Warnock (1978)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction
Chapter 1 General approach
Chapter 2 Historical background
Chapter 3 Scope of special education
Chapter 4 Discovery, assessment and recording
Chapter 5 Children under five
Chapter 6 Schoolchildren with special needs: introduction
Chapter 7 Special education in ordinary schools
Chapter 8 Special education in special schools
Chapter 9 Parents as partners
Chapter 10 Transition from school to adult life
Chapter 11 Some curricular considerations
Chapter 12 Teacher education and training
Chapter 13 Advice and support in special education
Chapter 14 Other education service staff
Chapter 15 Health service and social services
Chapter 16 Relations between professionals, confidentiality and coordination of services
Chapter 17 Voluntary organisations
Chapter 18 Research and development
Chapter 19 Priorities and resources
Summary of recommendations

Appendices

Appendix 1 List of contributors
Appendix 2 Categories of handicapped pupils
Appendix 3 Possible grid as basis for statistical returns
Appendix 4 Organisation of health service
Appendix 5 Research project on services for parents of under 5s
Appendix 6 Research project on pre-school education
Appendix 7 Research project on employment experiences of handicapped school leavers
Appendix 8 Survey of teachers' views on special education

Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the education of handicapped children and young people

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1978
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

ISBN 0 10 172120 X

Chapter 2: The historical background
[pages 8 - 35]

INTRODUCTION

2.1 Special education for the handicapped in Great Britain is of relatively recent origin. The very first schools for the blind and deaf were founded in the lifetime of Mozart; those for the physically handicapped awaited the Great Exhibition; day schools for the mentally handicapped and epileptic arrived with the motor car; whilst special provision for delicate, maladjusted and speech impaired children is younger than living memory. Even so, the early institutions were nothing like the schools we know today and they were available only to the few. As with ordinary education, education for the handicapped began with individual and charitable enterprise. There followed in time the intervention of government, first to support voluntary effort and make good deficiencies through state provision, and finally to create a national framework in which public and voluntary agencies could act in partnership to see that all children, whatever their disability, received a suitable education. The framework reached its present form only in this decade.

I EARLY DEVELOPMENTS TO 1870

2.2 The first school for the BLIND in Great Britain was established by Henry Dannett in Liverpool in 1791. Named the School of Instruction for the Indigent Blind, it offered training in music and manual crafts for blind children and adults of both sexes. No education as such was given: child labour was the rule and pupils were taught to earn a living. The Liverpool foundation was quickly followed by other private ventures: the Asylum for the Industrious Blind at Edinburgh (1793), the Asylum for the Blind at Bristol (1793), the School for the Indigent Blind in London (1800) and the Asylum and School for the Indigent Blind at Norwich (1805). As at Liverpool, these institutions were solely concerned to provide vocational training for future employment, and relied upon the profits from their workshops.

2.3 The next schools, which came thirty years later, saw the beginnings of a genuinely educational element in the instruction. Thus the Yorkshire School for the Blind (1835) set out to teach arithmetic, reading and writing as part of vocational training; whilst the school established by the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read (1838) regarded general education as the foundation for subsequent training in manual skills. The Society later opened branches in Exeter and Nottingham. The General Institution for the Blind at Birmingham (1847) combined industrial training with a broad curriculum in general subjects: and, following early concentration on training, Henshaw's Blind Asylum at Manchester (1838) eventually developed a thriving school with educational objectives. Nevertheless by 1870 there were only a dozen or so institutions for the blind, most of them in the nature of training centres; and only a small proportion of the blind benefited from their provision. However the first senior school for the blind had been founded in 1866 at Worcester and named 'College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen'.

2.4 The first school for the DEAF in Great Britain was started by Thomas Braidwood in Edinburgh in the early 1760s. Mr Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb, as it was called, took a handful of selected paying pupils to be taught to speak and read. In 1783 the Academy moved to London, where in 1792 the first English school for the deaf opened with six children under the direction of Braidwood's nephew. This Asylum for the Support and Education of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor flourished: in 1809 it moved to larger buildings and later opened a branch at Margate. In 1812 another Braidwood School opened in Birmingham. Other schools for the deaf followed in the 1820s at Liverpool, Manchester, Exeter and Doncaster. By 1870 a further six schools had been founded, including the first in Wales at Aberystwyth (1847) and Donaldson's Hospital (now Donaldson's School) in Edinburgh. These early institutions for the deaf, no less than those for the blind, were protective places, with little or no contact with the outside world. The education that they provided was limited and subordinated to training. Many of their inmates failed to find employment on leaving and had recourse to begging.

2.5 The first separate educational provision for PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED children was made in 1851, when the Cripples Home and Industrial School for Girls was founded at Marylebone. A training Home for Crippled Boys followed at Kensington in 1865. Both institutions set out to teach a trade, and education as such was rudimentary. The children came mainly from poor homes and contributed to their own support by making goods for sale. Little further was done for the physically handicapped until 1890.

2.6 Before the middle of the nineteenth century so-called MENTALLY DEFECTIVE children who required custodial care were placed in workhouses and infirmaries. The first specific provision made for them was the Asylum for Idiots established at Highgate in 1847. Like the institutions for the blind and deaf, the Asylum took people of all ages. By 1870 there were five asylums, only three of which purported to provide education. Admission was generally by election or payment. In the same year the newly created Metropolitan Asylum Board established all-age asylums at Caterham, Leavesden and Hampstead. The children were later separated from the adults, and those who were considered to be educable followed a programme of simple manual work and formal teaching. The staff were untrained and classes were very large. In Scotland, the first establishment for the education of 'imbeciles' was set up at Baldovan in Dundee in 1852 and later became Strathmartine Hospital. An institution for 'defectives' was founded later in Edinburgh: it transferred to a site in Larbert in 1863 and is today the Royal Scottish National Hospital. The Lunacy (Scotland) Act of 1862 recognised the needs of the mentally handicapped and authorised the granting of licences to charitable institutions established for the care and training of imbecile children.

II 1870-1902

2.7 The Forster Education Act of 1870 (and the corresponding Education (Scotland) Act of 1872) established school boards to provide elementary education in those areas where there were insufficient places in voluntary schools. The Acts did not specifically include disabled children among those for whom provision was to be made, but in 1874 the London School Board established a class for the DEAF at a public elementary school and later began the training of teachers. By 1888 there were 14 centres attached to ordinary schools, with 373 children. (1) A number of other boards followed suit over the same period, but they were a small minority. Boards generally made no specific provision for the deaf; some had genuine doubts about their legal powers to do so, while others either did not have the money or believed that it was not in any case a proper charge upon the rates. Moreover school districts varied enormously in their size and resources and many of them had no school board.

2.8 It was equally so with the BLIND. Two years after the Scottish Act 50 blind children were being taught in ordinary classes in Scottish schools, and in 1875 the London Board first arranged for the teaching of blind children in its elementary schools. By 1888 there were 23 centres attached to ordinary schools, where 133 children were taught part-time by teachers who were themselves blind. The children received the rest of their education in ordinary classes, where they mixed freely with the other children. These developments were matched by a handful of other boards, including the Cardiff Board, which appointed a blind teacher to visit the ordinary schools attended by blind children.

2.9 Special educational provision for PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY HANDICAPPED children was even slower off the mark. Those who attended elementary schools profited as best they could from the ordinary teaching. The more severely handicapped received care and sometimes education in institutions. However, in 1892 the Leicester School Board established a special class for selected 'feeble-minded' pupils, and in the same year the London Board opened a school for the special instruction of physically and mentally detective children who could not be suitably educated by ordinary methods. The emphasis was upon occupational activity rather than formal education. By 1896 there were 24 special schools in London attended by 900 pupils and before the end of the century schools for defective children had been established by six other boards.

2.10 These first, hesitant efforts by a few school boards to cater for some handicapped children owed nothing to educational legislation. The middle of the nineteenth century had seen a stirring of social conscience over the plight of the disabled, especially of the blind, but it was primarily concerned to relieve their distress, not to educate them. Yet as the principle of universal elementary education took root, it could be only a matter of time before the educational needs of handicapped children began to be recognised. Six years after the Forster Act the Charity Organisation Society was pressing the right of blind children to receive education and the duty of school boards to provide it, and later applying the same arguments to the education of the deaf. The Society for the Training of the Deaf made approaches to government. Other bodies added their voices and through meetings, publications and propaganda created the climate of reform.

