Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 6 seconds

It certainly feels like winter is here this week, and with it comes the countdown to the Christmas holidays!

You’ve told us that you’re enjoying our round-up of the highlights and best bits of the month.

Read on to discover in bite-sized format...

• What everyone was reading about in November
• Our most popular resource for education professionals
• Our Team’s highlight of the month
• What’s coming up next month
• A fact that may surprise you!

For the first time in our AET history, we ventured into Black Friday with an exclusive content which hit our social media channels on 25 November.

We released two checklists to help Early Years and Schools practitioners develop their communication skills and strategies with their autistic learners – and both proved popular with you!

Download the PNG images here, and print them off for use in your setting.

For Schools: Making Communication Clear

For Early Years: 10 Ways to Develop Interaction with Autistic Children

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In November our Schools Standards Framework was our most downloaded resource!

More than 480 professionals have been using it to:

• Identify priority areas to work on in their professional development
• Create an action plan to improve school-wide practices
• Implement reasonable adjustments for their autistic pupils
• Improve the engagement, retention, and academic achievement of autistic students
• Monitor practice and provide evidence of embedding good autism practice

Great work everyone who downloaded and used this popular framework!

Join the movement and download our Schools Standards Framework to improve good autism practice in your setting:

November was the month that saw us delighted to announce that we’d won another award for our Professional Development Programmes!

This time by Global Awards for Best Autism Programme of the Year.

During the awards process, Global Awards invited over 90,000 businesses and corporate professionals, magazine contributors and our subscribers to nominate companies & individuals based on factors such as:

✅ Quality of service

✅ Innovation

✅ Experience

✅ Sustainability 

It was a real testament to the quality and usability of our professional development programmes that the judges felt that the AET were deserving winners!

Find out more about our award-winning training and how it can benefit you here:

Ofqual is calling all teachers, parents and students to have their say.

The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation is asking for feedback on extra time and other reasonable adjustments in the exam process.

The student survey is open until the 8th of December and the link to the survey can be found here.

New Exclusions Guidance

Sadly, the statistics around autistic students being excluded from education are increasing, with many practitioners uncertain of how to make a positive impact.

We’ve been working with the National Autistic Society to create updated resources on exclusion and inclusion to help guide all education practitioners on this topic.

Our new free materials build on our previous resources, with reference to the latest policy, guidance and education law.

Please do keep an eye on our social media channels and Exclusions webpages for updates.

Our autism fact in November is a linguistic one:

"Takiwatanga" is the Maori word for autism, and means "In his/her own time and space" - perhaps a gentle and pertinent insight for us to consider.

We wonder how many of you knew that!

Thanks to our amazing and ever-growing community for contributing to an eventful and successful AET.

We look forward to sharing our final round-up of the year with you soon!

Your AET Team