ABSTRACT
Most secondary school teachers are familiar with pupils who have learning difficulties. Teachers need to be particularly open-minded about the abilities of children with special needs. The term 'special needs' now covers not only those children who have specific physical or mental disabilities but also those who experience difficulty in some aspect of their work perhaps for a period of time only. Hearing impaired pupils may have some difficulty in integrating into the mainstream school. Physical disabilities are the easiest of all handicaps to recognise and physically handicapped children may have more difficulty than others in persuading people to treat them in a normal way. Children with exceptional ability are an extremely varied group, including those who have all-round ability and those who are gifted in some particular way, perhaps as musicians, mathematicians or actors, who may or may not be exceptionally able in other aspects of their work.
