ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter revisits the distinction between hedgehog and fox stances, summarising the kinds of dichotomies, tensions and dilemmas that arise in educating children with disabilities and difficulties. There is also a summary of how these tensions have and can be resolved. The argument is that these theoretical positions frame how practical issues are approached and therefore influence policy and practice decisions. This is illustrated by considering how these ideas relate to the framing of policy in this area. One way forward is discussed; to establish an Education Framework Commission (EFC) to work on the assumption that policy is formed as a settlement that reconciles contrary value positions. A Commission would aim to design independently of Government a renewable medium term consensual educational policy framework using deliberative democratic approaches, within which current and future governments can work. The chapter also summarises how this book goes beyond the first edition. It then restates the book’s main policy and practice implications; that there are some hard choices in education as in other social practices, that there are political pressures to obscure these trade-offs and that conditions need to be created for policy makers to discuss and be open about these trade-offs.
