18/11/2025
“The sight of children in classes wearing ear defenders, I’m sorry, this is just insane.”
That was Richard Tice yesterday, talking about our children.
Ear defenders are not “insane.”
They are access.
They are inclusion.
They are what make school even remotely possible for so many autistic and neurodivergent kids.
Jude and Tommy both wear, or have worn, ear defenders in school.
They help reduce the overwhelming noise around them, so they are not spending all day with their fingers jammed in their ears, braced for the next sound.
Ear defenders mean their hands are free to take part in lessons. They can focus a little more on what is being taught. There’s more chance they can stay in the classroom, rather than being sent out or having a meltdown
What next, no wheelchairs in corridors?
No hearing aids because “it looks strange”?
Of all the things that are broken in our education system, of all the ways this country is failing children right now, he singles out ear defenders and talk about a “crisis of overdiagnosis.”
He also leans into this idea that parents and children are somehow the problem, that we are getting “too much,” that our children’s basic needs being met is why there is no money left for anything else.
Meanwhile, families are spending years fighting for EHCPs, spending savings on reports, going to tribunal, writing endless emails, being ignored, being blamed, being exhausted. No one is cashing in here. Parents are burning out trying to get the bare minimum so their children can cope in school at all.
This is ableist rhetoric from someone who has no idea what our kids actually live with, or what it takes to keep them in education. It makes families like ours feel like we are the problem, again. Like our children are too expensive, too much, taking up space they are not entitled to.
And to any one feeling angry or upset by what he said. You are not the problem. Your child is not the problem. The problem is focusing on the cost of the support rather than the cost of denying it.
Our children deserve better than this.
And we will keep fighting for them, no matter how loudly people like him try to make us feel like we shouldn’t
