This article examines the implications of the new education, health and care (EHC) planning process for career professionals in England. The new process comes in the wake of a succession of legislation relating to young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England. There is much to recommend the new process as it…

In this paper, we consider the relationship between the human and disability; with specific focus on the lives of disabled children and young people. We begin with an analysis of the close relationship between "the disabled" and "the freak". We demonstrate that the historical markings of disability as object of curiosity and…

This small-scale study investigates the perspectives of parents whose children have special educational needs/disabilities and who have elected to withdraw their children from the state-maintained education system in England and educate them at home. The study draws on data gathered from seven parents and their perspectives of home education…

The Coalition Government's "Green Paper" (DfE 2011) proposes a systemic overhaul of services for pupils with special educational needs in England, with increased parental choice of provision and "sharper accountability" (p. 67) in schools. Deadlines for various stages of this reform have not been met, and its final nature…

Schools in England (as elsewhere in Europe) have a duty to promote equality for disabled people and make reasonable adjustments for disabled children. There is, however, a degree of uncertainty about how well-placed parents are addressed to use the legislation to ensure their child's needs. This paper presents data drawn from a national…

This article focuses on young people with disabilities and mainstream physical education in England. Within this context there have been unprecedented levels of funding and resources directed towards physical education in order to support more inclusive physical education experiences for all young people, including those with disabilities.…

The project reported in this paper addresses the issue of trainee teacher learning with regard to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) during the school placement element of one-year postgraduate teacher training programmes in England. Through a focus on the university/school partnership, school organisational and classroom pedagogic…

Experiences of nature have been shown to be beneficial for disabled children; however, opportunities for disabled children to experience nature are often limited. The social model of disability may provide a theoretical base for increasing access to nature for pupils at Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools. Using results from interviews…

In this article, Rachel Fyson of the Centre for Social Work in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham reports the findings of a study into sexually inappropriate or abusive behaviour occurring between pupils in special schools in four local authorities in England. The behaviours identified ranged from relatively…

Normalization and social role valorization continue to play a central role in shaping debates and practice relating to learning difficulties. In the context of recent arguments this paper draws on the work of Foucault to deconstruct these theories. Foucault's work alerts us to a conceptual confusion at their heart which reproduces a common but…

This paper presents and discusses the key findings from a study funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) that explored the relationship between achievement and inclusion in mainstream schools in England. Overall the results indicate that, although there is a small statistical relationship between inclusion and academic achievement,…

The transfer to secondary education can be an anxious time and planning ahead can help. This article offers practical advice about what to consider, when to start planning and discusses many of the issues involved in the transition to later schooling. Written from the perspective of the English school system, many of the issues and principles are…

The exclusion of disabled children from ordinary schools, which occurred routinely in England until the late twentieth century, is mirrored in the way disability and difference have been largely ignored in the history of education. The first half of this paper outlines some of the key developments that have taken place in the field of education…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…

This report is based on interviews with learning supporters and observations of their work in a number of primary and secondary schools in London and in the North of England, areas which are known for efforts toward developing inclusion. The focus is on supporters' perspective, and the aim is to give a platform to what traditionally have been…