ABSTRACT
Educate the best and ditch the rest, with its consequent fragmentation of the individual, has had its day. The use and misuse of terms, in teaching practices and educational research, muddle rather than clarify the issues faced by children and young people in our education system. The enormous problems created for individuals by the different management systems which health, education and social services professionals work under is becoming almost legendary. A brief tour around most primary and secondary schools and colleges of Further and Higher Education built since 1970 will show any interested party that this legislation has had little impact. It gave plenty of apparently objective records and adults were able to measure the minute amounts of progress that some children were making. Responsibility for children that were then termed 'severely subnormal was transferred from health authorities to the local education authorities.
