16/08/2026
I haven't followed Professor Jason Arday's story closely enough to pretend I know everything about it.
And I'm sorry that it has taken his death, aged just 41, for me to stop and properly learn more about him.
But there is one part of his story that, as a SEND parent, I just can't get past.
A little boy with significant additional needs grew up to become a professor at Cambridge.
There is independent testimony from an adult who supported Jason at nursery describing a child with serious learning difficulties, who needed additional support and who didn't speak to her.
And I keep thinking about his mum, Giff.
Jason spoke about how important his mum had been in his life and credited her with refusing to accept the limitations being placed upon him. He once said:
“If I didn't have the mother I had, I wouldn't be here now.”
As a SEND parent, that lands.
Because she wasn't raising a future Cambridge professor.
She was raising her little boy.
Supporting him. Advocating for him. Finding different ways through. Believing in possibilities that perhaps weren't obvious to everybody else yet.
And look where that little boy went.
University. A PhD. Academia.
Eventually, Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge.
How utterly extraordinary is that?
I have dyslexia myself, and perhaps that's why this part of his story has got under my skin.
Places like Cambridge can feel almost untouchable when your brain doesn't naturally work in the way education expects it to. So much of education is still built around particular ways of reading, writing, organising and demonstrating what you know.
Neurodivergence doesn't disappear because someone becomes intelligent, educated or successful. You learn strategies. You use technology. You adapt. You find your own ways through.
And sometimes you end up somewhere that nobody looking at you as a little child could possibly have predicted.
I know Jason's later career became the subject of enormous public scrutiny. Allegations about his academic work had previously been investigated, with plagiarism allegations not upheld, while further questions and investigations followed later.
Those institutions can deal with those questions.
I'm not an academic. I didn't know Jason. I haven't studied his work and I'm not going to pretend I can adjudicate any of it.
That's simply not what this post is about.
This is about stopping for a moment and recognising something that I think is genuinely remarkable.
A Black, neurodivergent child with significant additional needs grew up and entered one of the most elite academic institutions in the world.
He didn't just get through the door.
He stood at the front of the room and taught.
I hope his students learned from him.
I hope neurodivergent children and adults saw him there and thought that perhaps some of those supposedly untouchable places weren't quite as untouchable as they seemed.
And I hope his mum knows that there are SEND parents learning about her son now and thinking:
Look how far that little boy went.
There will be plenty written about Professor Jason Arday's controversies. There already has been.
But those aren't the only things that get to be remembered about a person's life.
Jason Arday died aged just 41. His death was unexpected and is not being treated as suspicious. I won't speculate beyond that.
I didn't know him.
I just wish I'd stopped to notice this part of his story while he was still here.
Professor Jason Arday.
A little boy with SEND who grew up to become a Cambridge professor.
I think that's worth remembering.
