ABSTRACT
Why do some children with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) settle in some special schools, conform to rules, re-engage in education and acquire nationally-accredited certificates? Yet other special schools struggle to manage pupil behaviour, find it difficult or deem it inappropriate to offer a broad curriculum to a similar clientele and are identified by OFSTED inspectors as 'failing' or having 'serious weaknesses‧. What makes the difference between proficient and ostensibly poor provision for the eleven to twelve thousand pupils who are estimated to attend the approximately 280 special schools which are designated as being for pupils with EBD (Visser and Cole 1996)? This last question has been considered by educationalists such as Cooper (1993) and by HMI (Bull 1995, OFSTED 1995a) for some years. It was also a concern of the Audit Commission (1992) in its review of special education.
