ABSTRACT
The Education Act 1981 was greatly influenced by the Warnock Report, and continued with the same discourse of planning to meet special educational needs in the mainstream of the education system. The Education Reform Act, and specifically national testing and the National Curriculum threaten a new kind of exclusion for children with special educational needs. It claims to enshrine notions of access to a 'balanced and broadly based curriculum', and requires that those children with special educational needs who require exemption from parts of the National Curriculum should have that exemption examined every six months. Effectiveness depends on the constraints or possibilities imposed or opened up by the National Curriculum and the attendant testing, attainment targets and published results, and the consequent development of differentiated work. It depends on how much money statemented students and non-statemented students with special educational needs bring with them.
