ABSTRACT
Special Educational Needs (SEN) can be a highly emotive subject for both teachers and parents. Presently, over 90 per cent of pupils with SEN are educated in mainstream schools (Morris, 1998) and with the recent publication of the Government’s Green Paper, Excellence for All Children, the commitment to further integration of children with significant sensory, cognitive and physical difficulties into ordinary classrooms is affirmed. It will be incumbent upon Local Educational Authorities (LEAs) to offer parents of a child with a special educational need a place in a mainstream school before other specialist placements are considered. Therefore, it is likely that a teacher entering the classroom for the first time will experience an increasingly complex environment, populated by many pupils exhibiting a variety of impediments, requiring a range of teaching styles and resources to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment.
