Education
The Autism Centre of Excellence at Cambridge wants to ensure every autistic person can fulfil their potential in educational settings that are right for them and help them to thrive.Autistic children and their families are often let down by a system that doesn’t provide sufficient opportunities to engage in either mainstream schools or schools for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
The Autism Centre of Excellence at Cambridge (ACE) wants to ensure every autistic child can fulfil their potential in an educational setting that is right for them.
To achieve this, we will contribute to a global evidence base by funding and commissioning research into promising educational approaches. These will be identified through existing published research or via the experience of our partners.
Once new practices have been tested and approved, we will ensure they can be made available as widely as possible, both in the UK and internationally, by working with partner organisations. It is important that evidence-based approaches are made available for all ages, from early years to secondary schools and universities, across both mainstream and specialist settings.
The Autism Centre of Excellence at Cambridge is currently in discussion with a number of partners, including Gesher School. Details will be published here as they become available.
Educational Resources
Funding was received for the development and research evaluation of our educational resources. This work was carried out in partnership with the Autism Research Centre (ARC). We will continue to explore the potential of these resources, including ways to make them available around the world in different languages.
Some of these resources are available to download via the links below. They include ‘Mindreading’ and ‘The Transporters’, which can help with facial emotion recognition. Please note that accessing remotely can only be done with Apple’s IOS and not Google’s Android. However, they can be viewed on any PC or Mac computer or tablet.
Summer 2023 – new research confirms the effectiveness of The Transporters for Chinese autistic children
A new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Autism has confirmed the effectiveness of a Chinese language app version of Transporters for Chinese autistic children. It also provided evidence that it is also beneficial to autistic children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is important given the high rate of co-occurrence between the two conditions.
The full article is available here, and the Transporters can be purchased in multiple languages via the link below.
Mindreading
This online library of human emotions, offers 412 different emotions in the faces and voices of actors, for anyone who needs to improve in their ability to recognise emotions.
The Transporters
The Transporters is a series of short fun animations for teaching emotion recognition to young children.
Brick-by-Brick programme
Play Included supports autistic children through building LEGO models to encourage friendship and social skills.
What is autism?
More than 1% of the population is autistic. Find out more about what it means to be autistic, the strengths and the challenges, and why we need effective support services.
About Us
The Autism Centre of Excellence at Cambridge (ACE) is a science-led campaigning charity working closely with Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre. Our aim is to improve access to high quality support and remove barriers and stigma for autistic people.
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