ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the assessment process in relation to a child and his or her immediate learning environment. It opens with a discussion of what we should expect of the assessment process and suggests four principles that might provide a framework for forming judgements about different approaches to assessment. Special educational needs are of course influenced in part by a wider range of factors such as family characteristics, neighbourhood characteristics and school characteristics. A commentary on these assumptions may start from an observation reported by investigators of how recent British legislation on special educational needs is working in practice. This observation concerned the question of whether formal assessments were making use of the new relative concept of special educational needs. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of recent educational legislation in the United Kingdom.