When Performance and Neurodivergence Collide: A Framework for FE Managers

Picture this. A member of your teaching staff is three weeks into a formal performance improvement process. Observations have been graded as requiring improvement. You have documented everything carefully. Then, in a one-to-one meeting, they tell you they have just received an ADHD diagnosis. Or they hand you a letter from their GP. Or they simply say, for the first time, that they think there might be something going on that explains why they have been struggling.

What do you do next?

This moment occurs regularly in FE colleges and training providers across the UK, and most managers are not equipped to handle it. Not because they lack empathy or good intentions, but because nobody has given them a clear framework for what to do when neurodivergence enters a performance process. This article offers one.

Why is this so common in FE?

The NHS estimates that around one in seven people in the UK are neurodivergent. Apply that to a typical FE college staff body of several hundred employees and the numbers become hard to ignore. Apply it to the wider training and apprenticeship provider landscape, where workforce data is patchier and HR support is often thinner, and the gap between prevalence and awareness grows wider still.

The CIPD’s Neuroinclusion at Work Report (2024) found that only 27% of employers had provided any education or awareness-raising about neurodiversity for their staff. In FE, where managers are already stretched across observation cycles, Ofsted readiness, contact hour pressures, and learner outcomes, that figure is unlikely to be more encouraging.

Many practitioners who excelled in their subject specialism and built strong learner relationships have spent years quietly compensating for differences in processing, organisation, working memory, or sensory regulation. They manage well enough, until the pressure of a timetable change, a restructure, or an unsupportive management environment tips the balance.

At the same time, FE performance frameworks tend to be designed around a neurotypical model of working and teaching. Observation grades reward a particular kind of presence and pacing. Feedback is delivered verbally in real time, in a format that can be genuinely hard to retain for someone with working memory difficulties. Marking deadlines are set without adjustment for the person who processes written language differently. The system was not designed to exclude, but the effect can be exclusionary.

When these two realities collide during a live performance process, the stakes are high for everyone.

Understanding the terrain: the SCARF model

Before setting out the framework, it helps to understand why this situation is so neurologically loaded. David Rock’s SCARF model identifies five domains that the human brain treats as social survival priorities: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. A standard performance improvement process threatens all five simultaneously, often in ways that are significantly amplified for a neurodivergent individual.

Status is threatened by the formal process itself. Certainty is undermined by unclear targets and an unpredictable timeline. Autonomy is eroded when support is imposed rather than negotiated. Relatedness is strained by the power imbalance inherent in the process. Fairness is compromised when assessments measure the barrier rather than the performance.

Keeping the SCARF model in mind as a manager does not change the professional standards you need to uphold. It helps you understand why someone might be presenting in a particular way and why the adjustments outlined below are not concessions but genuine enablers of fair assessment.

Part one: pause and re-examine

A disclosure of neurodivergence does not automatically invalidate a performance process. It does require you to stop and ask a specific question: are the performance concerns being assessed fairly, given what you now know?

This is not primarily a legal question, though there are legal dimensions you will want to seek qualified HR or legal advice on. It is a professional one. If someone has been assessed as “not meeting the standard” for something that a reasonable adjustment could have enabled them to do differently, the process may be measuring the barrier rather than the performance.

ACAS, which published updated neurodiversity at work guidance in January 2025, is explicit on this point: making adjustments at an early stage can help prevent an employee being placed at a disadvantage because of their neurodiversity. The guidance also notes that managers frequently misinterpret neurodivergent behaviours as conduct or attitude problems. In a performance context, that misreading can shape the entire trajectory of a case.

Pausing does not mean starting from scratch. It means reviewing what you have, with new information, and deciding whether any part of the process needs to be revisited or redesigned before you continue.

Part two: adjust how, not what, and work it out together

Reasonable adjustments in a performance context mean changing how someone does their job, not changing what their job is. This distinction matters enormously in FE, where managers can feel caught between accommodating a staff member and maintaining professional standards.

