ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the connections between special education and education in general and will illustrate ways in which special education contributes to our understanding of schooling and the curriculum. It will focus on two key changes in the education service over the last decade from a special educational needs perspective: the introduction of the National Curriculum (NC) and the policy move towards greater school specialization. The NC involved an entitlement for all children and included at least in principle all children, even those with significant Special Educational Needs (SENs). This expressed the values of equal opportunities and inclusion. But, with the implementation of the NC, the need for flexibility and differentiation came to the fore. This recognized individual needs and the realizing of potential as values. The term differentiation has now come to refer to within-class curriculum planning and support arrangements. However, it can also refer to organizational arrangements within schools in the class grouping of children by abilities and in the allocation of pupils between schools. This point leads to the second focus of the chapter: the specialization of schools into grant maintained schools, LEA schools, schools with some degree of ability selection, special schools and technology schools. Such a diversity of schools has been justified in terms of the values of meeting different individual needs, but has also been criticized in relation to equality and social cohesion for re-establishing a stratified system of high and low status schooling. Within special educational provision these values of inclusion and individuality have also influenced parental interests in favouring either more mainstreaming on one hand or highly specialist residential or day schools on the other.
