The Contribution of Local Education Authorities to the Development of Education for Children Said to Have Mild and Moderate Difficulties With Learning and the Limitations Imposed Upon Them During This Development: With Reference, Where Appropriate, to Events in Northamptonshire

Scott, Peter Charles (1996). The Contribution of Local Education Authorities to the Development of Education for Children Said to Have Mild and Moderate Difficulties With Learning and the Limitations Imposed Upon Them During This Development: With Reference, Where Appropriate, to Events in Northamptonshire. PhD thesis The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000f7a9

Abstract

The thesis traces the development of education for children with mild and moderate learning difficulties through the actions of education authorities, either independently or in response to legislation or directives and reports from central government.

Using primary sources linked to significant periods, descriptions of the current system have been constructed in order to illustrate how the development has proceeded, the relationships between central government and the education authorities, how national policy has been put into practice, how pupils in these categories have been defined and identified, the significance of integration and the development of support services and their reorganisation as a result of the educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

The thesis deals with events surrounding the Departmental Committee on Defective and Epileptic Children ,(1898), The Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (1908), The Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee (1929) and the legislation of 1944, The Warnpck Report (1978), the development of support services during the 1980s, and finally the impact of educational reform and the introduction of the Code of Practice in the 1990s.

Where appropriate specific examples of responses and initiatives undertaken by LEAs had been described in order to illustrate the development that has taken place. In each chapter an account of events in Northamptonshire has been given. This becomes more detailed in the last three chapters which incorporate a case study of development in the county following the Warnock Report up to the present day.

The development of special needs policy in Northamptonshire is presented as a positive response to the directives of central government and as a sound basis for future development, providing possible solutions to some of the concerns reflected in current debates.