Every mind matters
“We don’t need to tear everything down and start again,” says Architectus Principal Dr Kellee Frith of making schools more inclusive of neurodivergent learners.
These are welcome words for educators in a quickly changing world where neurodiversity is increasingly on the radar.
In 2023, the Disability Royal Commission recommended a legal entitlement for all children, regardless of ability, to attend a local mainstream school. It sent a clear and important message for schools and education designers: Change the environment, not the child.
But welcomed as it may have been, the Australian education system is already under pressure without the need to re-think school environments.
“We don’t propose radical changes,” says Dr Frith of renewing campuses to support all learners. “It’s more about understanding what will support more kids and give them more choices.”
Endeavour Hills Specialist School, Architectus
Dr Frith has the unique role of Education Environments Strategist at Architectus. For a recent research project, ‘A Spectrum of Learning: Designing Schools for Neurodiversity’, she partnered with colleague Rachel Faber and The Geelong College in Victoria to make recommendations for how the school could update its environment to cater for neurodivergent children and their teachers.
The recommendations, which include offering opportunities to retreat from overwhelming spaces and re-thinking artificial light and colour selection, aim to cater for different processing styles and give children who sometimes struggle a chance to self-regulate.
“Choice was a major theme – giving students the ability to self-select spaces that would help them self-regulate and get themselves back on task,” says Dr Frith.
“Many of our school environments aren’t friendly to people who are anything other than neurotypical. By providing choice to everyone, we’re destigmatizing the specific choices that individual students make.”
Endeavour Hills Specialist School, Architectus
“What are the natural human behaviours and how can we support them instead of forcing people to do something that doesn’t come naturally?”
The recommendations are simple moves based on research and considered analysis, rather than expensive or extensive structural architectural changes.
Limiting stressful situations or ‘pinch points’ is an illustrative example: Shifting groups of lockers out of circulation corridors reduces crowding and noise that can overwhelm certain students.
Similarly, cafeterias can easily pass food through an external servery window, negating the need for all kids to come into an overwhelmingly loud and busy space.
Dr Frith also explains the importance of adding moments of respite along circulation paths. “Having drinking fountains in places so that there’s a real purposeful pause moment or a seat along the way,” explains Dr Frith.
Some suggestions are aimed directly at reducing stressful moments for children, such as adding undercover areas to building thresholds so kids have a moment to collect themselves, for example if it’s raining and they need to put on a raincoat.
While schools are busy, collaborative spaces, the project also considered how to design play spaces for children who prefer their own company.
Lucas Primary School, Architectus
“There are activities they can engage in where they don’t feel like they’re standing out because they’re choosing their own company, like a productive garden where they can just go and dig or weed or feed some chickens,” says Dr Frith.
When it comes to creating new spaces, such as ‘sensory rooms’ for children who need to retreat can be tricky, since they require dedicated staff to ensure supervision.
In general, the team focused on ways to balance supervision with privacy and dignity, so children can engage safely without feeling observed.
Haileybury Year 9 Centre, Architectus
“You can organise tall bookshelves in so that kids can sit in between them and feel completely hidden, but an adult walking past will easily be able to see over the top.”
“It makes a significant difference to the way that kids are able to operate in their environment.”
