in their own progress, not just its subject.

The real difference

Set the same expectations. Ask a child with ADHD to work on attention, on managing distraction, on emotional regulation — those goals don’t need to be softened or removed. What needs to change is the machinery around them: the agreed strategies, the way small progress gets noticed and named, and the degree of agency the child has in the story being told about them.

A report that says “must try harder” costs a teacher two minutes to write and gives a family nothing. A report that says what’s been tried, what’s shifted, and what’s next costs a little more time — and actually helps.