2.11 The time had come for an inquiry, and the Royal Commission on the Blind and Deaf was constituted in 1886. The Commission had started work the year before with a remit confined to the blind, but now extended to include the deaf. The amended terms of reference were to report on the provision for the education of the blind and deaf in the United Kingdom, the opportunities for their employment and the educational changes needed to increase their qualifications for employment. The Commission was also required to consider 'such other cases as from special circumstances would seem to require exceptional methods of education'. (We referred to the comprehensive nature of its remit at the beginning of this report.)

2.12 The Commission reported in 1889. It recommended the introduction of compulsory education for the blind from five to 16 and proposed that it should be provided by school boards either in their own schools or in institutions run by others if certified by the Education Department as being suitable. A two-stage arrangement was envisaged whereby pupils would receive elementary education to the age of 12 and thereafter follow a technical or an academic course. Boards should have the power to continue to pay grants beyond the age of 16 to assist pupils to establish themselves in a trade. At the elementary stage it was envisaged that the children would be taught in ordinary classes by ordinary teachers, although in town schools special instruction in reading might be given by visiting teachers or by attendance at a centre on certain days. There would be a need for special boarding schools for pupils who were delicate, neglected or lived too far from the nearest day school to be able to attend it without difficulty.

2.13 The Commission also recommended compulsory education for the deaf, to be provided by school boards, but with important differences. Since deaf children were generally less forward than hearing children they would not be ready to start school until the age of seven. Moreover, they would need to be taught not in ordinary classes but in separate schools or classes. There should be one teacher for every eight children where oral methods were used and one teacher for every 14 children for instruction by the manual system. The sexes should be educated separately. Teachers of the deaf should be paid higher salaries than ordinary teachers, their training should be under government supervision, and they should have qualified as ordinary teachers before beginning their special training.

2.14 The Commission's report was well received. Legislation quickly followed for Scotland in the Education of Blind and Deaf Mute Children (Scotland) Act of 1890, but three years elapsed before England and Wales were similarly covered by the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act of 1893. The Act required school authorities* to make provision, in their own or other schools, for the education of blind and deaf children resident in their area who were not otherwise receiving suitable elementary education. As the Commission had recommended, blind children were to receive education between the ages of five and 16 and deaf children between seven and 16. (The higher age of 16 was far ahead of contemporary provision for normal children, who, from the age of 11, might be given total or partial exemption from attending school.) Certified institutions were entitled to receive a per capita Parliamentary grant for each child received but had to be open to inspection.

*The term 'school authority' includes school boards, and, for areas not under a school board, the district council where such existed, or otherwise the body responsible for appointing a school attendance committee for the area.

2.15 The new Act meant that all blind or deaf children would in future be sent to school as of right. The uncertainties of the 1870 Act which had affected the special provision made in board schools were thus finally removed, and monetary support assured. In most cases the extra places were provided by the extension of existing schools. The larger school boards generally made real efforts to maintain good standards in their own schools, but many boards, particularly those of small towns and country districts, were less efficient. Moreover there were some 20,000 voluntary schools, over which the school boards had no control, and these difficulties persisted until the creation of local education authorities in 1902.

2.16 Before the Forster Education Act the needs of MENTALLY HANDICAPPED children were little recognised. Mental disability was for many children no substantial handicap in coping with the simple demands of everyday life in a largely uneducated and relatively uncomplicated world, and institutional provision was available for those who needed looking after. Their needs first became apparent after 1870 when large numbers of children of below average or poor intellectual ability entered public elementary schools. Many of them made scarcely any progress and their presence hindered normal teaching. There were no systematic means of assessing their individual capabilities and requirements. The range of disability was very wide and there were unresolved questions of definition. Instruction was based upon the official Code for normal children; classes were large and there was no opportunity, even if teachers had the skills, to shape a special curriculum for them. Unlike the blind and deaf they had no organised opinion to plead their cause. Apart from isolated examples of private provision in London and elsewhere very little had been achieved when the Royal Commission on the Blind and Deaf reported in 1889.

2.17 The Commission had distinguished between the feeble-minded, imbeciles and idiots. The last group, having the greater degree of intellectual deficiency, were not generally considered to be educable. The Commission argued that imbeciles, having a lesser degree of deficiency, should not remain in asylums or workhouses, but school authorities should be responsible for ensuring their admission to institutions where they should wherever possible receive an education which concentrated upon sensory and physical development and the improvement of speech. This would be given by ordinary teachers. As to the feeble-minded, these should receive special education separately from ordinary children in 'auxiliary' schools. The nature of the education to be given was not specified.

2.18 Following the Commission's report the Charity Organisation Society campaigned for the imposition of a duty on school boards to provide for the mentally handicapped and, to this end, sponsored in 1896 the National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-Minded. The campaign drew support from the findings of Dr Francis Warner, who investigated 100,000 children in district poor law schools and the London Board Schools in the early 1890s and concluded that about 1 per cent of the children required special care and training in separate schools on the grounds of their mental and physical condition. The Report of the Metropolitan Poor Law Schools Committee in 1896 also called for separate provision to be made for feeble-minded children. It recommended that they should be boarded out or placed in special training homes.

2.19 In 1896 the Education Department established a Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children, under its Chief Inspector of Schools. The Committee was asked to enquire first into the need for any changes in the system of education of feeble-minded and defective children not in charge of guardians and not idiots or imbeciles; secondly into the means of discriminating between educable and non-educable children and between those who could be taught in an ordinary school and those who should attend special classes; and thirdly into the provision of elementary education for children suffering from epilepsy.

2.20 Like the Royal Commission seven years earlier the Committee had to grapple with definitions. It decided that imbecile children were those who by reason of mental defect could not be educated to be self-supporting; and that feeble-minded children were those who, not being imbeciles, could not be taught in ordinary elementary schools by ordinary methods. Logically this distinction meant that all imbeciles would attend asylums and the feeble-minded would attend special schools or classes: but admission to asylums was only on the basis of certification, and many imbeciles were not certified. Thus some imbeciles would be presented for admission to special schools or classes. The Committee therefore concluded that the schools would need to exercise their own judgement on whether an individual child was capable of receiving proper benefit from special instruction. Dr Warner's study of London children had suggested that the children could be assessed by physical examination, and on this footing the Committee envisaged that a medical officer appointed by the school board would decide whether a particular child should be educated in an ordinary school, in a special school or not at all.

2.21 The Committee proposed that school authorities should have the duty to make special provision for all defective children in their area, and be given the power to compel attendance. Admission should be at age seven, and all children should remain until 14, unless the authority decided that they should stay until 16. Classes in special schools should be small, generally not greater than 20 or 30 in the case of senior classes. All headteachers should be qualified. The majority of assistant teachers should also be qualified and should moreover have additional training. None should be under 21. There would be not more than 4½ hours of teaching each day, and lessons should be short. There should be a varied programme of activities with emphasis on manual and vocational training for senior pupils.

2.22 The Committee had classed the feeble-minded with PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED children under the general description of 'defective'. It recommended that defective children of normal intelligence should attend ordinary schools, and be provided with transport; guides or boarding accommodation to enable them to do so. Even where a separate school was provided for them they should receive an ordinary education.

2.23 With regard to EPILEPTIC children the Committee proposed that where attacks occurred at intervals of a month or longer attendance at an ordinary class was possible: otherwise school authorities should be required to provide for them in residential special schools or to pay for their education and maintenance in a voluntary institution. Attendance should be compulsory.

2.24 The Committee reported in 1898. Its proposals were far ahead of contemporary ideas, made heavy organisational demands upon the boards and were, moreover, costly. Not surprisingly therefore the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899 merely permitted school boards to provide for the education of mentally and physically defective and epileptic children. The Act applied to children who 'not being imbecile, and not being merely dull or backward, are defective, that is to say ... by reason of mental or physical defect are incapable of receiving benefit from the instruction in ordinary elementary schools but are not incapable by reason of such defect of receiving benefit from instruction in special classes or schools'. Although an enhanced rate of grant was payable for this special provision, ten years later only 133 out of 327 local education authorities were using their powers under the Act. (2)

III 1902-1944

2.25 The Education Act 1902 abolished the school boards and established a two-tier system of local education authorities for elementary and secondary education respectively. The functions formerly exercised by school boards, including those relating to special education, were transferred to the new authorities for elementary education, whilst the higher education powers conferred upon county and county borough councils included the power to provide secondary education for blind, deaf, defective and epileptic children. With these changes the statutory foundation of special educational provision which had been laid in the last decade of the nineteenth century, though consolidated in the Education Act 1921, continued in broadly the same form until 1944. However, the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic) Act 1914 converted into a duty the earlier powers conferred on authorities by the 1899 Act to provide for the education of mentally defective children; and the Education Act 1918 did the same in respect of physically defective and epileptic children. Thus the intentions of the Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children were belatedly fulfilled and compulsory provision extended to all the categories of handicapped children which had so far been recognised.

