The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) landscape in England is bleak. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of pupils with SEND has increased. There is a shortage of places available in specialist SEND provision, and many pupils with SEND are being educated in alternative provision settings which arguably do not meet their needs.…

Parental choice remains a central theme in education policy in England. Parents have the right to choose how their children are educated. For some families this choice is surrendered, with volition and intention, to their local authority which allocates school places after parents, statutory guardians and families have made their decisions. Where…

In this article, Dominic Griffiths reflects upon the current cultural gap between those who locate themselves as working "on the inside" of the world of "special educational needs" and the "inclusion movement" and those who might be described as "mainstream classroom teachers". Griffiths warns of the dangers…

Scope exists within the Northern Ireland (NI) education system to transform mainstream schools into autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)-friendly environments. The efficacy of mainstream inclusion is discussed prior to discussing the creation of ASD-friendly schools. The transformation of mainstream school environments is underpinned by concepts such…

This personal account from a special educational needs co-ordinator illustrates the negative impact that resourced provision has had on one school. The provision caters for children with communication and interaction difficulties and is housed in a mainstream primary school. For this school, while the provision has had a beneficial impact on the…

In this paper we examine different aspects of the inclusion debate, including how it has been shaped by the political context in England over the past 30 years. We then give consideration to the key argument that has dominated the inclusion agenda over the last decade: should effective inclusion be considered only as placement in mainstream school…

As a society, we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive built environment. As part of the need to promote inclusion, there is now a growing trend to place pupils with special educational needs (SEN) into a mainstream school setting. This is often facilitated by providing a specialist SEN resource base located within the mainstream school.…

This study evaluates and compares special educational services for children with dyslexia in three different settings: special schools, reading units and mainstream resource provision. The emphasis in this paper is on the parental perspectives. Participants were the parents of dyslexic children, aged eight to thirteen, who had been accessing…

Providing children with special educational needs with individual education plans (IEPs) was advocated in the 1994 code of practice for SEN, and retained in the 2000 code. Specifically as it relates to mainstream secondary schools, this has proved highly controversial: many SENCos report that the writing and implementing of IEPs is a bureaucratic…

A basic need for a child is to belong to a group (Maslow, 1970). Groups help children: to develop relationships and to foster individual mental health (Johnson and Johnson, 1989); and disabled and non-disabled children, when given assistance, can develop relationships with each other (Sideris, 1998). But there are very few opportunities in Cyprus…

In this article Joseph Mintz explores the importance of developing positive attitudes to SEN and Inclusion among primary teacher trainees. The research reported indicates that student attitudes towards SEN/Inclusion were generally positive, but that such views are fluid and subject to change during a course of training. The article reinforces the…