Introduction

The term special educational needs began to come into use in the late 1960s as a result of increasing dissatisfaction with the terminology used in the Handicapped Pupils and School Health Service Regulations (1945), which classified handicapped children into ten categories according to their main handicap. There was, moreover, an increasing awareness of the frequency of learning and other difficulties affecting children's progress and adjustment in ordinary schools. A book by the headteacher of an infant school (Webb, 1967) had the title Children with Special Needs in the Infant School and described how 16 per cent of the 500 children who passed through the school during a six-year period needed and were given some additional help or consideration on account of learning, behaviour or emotional problems. The report of the Isle of Wight survey of the education, health and behaviour of 9-11-year olds (Rutter et al, 1970) found that one child in six had a chronic or recurrent handicap. The researchers commented that the categorizing of children according to their presumed major handicap had now become restrictive in planning special education and suggested ‗that special schooling be reconsidered from the point of view of the actual needs of handicapped children’ (p. 375). The Report of a Working Party at the National Bureau for Cooperation in Child Care (1970), Living with Handicap, suggested that categories should be viewed not so much as a categorisation of handicaps nor a categorisation of children but as a categorisation of special needs; moreover, the concept of special needs should include personal and social needs as well as more strictly educational ones (p. 206).