2.26 New provision continued to be made, much of it by voluntary effort and of a pioneering nature. Open air schools, day and boarding schools for physically handicapped children, schools in hospitals and convalescent homes and trade schools all contributed to more varied facilities available to local education authorities and parents. Examples were the Heritage Craft Schools and Hospital at Chailey, Sussex (1903), the Swinton House School of Recovery at Manchester (1905), the London County Council's Open Air School at Plumstead (1907) and the Lord Mayor Treloar Cripples' Hospital and College at Alton (1908). The Manchester Local Education Authority had opened a residential school for epileptics in 1910: by 1918 there were six such schools throughout the country.

2.27 The education of MENTALLY HANDICAPPED children however faced a period of uncertainty following the report in 1908 of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded. After four years' investigation the Commission concluded that institutional provision for mentally defective children on occupational lines was to be preferred to provision in special schools; it consequently recommended that the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899 should be amended to exclude these children and that responsibility for their training should lie with local mental deficiency committees. In the event this proposal was not accepted and the 1899 Act remained intact. Instead the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 required local education authorities to ascertain and certify which children aged seven to 16 in their area were defective. Only those who were judged by the authority to be incapable of being taught in special schools were to pass to the care of local mental deficiency committees. The duty to provide for the educable children which naturally followed was enacted a year later. In fact by 1913 175 out of 318 authorities had used their powers under the 1899 Act, about a third of them having established their own special schools: there were altogether 177 schools catering for some 12,500 mentally defective children. (3) By 1939 the number of children had risen to about 17,000. (4)

2.28 In Scotland, the Education of Defective Children (Scotland) Act of 1906 empowered school boards to make provision in special schools or classes for the education of defective children between the ages of five and 16, whilst the Mental Deficiency (Scotland) Act of 1913 required school boards to ascertain children in their area who were defective, and those who were considered incapable of benefiting from instruction in special schools became the responsibility of parish councils for placement in an institution. By 1939 the number of mentally defective children on the roll of special schools and classes had reached 4,871.

2.29 The education of mentally defective children again came under scrutiny with the appointment in 1924 of the Mental Deficiency Committee (the Wood Committee). This had been set up informally by Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education, in association with the Board of Control. It set itself to inquire into the incidence of feeble-mindedness and to suggest what changes were necessary in the arrangements for the education of feeble-minded children. Reporting in 1929 the Committee concluded that some 105,000 school children were mentally defective in terms of the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic) Act 1914 and accepted evidence that only a third of them had been ascertained and that moreover only a half of these were actually attending special schools. The Committee also estimated that a further 10 per cent of all children, though not mentally deficient, were retarded and failing to make progress in the ordinary school. (This broader concept of need found expression after 1944 in the category of educationally sub-normal pupils.)

2.30 The Committee's suggestions were very different from those of the Royal Commission twenty years before. Far from proposing the separation of mentally deficient children from the mainstream of education the Committee pressed for their much closer association with it. It proposed that the system of certification, which inhibited proper ascertainment of children's needs, should be abolished and that there should be a single system for dealing with the feeble-minded and the backward which allowed greater flexibility in the development of special schools and classes and the placement of pupils. It used these prophetic words:

'We do not however contemplate that these [special] schools would exist with a different legal sanction, under a different system of nomenclature and under different administrative provisions. If the majority of children for whom these schools ... are intended are, ex hypothesi, to lead the lives of ordinary citizens, with no shadow of a "certificate" and all that that implies to handicap their careers, the schools must be brought into closer relation with the Public Elementary School System and presented to parents not as something both distinct and humiliating, but as a helpful variation of the ordinary school'.

2.32 In contrast to the education of the physically and mentally handicapped that of BLIND and DEAF children had made substantial advances by the turn of the century. Provision for their education had been a statutory duty of the school authorities since 1893 and by 1902 most of the children were receiving education, either in maintained schools or in voluntary schools or institutions, and education was free to those children whose parents could not afford to contribute towards the cost. There were however three areas of deficiency. Their education was entirely neglected before they became of school age; moreover the statutory education of deaf children did not begin until the age of seven and even the blind were not in practice always able to gain admission to voluntary schools at five. Secondly, children with partial sight or partial hearing were at a disadvantage in ordinary schools, and even in special schools their usable sensory faculties were insufficiently exploited. Thirdly, whilst Worcester College provided an academic education for boys, there was no comparable provision for girls.

2.33 Nursery education for blind children originated in 1918 when the Royal National Institute for the Blind opened the first of its residential Sunshine Homes for deprived blind children. In 1921 the Institute also founded Chorleywood College as a secondary school for blind girls. The first provision for partially sighted children was made by the London County Council in 1907, when myopic children in the Authority's blind schools were taught reading and writing from large type instead of braille. The following year the Council established a special higher class for myopic children, which combined special instruction with attendance at ordinary classes for oral teaching. By 1913 eight English authorities were making provision for the partially sighted. Reporting in 1934 the Board of Education Committee of Inquiry into Problems relating to Partially Sighted Children recommended that so far as possible these children should be educated in classes within ordinary schools and should not be taught alongside the blind. The Committee had found that provision for 2,000 partially sighted children was being made in 37 schools and that a further 18 schools for the blind offered special education for the partially sighted. Nevertheless many partially sighted children were being educated as if they were blind.

2.34 So long as it was accepted that the formal education of DEAF children need not begin until two years later than that of the blind the question of nursery education for the deaf could hardly arise. They were not brought into line with the blind until 1938 (under the Education (Deaf Children) Act 1937). Although the need for a grammar school for the deaf was recognised before the Second World War no public provision was made until 1946, when the Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf was founded to take boys and girls sent there by local education authorities. The only earlier provision had been in private schools.

2.35 The first special school for partially deaf children was established by the Bristol Local Education Authority in 1906, and another by the London County Council soon afterwards. But most partially deaf children continued for many years to receive ordinary education or to be taught with deaf children in special schools. Their needs were examined by the Committee of Inquiry into the Problems relating to Children with Defective Hearing appointed by the Board of Education in 1934. Reporting four years later the Committee recognised that the needs of partially deaf children were different from those of deaf children, and were also varied. It suggested a three-fold classification: those capable of attending ordinary classes without special arrangements; those more severely affected who might either attend an ordinary school with the help of a hearing aid and support from visiting teachers of lip-reading or be taught in a special school (day or boarding) for the partially deaf; and those whose hearing was so impaired that they needed to be educated with the deaf. Teachers of partially deaf pupils should have the same qualifications as those of the deaf. The report led some authorities to provide residential schools for the partially deaf.

2.36 This period also saw the very beginnings of provision for the MALADJUSTED. Before the turn of the century a psychological laboratory began to study difficult children at University College, London, and the British Child Study Association was founded in 1893. In 1913 the London County Council appointed a psychologist (Cyril Burt) to examine, among other things, individual cases referred by teachers, school doctors, care workers, magistrates and parents. Largely influenced by developments in America, the concept of child guidance on multi-professional lines began to emerge, and in 1927 the Child Guidance Council, which later merged into the National Association for Mental Health, was formed. It aimed 'to encourage the provision of skilled treatment of children showing behavioural disturbances'. A number of clinics was subsequently started by voluntary bodies and hospitals. Provision by local education authorities came later, but by 1939 22 clinics, officially recognised as part of the school medical service, were wholly or partly maintained by authorities. However, since maladjustment was not officially recognised as a form of handicap calling for special education, practically no provision was made by authorities for these pupils before 1944, although some authorities paid for children to attend voluntary homes. In Scotland in the late 1920s an 'educational' clinic was opened by Dr William Boyd of the Education Department of the University of Glasgow and a 'psychological' clinic was established by Professor James Drever in the Psychology Department at Edinburgh University. The term 'child guidance clinic' was first used in 1931 when the Notre Dame clinic was opened in Glasgow. Glasgow was the first education authority to establish a child guidance clinic on a full-time basis, in 1937. Seven education authorities had child guidance clinics prior to the Education (Scotland) Act 1945.

