With John Harris, journalist and parent of James, a young autistic person
Journalist and author John Harris, who writes for The Guardian, among others, is one of the strongest voices in national media for special educational needs and disability (SEND).
John is the Dad of an autistic young man, so his family has many experiences in common with other families struggling through the SEND system. His articles are always an essential read, and an important antidote to the uninformed, anti-parent narrative and tropes we see all too often in the national press.
John has just published a book about his son, James, Maybe I’m Amazed*, and it’s a memoir that will resonate with so many parents who have autistic children. Happily, John has written today for SNJ about the book and why he wrote it. Best of all, he’s offering two copies to GIVEAWAY to SNJ readers—form at the end of his article. Many thanks to John for both the article and the giveaway, and we hope he’ll bring his unique perspective in future posts for us too!
How music saved my autistic son, the inspiration for Maybe I’m Amazed, by John Harris
When I started to write a memoir about my autistic son James, I knew one thing would come into the story again and again: the grind of fighting through the SEND system and the dire state it has ended up in.
For me and my family, all this goes back nearly 15 years. Back in 2011, with James’s fifth birthday getting closer, we had to write to our local council to request a statutory assessment for what was then called a Statement of special educational needs—whereupon we were turned down flat.
A lot of people reading this will probably sigh at the familiarity of what happened next: a few months of silence punctuated by exchanges of legal letters and reports. Then a sudden and unexpected phone call from a caseworker, who told us the council suddenly wanted to give James roughly what he needed: one-to-one support, speech and language therapy, help with his sensory issues, and much besides. Inevitably, though, our family’s everyday life often still revolves around unreturned phone calls, arduous form-filling, and the fear that everything might sooner or later fall apart.
So much time, so little change…
What really shocks me is that so little has changed. Our initial push for the right help for James happened well before the arrival of the Children and Families Act of 2014, which was meant to, “to give parents more control” and “support teachers in giving every child the support they need to succeed”. When I write about special educational needs for the Guardian, the conversations I have with parents, carers and teachers are full of striking reminders that the whole SEND machine still grinds on in much the same way. To get anything near what a child needs requires a Herculean fight. Moreover, from the hollowing-out of Sure Start centres to the awful waiting times for autism diagnoses, many things have become much worse.
The joy, along with the challenges
My book, Maybe I’m Amazed, describes my family’s experiences of all this, but it also tells another story: of joy, albeit in difficult circumstances.
When James was diagnosed with autism, most of what we were told by experts and professionals was about deficits and impairments and what he simply wouldn’t be able to do. I know why that happened: there was, and still is, a lot of truth to it. But there was also a chronic lack of information and insight about what autism would mean in terms of everyday life and how we could help James develop any talents.
The relevant reports—all of which I’ve kept—were often full of brutal, cold views of who he was and what he might achieve, e.g “James has poor reciprocal social interaction; James has poor speech which is certainly not fluent; James has repetitive stereotyped behaviours.”
We were already finding out he had passions and talents those verdicts missed out, particularly his fascination with music that began when he had yet to turn two. James has an amazing musical memory and an obsessive interest in The Beatles, The Clash, Kraftwerk, and a long list of bands and singers besides (the same applies to me: for the first 15 years of my professional life, I was a music journalist).
Autistic talents
We have since discovered, like many autistic people, James has absolute pitch: the ability to instantly name any musical notes, spot the keys songs are in, and sing notes to order. Between one and five of every 10,000 people are reckoned to have this skill, but among autistic people, the proportion might be as high as one in 20. Put simply, James hears things in music that most of us don’t.
He also has another common autistic trait: hyperlexia, which boils down to a facility with words, letters and numbers. For him, it also meant he could acquire the ability to read music without really having to try, which helped him to learn the keyboards and basic piano, and then teach himself to play the bass.
Through lots of reading and meetings with other people with similar skills, I have since come to realise that this kind of musicality is often woven into autism, which is a hidden story explored in my book. But our culture and institutions have not absorbed any such understanding: most common tropes about autistic talent still tend to be all about maths, science or computing.
