ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews French schooling arrangements for those pupils who in Great Britain would be said to manifest 'special needs' in education. The institutions take pupils who have a substantial handicap, especially of a mental category, to such an extent that one could wonder whether the notion of 'special need' is not in essence a need to exclude on the part of the social environment. Looking at the variety of situations, one could ask who defines the 'special need' or its French equivalent, who poses the questions, who responds, and who evaluates? One important point is pupil-mobility and institutional flexibility, or in contrast, the way handicap may be made permanent by institutionalisation, in structures which are self-feeding. Within the framework of the secondary school, there are special education sections for young people with moderate intellectual deficiency, and there are also some specialised classes for pupils with one or other type of handicap.