IV 1944-1955

Approach to legislation

2.37 In June 1941 the Board of Education issued the Green Paper Education after the war. Although 'strictly confidential' it received a wide circulation. The statutory framework of special education at that time was set out in the Education Act 1921. This had simply consolidated earlier enactments. Four categories of handicap were recognised - the blind, deaf, defective (comprising physical and mental disability) and epileptic. Local education authorities were required to ascertain and certify those children who were defective not being idiots or imbeciles. Blindness and deafness were not defined and there was no provision for the ascertainment and certification of these children. In effect the parents of children in any of the four categories were required to see that their child attended a suitable special school from the age of seven (or five in the case of blind or deaf children) until the age of 16. Local education authorities had the duty to secure the provision of such schools, and were empowered to provide continued education over the age of 16.

2.38 The Green Paper considered the Care and education of handicapped children in the course of a separate chapter devoted to the 'health and physical well-being of the child'. It described school accommodation for blind and deaf children as being generally adequate, though much of it was old and ill-distributed. Less satisfactory was that for mentally defective and delicate children (now certifiable as physically defective). It suggested that provision for most of these children should be made in ordinary schools. Maladjustment should be recognised as an additional category of handicap and a small number of residential special schools should be established for these children on a regional basis. Indeed local education authorities should cooperate generally in the joint use of special schools in the interests of effective and efficient provision. The whole of Part V of the 1921 Act, which dealt with education of handicapped children, should be revised and updated. In particular the system of certification of defective children should be reconsidered. The idea was floated that when the ordinary school leaving age was raised to 15 that for defective children should be reduced to the same age.

2.39 Two years after the Green Paper the government issued its White Paper Education reconstruction. (5) As in the Green Paper handicapped children were included in a separate chapter devoted to health and welfare, but this time they were dealt with in two sentences: 'Provision for the blind, deaf and other handicapped children is now made under Part V of the Education Act 1921, This part of the Act will require substantial modification'.

2.40 The modest attention to special education in the consultations which preceded the introduction of the Education Bill in 1943 and also in the parliamentary debates which followed meant that the foundations of reform had already been laid. The view that provision for handicapped children should be regarded as an aspect, if a special aspect, of ordinary education had been steadily gaining ground before the war, and exactly accorded with the spirit of post-war reconstruction. There was now no disagreement on the need for a single framework of educational provision in which special education would have a distinctive but natural place.

The Education Act 1944

2.41 The provisions of Part V of the Education Act 1921 which (like earlier enactments) had treated the education of handicapped children as an entirely separate category of provision, were replaced by a requirement that local education authorities must meet the needs of these children, in the form of special educational treatment, within their general duty to provide a sufficiency of primary and secondary schools. Special educational provision was to be included in authorities' development plans for primary and secondary education. The 1921 Act had provided for handicapped children to be educated only in special schools or special classes. Now, the less seriously handicapped children might be catered for in ordinary schools (not necessarily in special classes), although those with serious disabilities would, wherever practicable, continue to be educated in special schools. The options were later extended by the Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1953 to include independent schools, subject to the Minister's power of veto in a particular case.

2.42 Other major changes were introduced. The duty of local education authorities to ascertain which children required special educational treatment, hitherto confined to defective and epileptic children, was extended to children with all types of disability. They were generally described in the Act as 'pupils who suffer from any disability of mind or body' and definition of the types or categories was flexibly delegated to the Minister, acting under statutory regulations, instead of being written into the Act. Certification of defective children within the education system was abolished: any child considered to be educable would in future have access to schooling as of right. But children not considered to be capable of being educated in school were to be reported to the local authority for the purposes of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. The lower age of compulsory school attendance at special schools was uniformly reduced to five years and the right to remain beyond the age of 16 was established.

2.43 For the purposes of ascertainment, authorities were empowered to require parents to submit their children for medical examination, subject to a lower age limit of two years: and they could not unreasonably refuse the parents' request that their child should be so examined. No specific provision was made for parental appeal against an authority's decision that their child required special educational treatment, but parents could appeal to the Minister against an authority's refusal to consent to their child being withdrawn from a special school. Moreover, the normal procedures for the enforcement of school attendance applied, so that in the event of disagreement between the parents and the authority as to the school to be named in a School Attendance Order, the question could be referred to the Minister for his determination.

2.44 In Scotland, the Education (Scotland) Act 1945 repeated much of the content of the Education Act 1944, but with certain important differences. The duty of education authorities to ascertain which children required special educational treatment applied to children from the age of five. Education authorities were specifically empowered to provide a child guidance service in a child guidance clinic or elsewhere, its functions being to study handicapped, backward and difficult children, to advise teachers and parents as to the appropriate methods of education and training for these children and in suitable cases to provide special educational treatment in child guidance clinics. The creation of this service did a great deal to establish the importance in ascertainment procedures of the assessment of children by educational psychologists. In addition, the 1945 Act specifically recognised the educational importance of the early discovery and treatment of any disability of mind or body by placing upon education authorities the duty to make this known.

Planning the new structure

2.45 The intention of the 1944 Act, fulfilled by regulations made by the Minister in the following year, was to extend greatly the range of children's special needs for which authorities would be obliged to make specific provision, either in special schools or in ordinary schools. The Handicapped Pupils and School Health Service Regulations 1945 defined 11 categories of pupils: blind, partially sighted, deaf, partially deaf, delicate, diabetic, educationally subnormal, epileptic, maladjusted, physically handicapped and those with speech defects. Maladjustment and speech defects were entirely new categories. Partial blindness and partial deafness were extensions of existing categories, whilst delicate and diabetic children had previously been treated as physically handicapped. The categories (though not the detailed definitions) have remained unchanged since 1944 except that in 1953 diabetic children ceased to form a separate category and have since then been included with the delicate. The regulations prescribed that blind, deaf, epileptic, physically handicapped and aphasic children were seriously disabled and must be educated in special schools. Children with other disabilities might attend ordinary schools if adequate provision for them was available.

2.46 The new framework of categories entailed the development of existing and new forms of special educational provision. Detailed guidance on the provision to be made for each category by local education authorities in their development plans was issued by the Ministry of Education. (6) The small number of blind children (estimated to be about 1,200) would need to be educated in special boarding schools. Deaf children, though somewhat more numerous than the blind, might also require residential special schooling, except in the larger urban authorities, where special day school provision might be feasible. The more seriously affected partially sighted children should attend special schools (either day or boarding), but others could, with special help, be educated in regular classes in ordinary schools or in open air schools. About half of partially deaf children might with suitable support be capable of attending an ordinary day school: others would require the more sophisticated services of a day or boarding special school. Provision for delicate children not in hospital schools should be in open air day schools or in boarding schools for the delicate. The great majority of children would expect to return to ordinary schools within two years. Diabetic children should normally attend ordinary day schools, and be accommodated in special hostels if they could not receive adequate treatment and care whilst living at home. Epileptic children requiring regular medication should be sent to a boarding special school for epileptic children. The special educational needs of a maladjusted child should be assessed by an educational psychologist or a child guidance team and, depending on the assessment, might be met by his own teacher, with appropriate specialist advice; by periods of specialist teaching (often in a separate setting); by attendance at another day school (ordinary or special); or by transfer to a boarding special school. Local education authorities were reminded that effective assessment and placement called for proper arrangements for child guidance.

2.47 The guidance indicated that all children assessed as needing special educational treatment on account of physical handicap should be sent to an appropriate special school. Those with physical disabilities not requiring medical or surgical treatment or interfering with their progress in ordinary schools should not be regarded as physically handicapped. Aphasic children whose disability was not merely a defect of articulation should, given imperfect knowledge of the best methods of treatment, be admitted to a school for the deaf. Children with other speech defects should receive treatment at clinics whilst continuing to attend their own schools. A very large proportion of them could be expected to be cured by regular treatment.

2.48 The category of educationally sub-normal children was seen as consisting of children of limited ability and children retarded by 'other conditions' such as irregular attendance, ill-health, lack of continuity in their education or unsatisfactory school conditions. These children would be those who for any reason were retarded by more than 20 per cent for their age and who were not so low-graded as to be ineducable or to be detrimental to the education of other children. They would amount to approximately 10 per cent of the school population. Detailed suggestions were made for provision. In large urban areas about 1-2 per cent of the school population would need to be educated in special schools (including 0.2 per cent in boarding schools); the remaining 8-9% of the school population would be provided for in ordinary schools. They should be taught in small groups, in attractive accommodation and by sympathetic teachers. They should not however be isolated, but should be regarded as full members of the ordinary school and should share in general activities. In the absence of well-tried methods there would be need for experimentation to discover the most effective ways of helping them. In small urban areas rather more provision (for 0.4 per cent of the school population) might be required in boarding special schools: and where numbers were insufficient to support a day special school or a special class the remaining children would need to be educated in regular classes in ordinary schools.

