ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the developments in thinking about special educational needs (SEN) prior to the Warnock Enquiry, and considers some lessons about how the committee’s formulations were incorporated in subsequent legislation. The changes in principles and practice of SEN in the years that led up to the Warnock Enquiry amounted to a ‘paradigm shift’. Use of the term ‘special educational needs’ amounted to a ‘paradigm shift’ in people’s conceptualisation, from a ‘within-child’ model of the causation of children’s needs, to an ‘interactive’ one. The ‘special-ness’ of SEN was defined in relation to the scope within the education system for a flexible response to an individual’s needs. A child’s SEN is defined by the extent to which he has a ‘significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of his age’, or if ‘he has a disability which either prevents or hinders him from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided in schools’.
