FOI_26-167 Students with Neurodivergence and learning difficulties
Date of response: 13 August 2026
We have now considered your request of 23 July 2026 for the following information:
For this request, please include students recorded as having autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia/developmental coordination disorder, dyscalculia, or another neurodevelopmental condition or specific learning difference.
Please provide the following information:
Question 1. Number of students
For each academic year from 2020/21 to 2024/25, please provide:
a) the number of enrolled students recorded as having disclosed one or more of the conditions included above; and
b) the number of these students registered with the university’s disability, accessibility, learning support or neurodiversity service.
Where held, please break the figures down by condition.
Please also provide the total number of enrolled students in each academic year.
Question 2. Screenings and assessments
For each academic year from 2020/21 to 2024/25, please provide:
a) the number of individual students who requested a screening or preliminary assessment for a possible condition or specific learning difference; and
b) the number who received a screening or preliminary assessment arranged, delivered or funded by the university.
Where held, please break the figures down by the condition being screened for and distinguish between screenings delivered internally and those delivered by an external provider.
For clarity, this question concerns screening or preliminary assessment rather than students disclosing a diagnosis obtained independently.
3. Waiting times
For each academic year from 2020/21 to 2024/25, please provide:
a) the average or median waiting time between a student requesting support and receiving an initial appointment with the relevant service; and
b) the number of students waiting for an initial appointment, screening or preliminary assessment at the end of the academic year.
Please provide whichever waiting-time measure the university already records. If separate figures are held for support appointments and screenings, please provide both.
Question 4. Expenditure
For each corresponding financial or academic year from 2020/21 to 2024/25, please provide the university’s recorded expenditure on services specifically intended to support neurodivergent students.
Where a separate neurodiversity expenditure figure is not held, please provide:
a) the total expenditure or budget for the wider team responsible for this support; and
b) any separately identifiable expenditure on screenings, assessments, specialist staff, mentoring, assistive technology or external neurodiversity-support providers.
Please identify whether the figures represent allocated budgets or actual expenditure and briefly specify which costs are included.
Please exclude individual Disabled Students’ Allowance awards unless they appear within the university’s recorded income or expenditure, in which case please identify them separately..
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to question 1a) the number of enrolled students recorded as having disclosed one or more of the conditions included above; and b) the number of these students registered with the university’s disability, accessibility, learning support or neurodiversity services, broken down by condition, and information relating to question 3 of your request; average wait time between a student requesting support and receiving an initial appointment and those waiting for a preliminary assessment at the end of the academic year.
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to a disorder or disability a student has declared to the University, broken down by the condition(s) as per your request is held within our Admissions, Recruitment and Marketing department (for information declared to us at application stage), our Data and Quality Standards department (for declarations of a disability made once a student is enrolled/registered with us) and information relating to students registered with disability, accessibility, learning support or neurodiversity services is held within our Student Journey and Support department, and our Learning Enhancement Team.
Information relating to students requesting screening or preliminary assessment and the wait times between requesting screening and their first appointment is held within our Student Journey and Support department.
Taking figures available for the most recent academic year, we have identified 523 students who declared ‘A specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD', a 'social communication impairment such as Aspergers syndrome/ other autistic spectrum disorder or' two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions' which may fall into the scope of your request.
The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek for the breakdown of students declaring those specific conditions as noted in question 1, and reviewing our disability service records for the number of those students registered, as well as locating and retrieving waiting times between requesting screening and an initial appointment, would be to interrogate each individual student record manually. Multiplying by all five of the academic years of your request equates to estimated 2,615 students across the full requested period.
We have calculated it would take a minimum of 5 minutes per student, or 217 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual student record relating to their specific learning condition or disability (if noted). It would then take a further 10 minutes per student, to retrieve the information for question 3. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above. This would also only capture central records for those students who self-declared a neurodivergent issue on their student application or core student record. It is important to note that any disclosure would not include students who declared a condition informally within a Wellbeing meeting or through other means.
Under section 16 of the Act, and to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we would be able to provide, for question 1a) the total number of students, not broken down by specific disorder, who self-declared to the University a disability using one or more of the following categories:
• A specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D
• A social communication impairment such as Aspergers syndrome/other autistic spectrum disorder.
• Two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
Regarding question 1b, we would be able to provide the total number of students using any disability support or learning support services who had declared one or more of the above disabilities to the University. We can also provide the total number of all students enrolled to the University for each academic year of your request.
Concerning question 3, we would be able to provide response in relation to one academic year only – 2024-25.
We can provide to you the response to question 2 for total students, not broken down by specific learning disability, and for question 4 , we can respond in full.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.