The first ten years

2.49 The official guidance of 1946 had provided estimates for each category of handicap of the number of children who might be expected to require special educational treatment, not necessarily in special schools. In sum these amounted to a range between 14 per cent and 17 per cent of the school population. These were however planning objectives to be achieved in the fullness of time. The first task was to make good a shortage of places inherited from the war, through the interruption of school building and the effect of enemy bombing. In 1946 the number of children in special schools had for a variety of reasons fallen to 38,499 compared with 51,152 in 1939. Scarcity of building resources and the heavy demand for places to match the rapidly increasing post-war birth rate dictated the use of country mansions and other large buildings which were coming on to the market. Largely by these means the number of special schools increased between 1945 and 1955 from 528 to 743 (41 per cent) and the numbers of pupils in them from 38,499 to 58,034 (51 per cent). During the same period the number of full-time teachers in special schools rose from 2,434 to 4,381 (80 per cent). Of 16,159 places provided between 1945 and the end of 1955, 68 per cent were for ESN pupils, 14 per cent for the physically handicapped and 7 per cent for the maladjusted. Three out of five places were for boarders. In the same period 68 new boarding homes were provided, mainly for maladjusted pupils. The planning of these developments had been assisted by a series of regional conferences of local education authorities in 1946 and 1947 and again in 1954 and 1955.

2.50 By 1955 the guidance in Pamphlet No 5 had served its purpose. Provision for the BLIND AND PARTIALLY SIGHTED was judged to be adequate, and the partially sighted had been accommodated substantially in separate special schools. (The number of schools for both blind and partially sighted children had been reduced from 14 to three. This had been recommended by the Committee on the Partially Sighted in 1934, but was to be challenged later by the Vernon Committee in 1972.) Provision for the DEAF AND PARTIALLY HEARING had expanded rapidly to cope with the lower age of entry to school and was nearing sufficiency. The importance of early diagnosis, assessment and an early start to education was coming to be recognised. Advances in electronic engineering had made it easier to discover, measure and exploit the limited hearing that a deaf child might have; as with the partially sighted, provision for the partially hearing had been directed towards separate special schools.

2.51 Improvements in the methods of controlling EPILEPSY and increased willingness of teachers in ordinary schools to accept responsibility, with medical help, in less severe cases, suggested that existing places in special schools would fully meet foreseeable needs. The provision of 25 boarding schools in the decade 1945-55 had greatly eased the placement of children suffering from all kinds of PHYSICAL HANDICAP, including cerebral palsy. In January 1955 some 1,800 children with cerebral palsy were attending special schools other than hospital schools.

2.52 The first local education authority to employ speech therapists was the Manchester Local Education Authority in 1906. By 1945 70 authorities were employing them. But the development of provision for children with SPEECH DEFECTS had been delayed by lack of qualified staff. Before 1945 there was no single recognised qualification, no agreed syllabus of study and some professional rivalry. In 1945 the College of Speech Therapists was formed and became the sole organising and examining body and mode of entry for speech therapists to the National Register of Medical Auxiliaries. The College's syllabus and final examinations were thereafter adopted by all training schools in England and Scotland. On this foundation, the number of speech therapists employed full or part-time by local education authorities increased from 205 to 341 in the five years 1949-1954 (an increase of nearly 90 per cent on a full-time basis), whilst the number of children treated each year rose from 25,098 to 44,800. In 1969 the Quirk Committee, (7) reporting to the Secretaries of State for Education and Science, Social Services, Scotland and Wales, recommended unification of the speech therapy service, further expansion of professional staff, a broader based training at degree level and the establishment of a professional organisation. As a result the speech therapy services were reorganised in 1974 under area health authorities in England and Wales and under health boards in Scotland, But the government concluded that a fully graduate profession would need to be regarded as an aspiration for the future.

2.53 In 1955 12,000 DELICATE children were being educated in day and boarding open air schools in England and Wales. Considerable improvements in the standard of living and in the general health of school children resulting from the National Health Service and the provision of milk and meals in schools had both reduced and changed the nature of the need for special educational provision for this category of handicapped child, which from 1953 had included also diabetic children. Medical opinion also favoured a less spartan regime. A survey by medical officers, reporting in 1952, suggested that there was a continuing need for special schools for the delicate but little justification for expanded provision. It was thought that with reduced physical debility amongst school children these schools would increasingly cater for children who, for a variety of reasons (for example, asthma, the effects of illness or; in a few cases maladjustment*), found the life of an ordinary school too strenuous. The great majority of diabetic children, of whom there were estimated to be some 2,000 in 1955, were considered to be capable of attending ordinary day schools with care and treatment while living at home or at a hostel.

*In his first Annual Report (1908) the Chief Medical Officer had expressed the view that 'nervous' children were likely to benefit from attendance at open air schools.

2.54 But if special provision for most categories of handicap appeared to be nearing sufficiency in amount (as distinct from quality) the needs of EDUCATIONALLY SUB-NORMAL pupils remained obstinately unsatisfied in spite of continuous expansion since 1945. By the end of 1955 nearly 11,000 new places had been provided and a further 8,000 places were in hand. The number of children in ESN special schools had nearly doubled between 1947 and 1955 (from 12,060 to 22,639) yet the number of children awaiting placement remained high at over 12,000. It was clear that the rate of ascertainment of these pupils was constrained by the number of special school places available. Indeed a special enquiry of authorities conducted in 1956 showed that although 12,437 had been shown in the official returns as awaiting places in special schools, as many as 27,000 were considered to need such placement. These were children who were not being satisfactorily helped in ordinary schools.

2.55 Provision for MALADJUSTED pupils was also characterised by expansion in the decade 1945-55. Little had been done for them before the war. In 1945 the only facilities for examining maladjusted children were in 79 child guidance clinics (22 in 1939), some war-time hostels, a few independent boarding schools and two day special schools. Ten years later there were some 300 child guidance clinics, about two thirds of them provided by local education authorities, 45 boarding homes or hostels, 32 boarding special schools, three day special schools and a number of special classes. Further, local education authorities had placed over 1,000 maladjusted children in 158 independent boarding schools and were providing education for seriously disturbed children in six children's departments of mental hospitals. This expanded provision had been accompanied by greater discrimination in the referral, assessment, placement and education of children. The importance of early referral and of prevention as well as cure was increasingly recognised, and maladjustment was seen as having manifestations in passive introverted behaviour as well as iil disruptive or anti-social forms of conduct. Moreover the staff of clinics had expanded, though not in step with need. Whereas in 1945 clinics were generally run single-handed by a psychologist, in 1955 most of them were served by a team consisting of a child psychiatrist, an educational psychologist and a psychiatric social worker, and the teams worked more closely with the staff of special schools and hostels. A start had been made on providing courses of training for teachers and house-staff concerned with maladjusted children. Even so this branch of special education was recognised as being relatively undeveloped. With this in mind the Minister of Education had in 1950 appointed a Committee to enquire into and report upon the medical, educational and social problems relating to maladjusted children, with reference to their treatment within the education system. The Underwood Committee, as it was called, reported in November 1955. (8)

2.56 The special education of CHILDREN IN HOSPITALS had been safeguarded by the National Health Service Act of 1946. Section 62 empowered regional hospital boards and the teaching hospitals to arrange with a local education authority or voluntary body for the use as a special school of any premises forming part of the hospital. The number of hospital special schools grew from 95 in 1947 to 120 (15 run by voluntary bodies) in 1955. In addition to the 6,476 pupils who were being taught in the hospital schools, 1,425 children were receiving individual or group tuition. The education of these children was seen as posing special problems, deriving from the great variety of their medical condition and the nature of their treatment, the differing lengths of their stay, the necessary flexibility in organising classes, timetables and school terms, the considerable interruption in the continuity of teaching and unequal standards of physical accommodation and equipment. It was recognised that successful education depended upon close and continuous cooperation between hospital and teaching staff.

