History of Special Educational Needs in the UK

According to the Education Act, 1996, a child has special educational needs (herein after will be referred as SEN) if there is a learning hardship which needs supply of special educational care to him on the basis of his learning difficulty. For the purposes of SEN, a child includes any individual who is under the age of nineteen who is a registered student at a School in UK. Under section 323 of the Education Act (1996), a local authority from the local Council may issue a Statement of Educational Needs. This is a legal document which delineates about SEN of the child and explains how these requirements will be met with. The term SEN was first introduced by the Warnock Report of the late 1970s. Earlier, disabled students who needed special education were taken care of by 1944 Education Act where it stipulated ten categories for identification of children with SEN. The following were the definition of ‘handicap’ given by the 1944 Education Act.

• Partially sighted/Blind
• Delicate
• Deaf
• Educationally subnormal
• Diabetic
• Epileptic
• Physically handicapped
• Epileptic
• Speech defect
• Mal adjusted

There had been a radical change in formulation of special-education concept by the Warnock Report in 1978, which emphasised that a student’s educational requirement should be given first priority instead of individual’s learning impairment or disability. As of date, in the background of educational provision, the phrase SEN has a legal meaning which connotes to children who have learning disabilities or difficulties that make it more arduous for them to access or learn education compared to other children of the same age. In 2001 the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act established the legal rights for disabled student by amending the Disability Discrimination Act of 1996. This act protected SEN and disabled students from discrimination in all educational settings

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