ABSTRACT
The move for inclusion in education has developed from a worldwide move towards recognising human rights and counteracting segregation including apartheid and other forms of ethnic cleansing. For some, the word ‘inclusion’ has come to mean the wholesale closing of special schools, set up to serve the pupils in most need of special education whether their needs are physical or in areas of learning. In practice, pupils with special educational needs are increasingly being included in mainstream education, with arrangements made to ensure their special needs are met. Special schools are still providing education and sources of expertise in various areas, such as those with profound learning, behavioural or physical disabilities, including deafness and visual disabilities, but increasingly these schools are working in tandem with mainstream schools. Mainstream schools sometimes also have special units attached to them with specialist staff in a limited area of disability, where pupils are included in as many mainstream school activities as possible, but withdrawn for certain specialist lessons to the unit. Often pupils are bussed to such units from a wider area than the general catchment area for only one or two years to enable the pupils to get closer specialist attention than possible in, say, a small rural school. The pupils then return to their own area school more able to cope with the general curriculum.
