ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the management of educational exceptions (whether that be by diagnosis, language or learning need) through the lens of European legal traditions and informed by recent work in Critical Disability Studies. Special Needs Education – or “Exceptional Education” as it is also called – is identified as one instance of a state of emergency. This chapter establishes a framework through which critical questions concerning states of emergency may emerge (taking historical examples, including once again the Corona crisis) and then studies exceptional education according to them. The critical questions insert the possibility of democratic intervention and discussion in a field usually determined by necessity. Pupil data feeds into states of exception in education as it makes up the description of the present situation necessary to trigger emergency powers.
