Archbishop With Dyslexia Draws the Line Between Accommodating and Thriving
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Parents know how the system works: identify the struggle, provide the accommodation, check the box. That is what inclusion looks like in most schools, most workplaces, and most institutions. Archbishop Sarah Mullally — the Church of England’s Archbishop, who has dyslexia — stood before the General Synod in York in July 2026 and gave a name to why that picture falls short. “It is important that neurodivergent people within our church are not only functioning but flourishing,” she said. Functioning and flourishing are not the same thing. For any parent watching a child move through school with a learning difference, that is not a theological statement. That is the question that belongs in every IEP meeting.
TL;DR
The Church of England voted in July 2026 on a motion to appoint neurodiversity champions in every diocese, following Archbishop Sarah Mullally’s address on dyslexia and neurodivergent inclusion at General Synod in York.
The Archbishop, who has dyslexia, told General Synod: “It is important that neurodivergent people within our church are not only functioning but flourishing.”
The church’s “All Kinds of Minds” report (GS 2444) found institutions still shaped around neurotypical expectations create barriers for people with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, dyscalculia, and other differences.
Special education research [STRONG] shows supports that substitute for skill-building create dependence; the right question for any accommodation is whether it is building toward independence.
Parents should ask of any learning support: “What skill is this building, and how will we know when it has done its job?”
Archbishop Sarah Mullally, who has dyslexia, told the Church of England’s General Synod in July 2026 there is a difference between neurodivergent people “functioning” and “flourishing.” The distinction she drew has implications far beyond the church — and directly for parents navigating learning support for their children.
Common questions
What does “functioning vs. flourishing” mean for a child with dyslexia?
“Functioning” means a child gets through the school day with support in place — extended time, text-to-speech, a reading aide. “Flourishing” means the child is building the actual skills to need less support over time, not more. The distinction matters because accommodations work in two directions: the right support at the right moment builds capability; support provided as a substitute for skill-building removes the incentive to build the underlying skill. Ask of any accommodation: what is this building toward, and how will we know when the skill is established?
Is dyslexia really a gift?
Strengths do emerge in many people with dyslexia — empathy, pattern recognition, creative problem-solving. But the research direction is that these strengths are earned through productive engagement with the struggle, not handed over in place of it. Many dyslexic people say the “gift” framing makes the hard parts feel erased. The more useful frame for parents: the brain your child has today is not the brain they will have after a year of the right kind of practice. That is not a motivational poster — it is what the brain imaging actually shows (Shaywitz, Yale; Temple, Stanford).
How do I know if my child’s reading accommodation is building skills or replacing them?
Ask your child’s school two questions: (1) What specific skill is this accommodation scaffolding? (2) What would need to be true for this accommodation to no longer be needed? If there is no clear answer, the support is managing the gap rather than closing it. A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations such as an IEP or 504 plan, or if you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the required route to those supports — and worth pursuing alongside any home-based skill-building.
What questions should I bring to my child’s next IEP or school meeting?
Three that rarely get asked: (1) Is each accommodation in the plan building toward independence, or managing the gap indefinitely? (2) What does the intervention data say about my child’s trajectory — are the skills growing, or are we just keeping pace? (3) If my child used this support for five years, what would be different about their ability to read without it? These questions shift the conversation from “is the accommodation in place” to “is the child building the skill.” That is the functioning-to-flourishing question in practical form.
The motion before General Synod and what the church found
The Archbishop’s address opened debate on a formal motion titled “All Kinds of Minds: Affirming Neurodiversity in the Life of the Church” (GS 2444), prepared for the July 2026 General Synod session in York. The report behind the motion found that many churches remain shaped around neurotypical expectations, creating barriers for people with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and Tourette syndrome.
The picture that emerged from interviews with neurodivergent clergy was direct: many said they felt pressure to conform to what the report described as “a busy, extroverted, often male archetype reinforced by church culture.” The report named “cultures of ableism” within the denomination. The motion calls for “neurodiversity champions” to be appointed in every diocese, alongside neurodivergent-led training directed at “challenging and transforming unjust structures and processes” that disadvantage neurodivergent clergy and worshippers.
Archbishop Mullally, who has spoken more publicly about her dyslexia in recent years, described the neurodiversity training she led as Bishop of London as “invaluable for our life together and the culture of the Diocese of London.” She said her dyslexia developed in her humility, empathy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to listen — qualities she described as coming together in teambuilding. She also gave the clearest version of her challenge to the church: not only functioning but flourishing, and in order to enable that, the church must prioritise its learning and its listening.
Author Quote"
Neurodiversity is not a problem to be solved within the church, but it is a gift. It is important that neurodivergent people within our church are not only functioning but flourishing. And in order to enable that, we must prioritise our learning and our listening.
