Background:
COVID-19 pandemic has forced almost all activities as businesses, schools and entire countries to move completely online. For children and adolescents requiring special education like those affected by neuropsychiatric disorders (NPD), a particular effort was needed to ensure good results. A special program called “Smart School” has been developed between April and June 2020 involving 97 subjects with NPD whowere unable to access the school in our Institute, providing materials for specialized didactic, educational and rehabilitative activities.

Objectives:
The aim of this study is to compare the acceptance and compliance to Smart School programs between subjects with autism vs subjects with other NPD.

Methods:
The study group was composed by 28 subjects with autism (DSM-5 diagnosis), age 5-16 years ( mean 11);26 males and by 69 subjects with other NPD, age 4 – 17 years(mean 11); 32 males. The Smart School Project has foreseen the involvement of 20 Primary SchoolTeachers and 5 specialized operators, 1 Chief of Professional Education that coordinates the whole project in all the different steps, 1 DevelopmentalPsychologist 4 Professional Educators (EP) and 1 Neuro-Psychomotor Therapist ofDevelopmental Age
The overall scheme of Smart School program is the following: The teachers (bothPrimary and Secondary classes) prepare weekly teaching materials for their studentsand using the Google-Drive platform they insert them in the link generated for each student.
The specialized operators automatically access the links of Google Drive and check weekly the material sent by teachers to compare and integrate it with the educational project. Through We Transfer, the specialized operators send all the material to the families. After sending the material, the families are contacted by the specialized operators assigned to help and support them both in carrying out the activities and in managing their child and any behavioral problems manifested.
After two weeks from the beginning of the online education (April 2020) the index of appreciation and satisfaction expressed by the children was detected through the principal caregiver (mother in 93%) through a 4-point Lickert scale from1=unsatisfied to 4= very satisfied

Results:
The percentages of satisfactory + highly satisfactory judgment expressed by childrenand adolescents were 64.49% in group with autism and 25.8% in the group with other NPD ( p< 0.01).The corresponding percentages expressed by the caregiver were 60.8% and 55.3% ( p = NS) respectively .

Conclusions:
Subjects with autism showed a significantly higher appreciation of smart school online program at variance with subjects with other NPD. Caregivers judgments in the two groups were comparable. Lockdown for pandemic as expected seems to affect less the online education acceptance in students with autism despite their known resistance to the change routine context environment, probably because they suffer less from sociality lacking and because their environment at home seems to them more under control.