Discrediting or ignoring parent knowledge. Schools position professional judgment as authoritative whilst dismissing parent observations as biased, emotional, or uninformed. Parent reports of harm, distress, or accommodation need are treated as unreliable, requiring corroboration from professionals who rarely witness the contexts parents describe. Epistemic silencing operates through appeals to expertise, characterisations of parent anxiety, and structural hierarchies that position institutional knowledge as objective whilst treating lived experience as subjective.