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1 Looking back
A brief history of the Warnock Enquiry
Rob Webster
The significance of The Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People is evident from its first paragraph.
Ours was the first committee of enquiry specifically charged by any government of the United Kingdom to review educational provision for all handicapped children, whatever their handicap. The last such body to have terms of reference which approached our own in breadth was the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb and Others of the United Kingdom which reported in 1889.
(Section 1.1)
While commissions since the late nineteenth century have reported on specific disabilities and conditions, it would be 85 years before the UK government undertook as expansive a review into special education as the 1889 enquiry. Adopting the name of its chair, Mary Warnock, the enquiry commenced in 1974 and published its final report in May 1978.
The Warnock Enquiry remains the most comprehensive review of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) ever commissioned by a UK government. Members of its committee visited every type of setting: mainstream schools; nurseries; special nursery units; state, independent and residential special schools; further education (FE) colleges; assessment centres; hospitals; teacher training colleges; and departments of education in universities. It reached beyond the UK, investigating provisions in Canada, the USA, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. The enquiryâs themes ranged from categorisations of SEND, education within and across settings, relationships between families, health and social services, research in universities and teacher training.
A change in the law
In November 1971, a Labour backbencher asked the then secretary of state for education and science, Margaret Thatcher, to consider an enquiry into âthe whole field of special educationâ. The minister declined: âI do not think that this would be helpful in present circumstancesâ (HC Deb 825, 1971). Three years later, the proponent of that request, Doris Fisher, tried again. This time, Mrs Thatcher agreed. âI believeâ, she said, âthat the time is ripe for a general enquiry which will go somewhat beyond the specifically educational needs of the handicappedâ (HC Deb 864, 1973).
The lady, it seemed, was for turning. Yet it was not so much Mrs Thatcherâs mind that had changed but the law. Legislation following the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 meant that all children and young people were required to attend school. Yet little was known about the appropriate environments for those deemed by many, for so long, to be âineducableâ.
Both the 1970 Act and the appointment of the Warnock Enquiry reflected maturing social attitudes to disability. Over the 1950s, parent- led pressure groups began pushing back against the pervasive â and limiting â notion of ineducability. As Mary Warnock describes in Chapter 2 of this book, an influential figure over this period was Stanley Segal, âa highly energeticâ head teacher of a London special school. Segal lobbied members of Parliament by mobilising special educatorsâ and parentsâ knowledge and experiences of the learning capabilities of âmentally handicappedâ children. He robustly challenged the long-standing and pessimistic notion that âthe mentally defective were somehow a different species or were both abnormal as well as subnormal, and a matter for doctors rather than teachersâ (Segal, 1967). Greater awareness of the interaction between within-child factors and environmental factors informed a shared understanding of what children with physical disabilities and/or learning difficulties could and could not do.
Over the same period, epidemiological studies of educational, psychiatric and physical disorders in 9- to 11-year-old children, conducted on the Isle of Wight (Rutter et al., 1970), provided evidence that around 20 per cent of children were likely to have special educational needs at some point in their school career, which would require some form of special education provision. While additional estimates from the time suggested between 1.8 per cent and 2 per cent of the school population had severe, complex and long-term needs, the âone in fiveâ figure assumed educational, political and administrative significance. This, together with new understandings about disability, led to a paradigmatic shift in perception, which, in turn, paved the way for both more open and applied practices in special education and the legislative change that would bolster and amplify it.
A new vision
The Warnock Enquiryâs terms of reference were:
To review educational provision in England, Scotland and Wales for children and young people handicapped by disabilities of body or mind, taking account of the medical aspects of their needs, together with arrangements to prepare them for entry into employment; to consider the most effective use of resources for these purposes; and to make recommendations.
As noted earlier, the terms went âbeyond the specifically educational needs of the handicappedâ, and its subsequent recommendations implicated professionals in health and social care as well as education. The committeeâs report and recommendations reflected the hard-won right of people with disabilities to âuninhibited participation in the activities of everyday life, in all their varied formsâ (Section 7.1). Warnock invokes a description of âintegrationâ taken from the Snowdon Working Party (1976), and which, while written with people with physical disabilities in mind, captured âthe spirit of changing attitudes to handicap in all its manifestationsâ:
Integration for the disabled means a thousand things. It means the absence of segregation. It means social acceptance. It means being able to be treated like everybody else, it means the right to work, to go to cinemas, to enjoy outdoor sport, to have a family life and a social life and a love life, to contribute materially to the community, to have the usual choices of association, movement and activity, to go on holiday to the usual places, to be educated up to university level with oneâs un-handicapped peers, to travel without fuss on public transportâŚ
(Section 7.1)
The Warnock Report is sometimes credited as introducing inclusion, but in reality, it was a catalyst. âThe principle is not new to educationâ, states the introduction to the chapter, âSpecial education in ordinary schoolsâ. âIt had been long-standing government policy, confirmed in numerous official documents, that no child should be sent to a special school who can be satisfactorily educated in an ordinary oneâ (Section 7.2). As such, the committeeâs report contained no new or original recommendations relating to the law on integration or inclusion. It did, however, set out a coherent case for improving the quality of special education and for more inclusive, less segregational, forms of schooling that embodied social acceptance. While integration implies a sense of pupils adapting to the school, the committeeâs vision required schools to do the adjusting.