"
What the coverage gets wrong
Most reporting on the Archbishop’s General Synod address will lead with the “gift” framing and the personal disclosure. That angle is warmer and easier to share. What it sidelines is the evidence-backed distinction she drew between “functioning” and “flourishing” — a distinction the research on accommodation effectiveness makes urgent for families. Special education research consistently finds that supports provided as substitutes for skill-building create dependence rather than capability. Institutions that celebrate neurodiversity without building neurodivergent people’s capacity to thrive independently are doing the easier half of the job. Parents deserve both halves.
What the science says that the “gift” frame leaves out
The mainstream coverage of this story will center on the warmer angle: an Archbishop shares a personal dyslexia story, calls neurodiversity a “gift,” and the church takes a meaningful step toward inclusion. That frame is not wrong. It is incomplete in exactly the way that most institutional conversations about learning differences are incomplete, and the Archbishop herself pointed toward the gap.
Strengths do emerge from dyslexia — the Archbishop’s own account is evidence of that. But the research direction here [LEAN] is that those strengths are earned through productive engagement with the struggle, not handed over as compensation for it. Many people with dyslexia say that being told their condition is a gift makes the struggle feel erased rather than honored. The real takeaway from the Archbishop’s personal story is not that dyslexia produces gifts automatically — it is that she built something through years of navigating a world not designed for her brain. That is a very different story, and a more useful one for parents.
The harder, more actionable part of what she said is the “functioning vs. flourishing” distinction — and this is where research backs a stronger claim. Special education’s own evidence describes what happens when institutions provide accommodations because it is easier than addressing the actual gap: the support meant to scaffold skill development instead substitutes for it, and the incentive to build the underlying skill quietly disappears. A support that makes a child function is not the same thing as a support that builds a child’s capacity to thrive without it. The distinction is whether the support is a bridge toward independence or a permanent workaround for a reading difference that the right intervention could narrow.
The system the Archbishop named — shaped around neurotypical assumptions, treating compliance as the goal — is the same system most schools operate in. The church is not the villain here. “Good-enough inclusion” is: the institutional habit of treating visibility, representation, and accommodation as the finish line, when the harder work of building genuine capability has not started.
Key Takeaways:
1
Functioning is not flourishing: Archbishop Mullally named the gap between adequate accommodation and genuine capability-building — a distinction that belongs in every IEP conversation parents have about their child’s learning support.
2
Strengths from dyslexia are earned, not given: Research direction [LEAN] finds that strengths associated with dyslexia emerge through productive engagement with the struggle — which means the “gift” frame, while warm, misses why families need skill-building support, not just affirmation.
3
Ask what the support is building: Special education research [STRONG] finds that supports substituting for skill development create dependence; the right question for every accommodation is whether it is a bridge to independence or a permanent workaround.
What “functioning vs. flourishing” looks like in practice for your child
The Archbishop’s framework is a practical diagnostic for parents. For any support your child receives — extended test time, a reading specialist, small-group instruction, an aide — the question worth asking is: Is this support building toward a skill, or is it managing the gap indefinitely? That is not a reason to remove accommodations. It is a reason to know why each accommodation exists and what it would take for it to no longer be needed.
The IDA’s 2025 definition of dyslexia — its first major update in 23 years — reinforces the possibility of change. It explicitly moved away from the old fixed-deficit model toward multi-system, intervention-responsive factors. Brain imaging research from Yale (Shaywitz) and Stanford (Temple) shows that children who struggle with reading develop the same reading pathways as typical readers after appropriate, intensive intervention. The brain builds new pathways with practice. Functioning is not the ceiling.
The tradeoff is real. Neurodivergent children who are accommodated without being genuinely supported in building skills sometimes learn to navigate around their challenges without closing the underlying gap. For some children, at some stages, that is the right call — there are genuine limits and accommodations serve a real purpose. But for most children in the early and middle years of schooling, the direction a support is pointing matters. Ask your child’s school: What skill is this support building? How will we know when it has done its job?
Every parent who took the time to understand what their child actually needs — not the accommodation the system defaulted to, but the skill their child needed to build — is already doing what the Archbishop named. The obstacle facing neurodivergent children in most institutions is not that people have stopped caring. It is that systems built around neurotypical assumptions treat accommodation as an achievement rather than a starting point. Your child’s brain does not stop changing because the institution reached the checkbox. The right kind of support, applied consistently, builds the pathways that lead from functioning to flourishing. If you want a clear starting point for understanding where your child stands and what that path looks like, the Learning Success All Access program gives you the tools to start today. Get started here.
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