ABSTRACT
The provision of education for disabled children, and those identified as having special educational needs, has been transformed over the last 25 years. Prior to the 1981 Education Act, education for children who were not deemed normal was essentially based on their medical or quasi-medical diagnosis and educational provision, including what school they went to, was often almost automatically determined in accordance with that diagnosis. So, for example, children with ‘physical handicaps’ (as it was known) were usually placed in schools for such children, those with a visual impairment were placed in schools for blind children, those with a hearing impairment were placed in schools for deaf children, and so on. There were some categories in which children were placed which were somewhat obscure and some were positively offensive. For example, there were schools for ‘backward’ children, ‘delicate’ children and ‘educationally sub-normal’ children!
