ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of special needs education policy, as the backdrop for understanding the main emergent strand of concern for parents: statementing and decisions about the appropriate school. The integration debate peaked in the UK with the Warnock Report 1978 and the consequent Education Act of 1981. ‘The general aim of the reforms has been to introduce a more competitive, quasi-market approach to the allocation of resources in the education system, and to increase the range of parental choice over children’s schooling’, 1993. The Audit Commission Report and the 1993 Education Act suggest that complacency is not the problem - it is poor funding in ‘the only developed country to attempt special education reform without an allocation of additional funds to carry it out’. At the same time as parents were handling the administrative process required for their child to obtain an acceptable educational statement, choices had to be made about nursery and schools.
