ABSTRACT
In Swadlincote, a small town in South Derbyshire, almost all the children with special needs within the area are educated in ordinary schools Springfield primary school contains units for ESN(M) children and severely mentally handicapped children including the most profoundly multiply handicapped. All their children, apart from the profoundly handicapped group who remain at Springfield until they are sixteen, transfer at eleven years of age to Pingle Comprehensive. Pingle school thus provides a unique example within the UK of a comprehensive school educating children of all ranges of ability and handicap. The mentally handicapped children have their own base attached to the main school whilst within the school are separate ESN(M) and remedial classes. Despite the retention of these distinctions it is striking how much the school has achieved in making mentally handicapped students part of the educational community. Details of the integration scheme at Pingle school were first described by the ex-head of the school’s Slow Learner Department in an article in Special Education in 1977, and the developments that have taken place over the subsequent three years are recorded in a second article by the present head and deputy of the department in the same journal in early 1980. The following account is taken from these two articles, and illustrates the perspective held by these heads of department about the developments in their school
Background
The integration system originated in 1970 when the Derbyshire education authority was concerned with providing secondary education for South Derbyshire area ESN(M) pupils who were in a small, recently opened unit attached to a junior school in Swadlincote. There was no area special school and so the education authority decided as a matter of policy to transfer all children reaching the age of 11 from the junior school unit to the Pingle School which was then an 11 to 15 junior high school, one of three serving the urban district and surrounding rural areas.
