Special educational needs require inclusion

There may well be a “showdown” between parents and the government where special educational needs is concerned, but posing the problem simply as “inclusion” versus “segregation” obscures as much as it illuminates (Pupils with special needs belong with everyone else. We don’t need segregation, 19 March).It supposes that having enough money to fund one-to-one support for all those who need it would somehow realise the inclusionist dream. It wouldn’t. Not because inclusion is not a worthwhile goal, but because it ignores the reality that modern schooling is run on principles that have narrowed the meaning of education – notwithstanding heroic efforts at differentiated learning, or the dedication of specialist staff.Education now is focused on narrowly defined outcomes that squander as much potential as they claim to realise, in an overly standardised, competitive, needlessly stressful assault course whose finishers will be flattered or savaged in an annual summer beauty pageant commanding wall-to-wall media coverage.