Critically, this should be a collaborative process, not a unilateral decision. The employee is the expert on how their neurodivergence affects them at work. The manager understands the operational constraints. Getting to a workable plan means both parties bringing that knowledge to the table honestly.

This conversation often surfaces something managers find surprising: what they assumed was non-negotiable frequently is not. The immediate verbal feedback debrief after an observation, the specific format of a lesson plan submission, the day and time of a review meeting: many of these feel fixed but are actually customs rather than requirements. When managers open up the question of what is genuinely non-negotiable versus what is simply how things have always been done, it often creates more room than expected.

Some practical examples that sit clearly within the adjustment of how: providing written feedback after a lesson observation instead of an immediate verbal debrief; allowing additional preparation time before submitting a lesson plan for scrutiny; sharing review questions in advance; extending a marking turnaround when the original deadline was set internally and genuinely flexible.

This looks somewhat different depending on the setting. In a large general FE college, there is usually a line manager, a curriculum director, and an HR team who can share the load of designing and reviewing adjustments. In an independent training provider or apprenticeship organisation, the line manager is often working with far less backup. The same principle applies in both contexts, but in the latter, the manager may need to be more proactive in sourcing specialist advice, whether from occupational health, an external workplace needs assessor, or sector-specific HR guidance. The resource level differs; the obligation to think carefully does not.

What is non-negotiable is clearer once you name it. Being observed is non-negotiable. Maintaining a marking responsibility is non-negotiable. The professional standard remains; the access route to meeting it is what you are adjusting.

There is one more point that belongs here. Change can take longer when someone is also navigating a neurodivergent profile, particularly if they are newly identified or only recently accessing support. That does not mean timelines have no limits. It means timelines should be set with that reality factored in, not against it. And it means that the goals themselves must be precise. Woolly objectives and unclear success criteria do not just make performance management harder. They make it unfair. For someone who processes information literally or who struggles with ambiguity, a target framed as “improve your classroom presence” or “be more organised” is not a target at all. That kind of vagueness is, in my view, potentially discriminatory in its own right. Failing to address the Certainty and Fairness dimensions of the SCARF model through unclear goal-setting is not neutral: it actively disadvantages the people least equipped to work around imprecision. Good performance management in this context requires specific, observable, achievable criteria, explained clearly and confirmed in writing.

Part three: reasonable has limits, and you are allowed to know them

Managers often feel that once neurodivergence has been raised, any adjustment request must be granted without question. That is not the case. Reasonable adjustments are assessed against factors including operational impact, cost, the size of your organisation, and whether the adjustment actually enables the person to meet the core requirements of the role.

What “reasonable” means in practice is further than most managers assume, and the cost of underestimating it can be significant for everyone involved. Employment tribunal data consistently shows that employers fall down not by refusing unreasonable requests, but by failing to engage thoughtfully with requests that were reasonable. But the limits do exist, and understanding them clearly is not a failure of inclusion. It is what allows you to have an honest conversation with your employee about what support is possible and what the path forward looks like. Clarity offered with genuine goodwill is more useful to everyone than a vague promise to do what you can.

What good looks like

The manager who handles this well does not just avoid a difficult outcome. They often salvage a situation that felt unsalvageable, rebuild trust with a staff member who expected to be managed out, and model for their wider team what it looks like to take inclusion seriously under real pressure.

That kind of leadership is not a one-off intervention. It is a signal about the culture you are building. In a sector where talented practitioners are leaving, and neurodivergent staff remain significantly under-supported, across colleges and training providers alike, getting this moment right matters far more than most people realise. The manager who pauses, asks the right question, and works it out with their employee is not lowering the bar. They are raising it.

By Nathan Whitbread, The Neurodivergent Coach

Further reading: ACAS Neurodiversity at Work guidance and CIPD Neuroinclusion at Work Report.