Funding cuts have decimated music learning
This brings me to an overlooked crisis connected to the current SEND meltdown. We still have middle schools where we live in Somerset and when James started at his, he was lucky enough to find a thriving music department, led by a teacher who went out of her way to include him in a lot of what she did. Later, James attended a specialist autism school, but in retrospect, his music class was the peak of his inclusion in mainstream. He got weekly general music lessons and received a rapturous reception for his performances in two school productions, when he played Beatles and Velvet Underground songs.
For a lot of SEND kids with similar talents, those opportunities would never have arisen. Beginning under the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2010, as schools suffered cuts and were instructed to focus on maths, English, languages and science, music education fell into a constant state of crisis.
Since 2010, there has been a 56% reduction in the recruitment of music teachers and a 36% funding cut for the Music Hubs that were founded to embed music education in schools. Between the same year and 2024, the number of kids taking music GCSE in England fell by 30%. In many state schools, there is now no dedicated instrument tuition.
This is not just about the chance for some kids to excel. School is often a confounding and exhausting experience for neurodivergent children and young people, and a good music department can be a welcome redoubt of calm and friendship. The therapeutic benefits of music for kids with additional needs are well-established. In that context, the decline of music education in schools is surely as heartbreaking as it gets.
Will this Government restore music education?
Whatever its other misjudgments and wrong turns, the government shows some signs of understanding this. In the party conference speech he gave in 2024, Keir Starmer mentioned he was an accomplished flautist while at school and emphasised why this represented something important: “Everyone deserves the chance to be touched by art. Everyone deserves access to moments that light up their lives. And every child deserves the chance to study the creative subjects that widen their horizons.”
The Education Secretary, Bridget Philipson, has expressed similar sentiments. Last year, the government ordered a Curriculum and Assessment Review, holding out the prospect of “a broader curriculum, so that children and young people don’t miss out on subjects such as music, art, sport and drama.” It will reportedly publish its interim findings this week before issuing a full report in the summer.
But with the government preparing for more spending restraint, will anything meaningful come of it? As we nervously follow all those rumours and briefings about changes to the SEND system, some of us are also closely monitoring this story for many of the same reasons. It is centred on a simple question: whether one of the most woeful narrowings of the curriculum that happened under the last government will be reversed, and mainstream provision thereby improved for the kind of SEND children and young people the decline of music education pushed away.
As a matter of experience, I know this for certain: any school without music cannot claim to be inclusive. Without the chance to pursue his talent in the classroom, my son’s life so far would have been very, very different.
- Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in 10 Songs is published by John Murray on March 27th. Pre-order LinkTree here.
- *SNJ note: To support SNJ, ordering via Amazon via this link pays us a small commission at no cost to you
See John Harris Live!
John Harris will be talking about his book, music, autism and the SEND crisis at events around the country. See below for venues:
- Monday March 24th: Rock’n’Roll Book Club in Walthamstow, East London,
- Monday March 31st Rough Trade, Denmark Street central London
- Wednesday April 16th Waterstones in central Manchester
- Tuesday April 22nd Elysium Gallery in Swansea
- Thursday April 24th Fesival of Debate Sheffield Festival of Debate
- Wednesday, May 28th (on same soon) Derby Book Festival
- More dates to be announced.
GIVEAWAY: Win one of two copies of Maybe I’m Amazed by John Harris
Sorry, the giveaway is now closed.
>>*Please Read the Terms & Conditions and our disclosure policy for reviews:
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Also read:
- Read all our reviews
- Visit our Amazon Storefront (external link)
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- REGISTER NOW! WEBINAR on the Government’s plans to cut EHCP and EOTAS rights. With SNJ & SEND legal charity, SOS!SEN
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Why every child deserves Portage, wherever they’re born
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- What might the SEND reform proposals mean for specialist tutors, alternative provision and EOTAS?
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- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children - August 28, 2026
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people - August 25, 2026
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation - August 24, 2026
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