2.57 In Scotland an attempt was made to bring together expert opinion on all forms of handicap. In 1947 the Secretary of State remitted to the Advisory Council in Scotland the task of reviewing the provision made for the primary and secondary education of pupils suffering from disability of mind or body or from maladjustment due to social handicaps. The Council produced between 1950 and 1952 seven reports which were valuable guides to education authorities on the provision for different handicaps, although their predictions of future need have not all stood the test of time. For example, it was thought that special provision should be made for 20,000 physically handicapped pupils, whereas the number of these children in special schools in 1976 was only 1,076: conversely the Council's estimate that four residential child guidance clinics would suffice to meet the needs of all children maladjusted because of social handicap has proved to be hopelessly inadequate. The Scottish Education Department Circular No 300 (9) in presenting these reports placed special education within the mainstream of primary and secondary education:

'Special educational treatment should not be thought of mainly in terms of the provision on a large scale of separate schools for handicapped children ... It is recognised that there must continue to be situations where it is essential in the children's interest that those who are handicapped must be separated from those who are not. Nevertheless as medical knowledge increases and as general school conditions improve it should be possible for an increasing proportion of pupils who require special educational treatment to be educated along with their contemporaries in ordinary schools. Special educational treatment should, indeed, be regarded simply as a well-defined arrangement within the ordinary educational system to provide for the handicapped child the individual attention that he particularly needs.'

V 1955-1977

2.59 This section sketches the main events in special education from 1955 to the present day and looks at particular areas where significant developments have taken place with which we are especially concerned in this report.

Developments in child guidance

2.60 The important recommendations of the Underwood Committee on child guidance were brought to the attention of local education authorities in Circular 347. (10) The Circular accepted the Committee's report as the basis for the organisation and future development of child guidance. The Committee had urged that there should be a comprehensive child guidance service available for the area of every local education authority, involving a school psychological service, the school health service and child guidance clinics, all of which should work in close cooperation. Authorities and regional hospital boards should plan their provision in consultation. The Circular asked local education authorities, in consultation with hospital authorities, to give effect to these recommendations and to submit progress reports by June 1960. At the same time hospital and local authorities were asked by the Ministry of Health to cooperate with local education authorities. In their subsequent reports most local education authorities accepted the pattern of child guidance clinics suggested in Circular 347, whereby the authority would provide the premises and employ the psychologists and psychiatric social workers, whilst the hospital service would provide psychiatrists.

2.61 The major bar to progress was a continuing shortage of professional staff, demand for which was increased by the recommendation of the Underwood Committee (endorsed by the Ministry of Education in Circular 348 (11) that a maladjusted child should, wherever possible, continue to live at home during treatment and attend an ordinary school or special school or class. This had led the Department to ask authorities to consider the need for more day schools or special classes, and, through their regional machinery, to review the need for boarding provision in schools or homes. The number of child guidance clinics increased modestly each year from 162 in 1950 to 367 twenty years later, but that of professional staff continued to lag behind. The duties, training and supply of educational psychologists were considered by the Summerfield Working Party which reported in 1968. (12) The Working Party recommended new and expanded arrangements for training and a doubling of numbers. By 1977 the position had substantially improved. An investigation of the functions of clinical psychologists was similarly considered by a sub-committee of the former Standing Mental Health Advisory Committee (the Trethowan Committee) which reported in 1975. The contribution of social workers to child guidance was strengthened by the Health Visiting and Social Work (Training) Act 1962, which established national arrangements for the training of health visitors and social workers, as recommended in the Jameson (13) and Younghusband (14) reports.

2.62 In 1974, on transfer of responsibility for the school health service to area health authorities, the provision and organisation of child guidance was the subject of further advice, (15) jointly from the Departments of Education and Science and Health and Social Security. This recommended that the child guidance service should be based on a multi-professional team, providing assessment, diagnosis, consultation, treatment and other help as needed by the child, his parents or other people in regular contact with him. Local and health authorities were asked to extend the available help to children). with behavioural, emotional and learning difficulties, and to the families of these children through more flexible use of distinct but collaborating services, and to report their new arrangements. The Court Committee on Child Health Services (16) which reported to the Secretaries of State for Social Services, Education and Science and Wales in 1976 recommended 'that the child guidance clinics and psychiatric hospital services should be recognised as part of an integrated child and adolescent psychiatry service'. In its Circular advising health authorities of the government's conclusions on the Committee's recommendations, the Department of Health and Social Security accepted the need for further progress in the integration of services, in the sense of coordinated planning and working as distinct from fusion of the existing services into a new one. (17) The Circular also indicated that a document illustrating some aspects of good practice in the integrated services would be issued jointly with the Department of Education and Science during 1978.

2.63 In Scotland the child guidance service developed much more rapidly than in England and Wales. By 1966, 25 of the 35 education authorities had a child guidance service. The Education (Scotland) Act of 1969 made the provision of such a service a duty and the functions referred to in paragraph 2.62 were extended to include advice to social work departments, which had been established by the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. (The Scottish child guidance service has no direct medical component as in England and Wales and is organisationally similar to the school psychological service south of the border. The agreed ratio of educational psychologists to children in Scotland is 1:3,000, which it is hoped to attain by 1980.)

Child care

2.64 In England and Wales, effect was given to another recommendation of the Underwood Committee when in 1959 agreement was reached that the training courses provided under the aegis of the Central Training Council in Child Care should be extended to cover those intending to undertake the residential care of handicapped pupils in schools and boarding homes. Three types of courses were available: a basic one-year course for new entrants, a short refresher course for those in post, and a one-year advanced course for those aspiring to responsible posts. The Central Training Council in Child Care was succeeded in 1971 by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), set up as a result of the recommendation of the Seebohm Report (18) that there should be one central body responsible for promoting the training of the staff of the personal social services. In 1977 CCETSW confirmed its intention of discontinuing its awards of the Certificate in Residential Social Work and the Certificate in the Residential Care of Children and Young People in view of its plans to provide alternative opportunities for training for work in residential establishments within courses leading to the award of the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work and schemes for the Certificate in Social Service.

Independent schools

2.65 The Underwood Committee had also recommended that local education authorities should be permitted to maintain maladjusted pupils only at those independent schools which were recognised by the Ministry of Education as efficient. This policy was accepted in principle in Circular 4/61 (19) as being applicable to the placement of all handicapped pupils, and notice was given of the progressive elimination of placements in non-recognised schools, to be completed by June 1964. This intention was not in the event fulfilled. Although the Circular resulted in more rigorous control of the use of unrecognised schools, pupils continued to be admitted to them in substantial numbers. The decision of the Secretaries of State for Education and Science and for Wales, announced in 1977, to discontinue the recognition of independent schools from April 1978 meant that the policy in Circular 4/61 would need to be reviewed.

Mentally handicapped children

2.66 Increasing unease about the principle and practice of excluding large numbers of mentally handicapped children from school found expression in the Mental Health Act 1959. The Act replaced Section 57 of the Education Act 1944 (as amended) by less rigid provisions. Parents were allowed extra time in which to appeal to the Minister against a local education authority's decision that their child was incapable of being educated in school; and given the right to call for a review after one year, with like opportunity to appeal. Parents were to be given more detailed information about the functions of the local authority in relation to treatment, care and training, and, wherever possible, a statement of the arrangements proposed to be made for their child by the local authority in discharge of those functions. Thus cooperation between local education and health authorities was enforced by statute.

2.67 But whilst the 1959 Act was a response to unhappiness, particularly amongst parents, about the labelling of some children as not being entitled to education, it had merely tempered the procedures leading to segregation. Criticism of the system continued to grow, and moreover, the concept of special education was broadening to encompass needs hitherto regarded as beyond its reach. These tensions were finally resolved in April 1971 when local education authorities assumed responsibility for the education of mentally handicapped children, following the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970, which removed the power of health authorities to provide training for these children and required the staff and buildings of junior training centres to be transferred to the education service. In this way some 24,000 children in junior training centres and special care units, 8,000 in about 100 hospitals, and an uncertain number at home or in private institutions ceased to be treated as being mentally deficient and became entitled to special education. For this purpose they were to be regarded as severely educationally sub-normal (ESN(S)), as distinct from the moderately educationally sub-normal (ESN(M)) who had previously made up the ESN category. Many of the children had other difficulties.

2.68 Detailed advice to local education authorities on the operation of the new arrangements was given in Circular 15/70. (20) Junior training centres would normally be approved by the Secretary of State as special schools. Provision in hospitals might take the form of hospital special schools or arrangements for teaching under the terms of Section 56 of the Education Act 1944. In the event about 400 new special schools were so formed. The training of teachers of mentally handicapped children would be integrated as soon as possible into the ordinary three-year initial teacher training: but to assist the transition special one-year courses would be provided at selected colleges for those teachers who held the Diploma of the Training Council for Teachers of the Mentally Handicapped and who could satisfy the minimum entrance qualifications. Apart from questions of staffing, many of the new special schools were accommodated in old outmoded buildings, and although their replacement became a major feature of special school building programmes since the 1970 Act was passed* a great deal remained to be done to achieve satisfactory standards in all schools.

