From Ebbe Hamzan
I write as a mother of a 19-year-old autistic daughter, and as a concerned Malaysian citizen.
While progress has been made in special needs education at the primary and secondary levels, far too little attention is paid to what happens after, when autistic children become autistic adults.
My daughter is high-functioning, a term that on paper is often assumed to be positive given the challenges commonly associated with autism.
In reality, it often places a child in a painful “neither here nor there” space.
She did not fit comfortably into special education settings, where she risked regression, nor into mainstream schools, where she was bullied, overwhelmed, and unsafe. For us, inclusion was not a buzzword; it was a matter of protection and survival.
When my daughter was little, there weren’t that many options. So, she remained in a government mainstream school during most of her primary years. She learned to adapt, often at great personal and social cost.
Yet when she eventually sat for UPSR, she achieved results that surpassed many of her classmates. This was an early reminder that ability and potential are often misjudged when a child learns or processes the world differently.
As she grew older, safety concerns, particularly as a young girl with limited social awareness, left us with little choice but to explore small, inclusive international schools for secondary education.
That path was costly and challenging. Some schools were honest about their limitations. Others attempted inclusion but failed badly, isolating and embarrassing the child in ways that caused more harm than good.
Most troubling were those that claimed expertise they did not have: unqualified operators who could not teach and hastily labelled capable students as intellectually incapable. My daughter, along with others, was pushed into a “skills stream”, effectively closing the door to IGCSEs.
Let me be clear: vocational and skills-based pathways are valuable and necessary. But they should be options, not default endpoints. Many neurodivergent learners, when taught appropriately, are fully capable of academic achievement.
After multiple school changes and accumulated trauma, we homeschooled her. With God’s will, she completed her IGCSEs, earning more than sufficient results to pursue a diploma. Given her strengths, fine arts was the natural path forward.
And yet, after more than a decade of navigating a fragmented and exhausting education journey, we encountered another barrier.
Despite meeting entry criteria and a letter from a medical specialist confirming her abilities and recommending reasonable accommodations, colleges either rejected her outright or warned of likely rejection. The reason was not academic capability, but an unwillingness to support.
We are not talking about complex interventions: merely basic accommodations such as slightly extended time for exams or assignments.
What was particularly troubling was that even with class sizes of only five to seven students, educators still refused to provide support. The explanation offered was familiar: “We must treat everyone the same.”
But treating everyone the same is not fairness; it is convenience.
Others say they are “not trained to support neurodivergent students”. This raises an uncomfortable question: if higher learning institutions are unwilling to learn, adapt, or even try, then who is?
Why not offer a chance, review progress, and adjust if necessary? Why shut the door entirely?
The result is devastatingly simple: the future stops.
Many qualified, willing and able autistic adults are left stranded. Families are forced to figure out how to keep their children financially and socially independent in a system that offers no clear pathway forward. Our education framework fails autistic individuals, educators, and society at large by making little room for difference.
This is not only a social failure, but an economic one. How many capable individuals are prevented from learning, working, and contributing?
What is the cost of this lost potential in productivity, innovation, and perhaps even tax revenue? And when exclusion leads to long-term dependency or health challenges, who bears the burden? Families, the healthcare system, and society as a whole.
Malaysia is not a welfare state. Yet, through inaction and poor planning, we are quietly creating a population that is excluded from contribution and at risk of long-term dependency. That is neither compassionate nor economically sound.
The question, then, is not whether Malaysia can afford to build inclusive pathways for autistic adults, but whether we can afford not to.
With clearer policies, modest accommodations, educator and employer training, and accountability, we can unlock contributions that already exist but are currently wasted.
The inclusion of able neurodivergent individuals is not charity; it is investment.
Ebbe Hamzan is an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.