The history of special education in both Australia and the United Kingdom evolved largely around the growth of special schools. The advent of universal education in most western countries was no guarantee that schools would provide for all students. Initially, school learning was equated almost exclusively with the acquisition of basic skills of literacy and numeracy. Schools made no provision for students who were for various reasons unable to acquire these skills, or could only acquire them with considerable difficulty. The development of alternative and distinct methods of communication meant not only that students with impairments in vision and hearing would need special instruction in these methods, but that instruction in the rest of the curriculum would also be expected to rely on special communicative techniques. Thus the earliest special schools were set up to serve categories of disability, usually by charitable organisations that would be expected to assume a lifelong support service for the individual with a disability.