*For example, of the 1974-75 special school building programme 42 per cent was devoted to ESN(S) places: in 1975-76 the figure was 33 per cent. Special school building was seriously interrupted during 1976-78.

2.69 In Scotland education authorities became responsible in 1947 for the education of children who were described as 'ineducable but trainable'. Those children were placed in junior occupational centres and trained by instructors, but following the Report of the Melville Committee (21) and subsequent provisions in the Education (Mentally Handicapped Children) (Scotland) Act 1974 the centres were renamed schools, and teachers were appointed in addition to the instructors. The 1974 Act also gave education authorities responsibility for the education of children who had previously been described as 'ineducable and untrainable'.

Community homes and List D schools

2.70 Under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 a new system of community homes was established in England and Wales which called for new forms of collaboration between local education authorities and social services departments. The new system brought together establishments for the accommodation of children in the care of local authorities and the former remand homes and approved schools. Approved schools, which had been established in 1933, were residential institutions approved by the Home Secretary for the education and training of boys and girls who, with few exceptions, were ordered to be sent to them by the courts. They provided a general education, with considerable attention to craft training for the older children, but their primary objective was the social readjustment of the boys and girls in preparation for their return to the community. In Scotland all the functions of the former approved schools, including the provision of education, were transferred in 1971 to local authority social work departments under the terms of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, and these institutions are now known as List D schools.

The school health service

2.71 The school health service originated in the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act 1907, which gave local education authorities the duty to provide for the medical inspection of children in public elementary schools and the power (which became a duty in 1918) to make arrangements, with the sanction of the Board of Education, for attending to their health and physical condition. The Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906 similarly enabled authorities to provide or assist the provision of meals for children attending public elementary schools. In 1918 local education authorities were given the duty to provide for the medical inspection of children in secondary schools and the power to arrange for their medical treatment. The powers and duties of the Board of Education relating to the medical inspection and treatment of children and young persons were formally transferred under the Ministry of Health Act 1919 to the newly created Ministry of Health, but continued to be exercised, as permitted under the Act, by the Board on behalf of the Health Minister. The Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health became also Chief Medical Officer of the Board, and subsequently of its successors, the Ministry of Education (1945) and the Department of Education and Science (1964). The Education Act 1944 and Education (Scotland) Act 1945 gave education authorities the duty to provide meals and milk for pupils at maintained schools; the duty to provide medical and dental inspection in all maintained schools; and the duty to provide or to secure for children attending maintained schools all forms of medical and dental treatment other than domiciliary treatment, without cost to parents. The National Health Service Act 1946 and the equivalent Act of 1947 in Scotland enabled education authorities by arrangement to use the services of regional hospital boards and teaching hospitals.

2.72 In April 1974 the school health service in England and Wales became absorbed into the National Health Service under the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973. A similar change took place at the same time in Scotland. The Act transferred responsibility for providing for the health of school children from education authorities to the Secretary of State for Social Services. From its inception, the school health service pioneered development in preventive medicine at a time when the importance of prevention was not generally recognised, and achieved much success in competition with therapeutic medicine, despite recurrent economic crises. Throughout its life the service has been particularly concerned with the needs of handicapped children; and the importance of continuing cooperation between the health, education and social services was stressed by the government in the White Paper that preceded the 1974 Act. Machinery was provided in Section 10 of the Act, which required health and local authorities to establish Joint Consultative Committees to promote the cooperative development of services.

Assessment

2.73 The construction of educational programmes for individual children with special needs depends for its success upon the accurate assessment of their needs. This was the theme of a joint departmental Circular issued in 1975. (22) It examined the composite process of discovery, diagnosis and assessment, emphasised its multi-professional character and stressed the value of informality and the importance of parental participation. It also introduced an improved set of forms for recording the educational, medical, psychological and other data required for deciding the nature of a child's special educational needs, and a summary sheet for use during the process of assessment, placement and review. Comments received in 1977 from local education authorities indicated their general satisfaction with the new procedures and their wish to develop them further.

2.74 In Scotland the 1960s had seen some confusion over the procedures for the assessment of handicapped children. Working parties examined the assessment of four groups of handicapped children: mentally handicapped, visually handicapped, maladjusted and hearing impaired. As a result major procedural changes were included in the Education (Scotland) Act 1969. The Act redefined special education in terms which excluded the concept of a fixed disability of mind or of body. It recognised the importance of early discovery by abolishing the minimum age at which a child could be ascertained by an education authority and established that the decision to ascertain a child was not exclusively a medical one. It required that in every case reports of psychological as well as medical examinations should be considered, with, wherever possible, the views of the child's parents and those of his teacher. It also recognised the widely held view that assessment is a continuing process.

Special qualifications of teachers

2.75 The enactment of compulsory education for blind and deaf children in 1893 was unaccompanied by any requirement relating to the training or qualifications of teachers. In 1886, when the Royal Commission on the Blind and Deaf was constituted, there existed three rival voluntary colleges which acted as examining bodies and issued certificates in the teaching of the deaf, but they were not recognised by the Education Department. The Commission recommended that training colleges for teachers of the deaf should operate under government supervision and that entrants to them should already be certificated teachers: but it made no proposals for compulsory further training or additional qualifications. In 1907, however, the three voluntary examining colleges were brought together to form a single joint examining body, and two years later the Board of Education approved its examination and recognised the diploma that it awarded. The Commission had offered no positive views about the training of teachers of the blind, but in 1907 the College of Teachers of the Blind was established as a voluntary examining and awarding body, and was also accepted by the Board. Thereafter the Board's regulations laid down that teachers in schools for the blind and deaf must obtain within two years of their appointment an approved qualification. The 1908 regulations have broadly continued to the present day.

2.76 The McNair Committee (1944) (23) did not consider in detail the training of teachers of the handicapped, but the Fourth Report of the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers (NACTST) (1954) was devoted wholly to it. The Report recommended that with certain exceptions all intending teachers of handicapped children should, after experience in ordinary schools and some preliminary experience with handicapped children, take a full-time course of additional training. The Ministry of Education's Circular 324 (24) accepted the recommendation in principle but declared it to be impracticable for the present. Teachers in special schools for blind, deaf and partially deaf pupils were already required to obtain a prescribed additional qualification within three years of taking up their appointment: whilst teachers in special schools taking classes of pupils who were both deaf (or partially deaf) and blind were required to hold a prescribed additional qualification for teachers of deaf and partially deaf children. The Circular urged that they should be encouraged to obtain also the qualification required of teachers of the blind. The requirement of an additional qualification was now extended to teachers of partially deaf pupils in special classes or units in ordinary schools.

2.77 The question of whether teachers of pupils with other kinds of disability should be required to have an additional qualification was considered again by the NACTST in 1962, but the Council concluded that the time was still inopportune. Ten years later the Vernon Committee (25) recommended that teachers of partially sighted children should (like those of the partially hearing) be required to have an additional qualification. This was also accepted in principle but not implemented. However a range of courses of in-service training continued to be available to teachers of handicapped pupils.

2.78 In Scotland following the first World War the National Committee for the Training of Teachers established a Central Executive Committee to make arrangements for the training of teachers of mentally defective children. In 1923 Kennedy Fraser was appointed to Jordanhill College of Education to be responsible for the endorsement course in special education. This was initially a one-year course but it had to be shortened to a term because of lack of numbers. For the next 30 years this course was the sole source of training of teachers in special education in Scotland. In 1956 a course was established at Moray House College of Education and by 1974 five such courses were available in Scotland. Until 1972 teachers of the deaf in Scotland were trained at Manchester. From that date, however, training was provided at Moray House College of Education and in 1972 the Scottish Centre for the Education of the Deaf was established in that College.

Integration

2.79 In 1928 the Wood Committee had stressed the unity of ordinary and special education. The philosophy of the Education Act 1944 had been explained during the debate on the Education Bill by the Parliamentary Secretary (Mr Chuter Ede) in these words: 'May I say that I do not want to insert in the Bill any words which make it appear that the normal way to deal with a child who suffers from any of these disabilities is to be put into a special school where he will be segregated. Whilst we desire to see adequate provision of special schools we also desire to see as many children as possible retained in the normal stream of school life.' (26) Accordingly, Section 33(2) of the Act provided for the less severely handicapped (the great majority of all handicapped) to be catered for in ordinary schools, and the ensuing departmental guidance to local education authorities contained detailed suggestions as to how this might be achieved. The post-war planning of special educational treatment thus proceeded on two main assumptions: first, that special educational treatment would be required for up to 17 per cent of the school population; and secondly, that ordinary schools would have the major share in providing it.

