Section 1 1. IntroductionThe nineteenth century education system was arguably in the ownership of the upper and middle classes and those who did not fit into their criteria were educated in special schools. This segregation of the education system incorporated the poor and those who were believed to be different from ‘normal’ children and were often referred to as the ’handicapped’ (Fredrickson and Cline, 2009) Furthermore, Fredrickson and Cline (2009) suggested that this segregation continued until the twentieth century, and in the mid-1960s there was a move to reverse the notion that ‘handicapped’ children were different. Consequently, the movement towards ‘normalisation’ manifested into integration. The Warnock Report (1978) recognised the ‘normalisation’ movement was “the central contemporary issue in special education” (DfES, 1978: 99). Furthermore, Ainscow (1995) argued integration was about developing a small number of changes to accommodate a student with special educational needs (SEN) within a school, whereas inclusion was establishing a more extreme set of changes that a school had to undertake to encompass all children.
Moving from her initial 1978 report, Warnock (2005) questioned the issue of inclusion as to where a child was geographically, to where they belong in terms of social and educational security and the idea of inclusion was “possibly the most dangerous legacy of the 1978 report” (Warnock 2005: 22). However, the coalition government in the Teather Report ‘Supporting and Aspirations; a new approach to special educational needs’ (DfE, 2011) aimed to “set out the strong strategic role that local authorities for pupils and families, vulnerable children, and educational excellence” (DfE, 2011: 95). Furthermore, it set out an argument that the funding for SEN students passes to their parents (DfE, 2011) and this recommendation arguably empowers the parents a greater freedom of choice in how and what services are best utilised…