There’s a particular kind of pupil I worry about most. Not the child whose difficulty is obvious and documented, but the one whose need is invisible: no wheelchair, no medical certificate, nothing you can point to, just a bright child who is somehow always behind, always tired, always a little defeated. These are learners with hidden needs, and our system is remarkably good at losing them.
I wrote about this for the Chartered College of Teaching in a research review with a title drawn from how these young people feel: I’m not hiding, you just can’t see me (Ross). It’s about how schools can support the learners they can’t easily see.
Why hidden needs slip through
Start with a simple, awkward fact about how support is allocated. Needs that come with a clear medical diagnosis tend to be recognised more readily than those that don’t. To put numbers on it, autism, which requires a medical diagnosis, is the documented need on around 28.8 per cent of Education, Health and Care Plans, the highest of any category, while specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia account for only around 5.1 per cent.
That gap isn’t really about how common these needs are. It’s about how visible and how “provable” they are. As others have noted, one of the first jobs a label does for a hidden difficulty is to prove the impairment is real, precisely because there are no physical markers to point to. And dyslexia, whose very definition some still contest, is harder to “prove” in that sense than a medically diagnosed condition. In practice, though, the difficulty getting a diagnosis usually comes down to a lack of resources and funding rather than any genuine confusion about what dyslexia is.
So we have a system where the current expectation is that most needs will be met in the ordinary classroom through good teaching, with teachers placed at the very heart of the support system. That’s a reasonable aim. But for a child whose need is invisible, undiagnosed and under-resourced, it can mean falling quietly between every stool.
The double hiding
Here’s what makes hidden needs doubly hard, and it’s where two strands of my research meet.
The need itself is hard for adults to see. And, as I found when I listened to young people directly in my study of their experiences, the young people themselves often actively hide their difficulties. They don’t want to be “outed”; they mask, they cover, they avoid. In the family research I’ve done, the great majority of parents reported their child trying to hide their struggles.
Put those two things together and you get a child whose need is invisible to the system and deliberately concealed by the child. It’s no wonder these learners get missed. And hiding is exhausting and corrosive, which is why hidden needs so often travel with anxiety and low self-esteem, something I explore in dyslexia and mental health.
What schools can actually do
The good news is that seeing the unseen is a skill, and it can be built. A few things make the biggest difference.
Look for the pattern, not the label. A capable child who is exhausted by simple tasks, who avoids reading aloud, whose written work never matches their spoken ideas, who has started to say they’re stupid: these are signals worth following, with or without a diagnosis. Don’t wait for a certificate to start helping.
Act on need, not just on paper. The framework expects good teaching to meet most needs in the classroom, so a child shouldn’t have to be formally labelled before anyone adapts for them. The same everyday, low-cost strategies that help diagnosed dyslexic learners help the undiagnosed ones too, and they help without singling anyone out. (I’ve set these out in integrating dyslexia support into mainstream teaching.)
Make it safe to be seen. Children hide because being seen has felt unsafe or shameful. A culture where difference is treated as ordinary, and where asking for help is normal rather than exposing, lets young people put down the effort of concealing. That’s a whole-school job, and I write about the culture and relationships it takes in how good dyslexia support actually happens.
Ask them. It sounds obvious, yet young people with hidden needs are too rarely consulted about their own provision. They usually know what helps and what exposes them. Asking, and listening, is often the fastest route to seeing what you’d otherwise miss.
The heart of it
A hidden need is still a need. The absence of a visible marker, or even of a formal diagnosis, doesn’t make a child’s difficulty any less real, or our responsibility any less clear. The learners you can’t see are still there, working twice as hard as everyone assumes. Our job is to notice them, to make it safe for them to be seen, and to help before they disappear from view altogether.
Questions people often ask
What are hidden learning needs? Needs like dyslexia, and other specific learning difficulties, that have no obvious physical markers. A child can have a significant difficulty that isn’t visible and hasn’t been formally identified, which makes it easy for schools to miss.
Why do children hide their difficulties? Because being seen has often felt unsafe or shaming. Young people mask and avoid to protect their social standing and sense of self. Most parents report their dyslexic child trying to hide their struggles, and hiding is exhausting.
Does my child need a diagnosis before school will help? They shouldn’t. The framework expects most needs to be met through good classroom teaching, and the strategies that help are largely the same with or without a label. That said, an assessment can help everyone understand the profile and unlock further support.
How can I tell if a child has a hidden need? Look for patterns rather than proof: a capable child who tires quickly, avoids reading aloud, produces written work below their spoken ability, or has started to describe themselves as stupid. Follow the pattern, and ask the child.
References and further reading
- Ross, H. I’m not hiding, you just can’t see me: understanding how schools help learners with hidden learning needs, Chartered College of Teaching (Research Hub). Read the review
- Ross, H. (2021) ‘I’m Dyslexic but What Does That Even Mean?’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 23(1), 284-294. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.782
- Ross, H. and Hicks, J. (2019) Managing Dyslexia as a Family, in The Human Cost of Dyslexia (APPG for Dyslexia and other SpLDs). Read the report
See the full list of publications.