2.80 These intentions were not in the event fulfilled: special educational treatment came to acquire a much narrower connotation than the official guidance had indicated; and its provision in ordinary schools failed to develop on the scale envisaged. With the benefit of hindsight it is possible to discern a number of interacting reasons why this happened. In the first place the statutory framework was not conducive to a broad conception of special educational treatment or to its positive development in ordinary schools. The children for whom special educational treatment was to be provided were defined in Section 8(2)(c) of the Education Act 1944 in a way which apparently excluded those whose needs did not spring from physical or mental disability. Further, Section 33(2) imposed a dichotomy between serious and less serious disabilities and, though stipulating that children with severe disabilities were to be educated in special schools wherever possible, merely permitted those with less serious disabilities to be educated in ordinary schools. The fact that ascertainment might entail resort to the compulsory procedure of medical examination and invariably meant formally assigning a child to one of the statutory categories of handicap, none of which might, in fact, fit his condition, was a disincentive to action. Inevitably ascertainment tended to be directed to children with more severe disabilities whom the law required to be educated in special schools. The widespread use of intelligence testing in determining the need for special education so far as mentally handicapped children were concerned also tended to perpetuate the notion of the separateness of such children.

2.81 Practical factors, too, impeded the development of special educational provision in ordinary schools. In the decade after the war local education authorities were hard pressed simply to maintain the fabric of the education service. Much school accommodation had been destroyed and many surviving buildings were in bad condition. Scarcity of building materials restricted work to essential needs including provision for raising the school leaving age, for the rapidly rising school population and for new housing estates, and the Building Regulations for schools allowed new building only on the basis of classes of 30 pupils in secondary schools and 40 in primary schools. Such classes were too large to enable effective special educational provision in ordinary schools to be developed. Nor was it a question of building alone. There were other shortages, for example of suitably trained teachers and other professionals required for effective assessment and treatment, and the quota of teachers then in operation did not allow for any appreciable reduction in the size of classes. For these reasons ordinary schools were badly placed to provide special education. The expansion of provision in special schools, in contrast, was greatly facilitated by the opportunities which existed for local authorities to purchase large town houses or country mansions relatively cheaply. In this way a large though not entirely adequate number of new special schools was provided, though at the price of their isolation. Since local authorities anxious to develop their special education could do so only in special schools, special educational treatment came to be associated with provision in special schools.

2.82 However, once the post-war difficulties had been overcome, developments followed which encouraged revival of the idea of special educational provision in ordinary schools. In particular, completion of the reorganisation of all-age schools in the 1960s and the progressive ending of selection for secondary education which followed the issue of Circular 10/65 (27) enabled ordinary primary and secondary schools to broaden their educational programmes and to take greater account of children's individual needs. Special classes and units were established for children who had been ascertained as needing special educational treatment and a variety of forms of 'remedial' education was developed for other children. Local education authorities were encouraged to minimise the formalities of ascertainment, to widen the basis of assessment and to diversify the provision. Integration became a topical subject of discussion.

2.83 Support for integration found Parliamentary expression in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, a private member's measure, which in Sections 25-27 required local education authorities, so far as was practicable, to provide for the education of deaf-blind, autistic and acutely dyslexic children in maintained or assisted schools. Although the legal description of the schools in which provision was to be made included special schools the intention was clearly that provision should, except for good reason, be made in ordinary schools. In Scotland, the same theme lay behind the report of the McCann Committee (28) on the secondary education of physically handicapped children. The Committee's report, whilst recognising that some physically handicapped children would require education in special schools, envisaged an ever increasing number of them being educated in ordinary schools.

2.84 This partial modification of the 1944 provisions was overtaken by the Education Act 1976, which in Section 10 required local education authorities to arrange for the special education of all handicapped pupils to be given in county and voluntary schools, except where this was impracticable, incompatible with the efficient instruction in the schools or involved unreasonable public expenditure, in which case it could be given in special schools or, with the Secretary of State's approval, in independent schools. The provision, which took the form of an amendment of Section 33(2) of the Education Act 1944, would come into force on a day to be appointed by the Secretary of State. In January 1977 the Secretary of State announced that before deciding to introduce the new provision she proposed to consult widely with the educational and other interests and also to await our findings. At the same time she made clear that the new legislation had not introduced a new principle, but had rather given a new impetus towards integrated provision, in which special schools would continue to have an important place.

CONCLUSION

2.85 Since the implementation of the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 and the Education (Mentally Handicapped Children) (Scotland) Act 1974 all handicapped children, however serious their disability, have been included in the framework of special education.* Section 10 of the Education Act 1976, when implemented, will shift the emphasis of special educational provision within the framework in England and Wales significantly in the direction of greater integration and improved provision in ordinary schools. The quality of special education, however, cannot be guaranteed merely by legislation and structural change. The framework provides the setting within which people work together in the interests of children, and the quality of education depends essentially upon their skill and insight, backed by adequate resources - not solely educational resources - efficiently deployed. Our report is pre-eminently about the quality of special education, and in the following chapters we take up many of the themes that have emerged in this brief review of history.

*Also in 1970 The Transfer of Functions (Wales) Order provided for the Secretary of State for Wales to assume responsibility for a range of functions previously exercised by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, including special education.

References

(1) Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and Others of the United Kingdom, Vol 2, Appendix 26. Cited in Pritchard DG, Education and the handicapped 1760-1960 (1963). The early part of this chapter draws extensively on Pritchard's history.

(2) Annual Report for 1909 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education (HMSO 1910), p 152.

(3) Annual Report for 1912 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education (HMSO 1913), p 239.

(4) Pritchard DG, op cit., p 188.

(5) Education reconstruction. Cmnd 6458 (HMSO 1943).

(6) Special educational treatment. Ministry of Education Pamphlet No 5 (HMSO 1946).

(7) Speech therapy services. Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretaries of State for Education and Science, for the Social Services, for Scotland and for Wales in July 1969 (HMSO 1972).

(8) Report of the Committee on Maladjusted Children (HMSO 1955).

(9) The Education of Handicapped Pupils: The Reports of the Advisory Council (21 March 1955). The titles of the Reports were as follows:
Pupils who are defective in hearing (Cmd 7866)
Pupils who are defective in vision (Cmd 7885)
Visual and aural aids (Cmd 8102)
Pupils with physical disabilities (Cmd 8211)
Pupils with mental or educational disabilities (Cmd 8401)
Pupils handicapped by speech disorders (Cmd 8426)
Pupils who are maladjusted because of social handicap (Cmd 8428)

(10) Ministry of Education Circular 347, Child Guidance (10 March 1959).

(11) Ministry of Education Circular 348, Special educational treatment for maladjusted children (10 March 1959).

(12) Psychologists in education services. The Report of a Working Party appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science: the Summerfield Report (HMSO 1968).

(13) An inquiry into health visiting. Report of a working party on the field of work, training and recruitment of health visitors (HMSO 1956).

(14) Report of the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Welfare Services (HMSO 1959).

(15) DES Circular 3/74, DHSS Circular HSC(IS)9, Welsh Office Circular WHSC(IS)5, Child Guidance (14 March 1974).

(16) Fit for the future. The Report of the Committee on Child Health Services. Cmnd 6684 (HMSO 1976).

(17) DHSS Health Circular HC(78)S Local Authority Circular LAC(78)2, Welsh Office Circular WHC(78)4, Health Services Development (January 1978).

(18) Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services. Cmnd 3703 (HMSO 1968).

(19) Ministry of Education Circular 4/61, The use of independent schools for handicapped pupils (27 March 1961).

(20) DES Circular 15/70, Responsibility for the education of mentally handicapped children (22 September 1970).

(21) The training of staff for centres for the mentally handicapped. Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland (HMSO 1973).

(22) DES Circular 2/75. Welsh Office Circular 21/75, The discovery of children requiring special education and the assessment of their needs (17 March 1975).

(23) Teachers and youth leaders. Report of the Committee appointed by the President of the Board of Education to consider the Supply, Recruitment and Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders (HMSO 1944).

(24) Ministry of Education Circular 324, The training and supply of teachers of handicapped pupils (29 May 1957).

(25) The education of the visually handicapped. Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science in October, 1968 (HMSO 1972).

(26) Parliamentary Debates: Hansard Vol 398 Col 703 (21 March 1944).

(27) DES Circular 10/65, The organisation of secondary education (12 July 1965).

(28) The secondary education of physically handicapped children in Scotland. Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland (HMSO 1975).