ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the school effectiveness knowledge base has possibilities for persons within the special educational needs community. The children themselves are required to finish work, if they have fallen behind others, during lesson transitions and, during breaks, and have specially segregated 'catch up' sessions after school. For certain groups of pupils, in fact, the variation in examination results between individuals in different schools was as much as one-quarter of the total variation in their examination results. In addition to research on secondary school processes, characteristics of effective primary school organisations have been identified that are associated with high performance in cognitive areas such as reading and writing and in non-cognitive areas such as truancy. The research paradigm has the 'agreed upon' procedures of normal science that act to sift valid from invalid accounts. The chapter outlines the implications for the special needs community, rather little-noticed findings which question some of the more intellectual 'taken-for-granted' tenets within the field.