The Warnock Report
The Warnock Report consolidated and brought together many different strands of thinking and practice in special education and employment in one place, and articulated a cohesive and expansive plan for lifelong inclusion for those with SEND. Special schools and âordinaryâ (i.e. mainstream) schools would be brought closer together. Special units attached to, and functioning as part of, mainstream schools would facilitate âlocationalâ and âsocialâ integration (Sections 7.7â7.8). Young people would be supported to attend âordinaryâ courses at FE colleges. Universities and polytechnics were advised to develop admissions policies for students with SEND. Industrial Training Boards were to encourage employers to provide employment and training opportunities for people with disabilities or significant difficulties. And there was a call for more opportunities for people with disabilities to become teachers.
The enquiry was pre-eminently about the quality of special education, but as Warnock acknowledges early on in the report, quality âcannot be guaranteed merely by legislation and structural changeâ. The framework outlined in the reportâs 220 recommendations provided âthe setting within which people work together in the interests of children, and the quality of education depends essentially upon their skill and insight, backed by adequate resources â not solely educational resources â efficiently deployedâ (Section 2.85).
Accordingly, a significant aspect of the report focussed on teachers and the wider network of professionals working with children and young people with special needs, and their families. The substantive chapter entitled âTeacher education and trainingâ recognised that increasing teachersâ knowledge of SEND was âof the utmost importanceâ. While in-service training was âvitalâ, Warnock argued that âthe groundwork should be laid in initial trainingâ. The committee recommended that a âspecial education elementâ be included in all initial teacher education courses âas soon as possibleâ (Sections 21.1â12.10).
Warnock envisaged a new special education workforce developing up around teachers to support and facilitate. Universities and teacher training colleges would require âat least 200 additional full-time lecturersâ to deliver the special education element (Section 12.14). Mainstream head teachers were required to appoint a âdesignated specialist teacherâ who would assume âday-to-day responsibility for making arrangements for children with special needsâ (Section 7.28). The first indications of the creation of a paraprofessional workforce are also evident in the committeeâs report. It called for the appointment of at least one ancillary worker (or non-teaching assistant) to work in special classes and units attached to mainstream schools (Section 14.32).
Across several further chapters, the report made recommendations concerning the roles of a cadre of practitioners who interact with children with special needs and their families beyond school, in educational psychology, careers, social services, health and medicine. Warnock stressed the requirement for a much closer coordination between these services. There were even suggestions relating to inter- professional training between disciplines that could lead to dual qualifications, such as in health and psychology. Much of what Warnock proposed regarding initial teacher training (ITT) and collaborative multi-agency working remains unresolved. Contributors to this book examine some of these missed opportunities and failings.
Introducing âspecial educational needsâ
One of the enquiryâs most significant achievements was transforming how we talk about disability. It provided the first major challenge to the medical model of disability: where impairments and differences are portrayed as intrinsic to the individual and the cause of disadvantage and lower quality of life. The medical model had been sustained over decades by the terminology used to officially categorise people with learning difficulties and disabilities. The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 required local education boards to identify âmentally defectiveâ children and young people aged 7â16 and categorise them on the basis of their IQ as âidiotsâ, âimbecilesâ or âfeeble-mindedâ. Under the Education Act 1944, many children with SEND were considered âuneducableâ and grouped, again by IQ, into categories such as âmaladjustedâ or âeducationally subnormalâ. Limiting and dehumanising language like âbackwardâ and âretardedâ were commonplace (Wood, 1929).
Warnock concluded that such labels were not just unhelpful for identifying an individualâs educational needs but amounted to a life sentence. The enquiry popularised the term âspecial educational needsâ, conceived by Ronald Gulliford (1971), and consigned the most pernicious labels to history. Conceptualisations of special educational needs were widened in ways that made it clearer to teachers that they would have some pupils with SEND in their classrooms.
The Education Act 1981
Though the Warnock Enquiry was initiated by Edward Heathâs Conservative government, the committee undertook its work during the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan (1974â1978). Labour dithered in its response to the final report, and 12 months after it was published, the Conservatives, now led by Margaret Thatcher, returned to power. The committeeâs recommendations then found a legislative home in the 1981 Education Act.
The Act introduced the system of statutory assessment â or âstatementingâ. Although the requirement for the secretary of state to issue a code of practice of practical guidance came later, with the Education Act 1993, there were key elements of the basic statementing machinery, proposed by the Warnock Committee, that have endured, including parentsâ right to appeal decisions made by the local authority (Section 4.74). What is more, elements of the 2014 SEND reforms were presaged by Warnockâs recommendations. For example, the notion that provision and services should extend to the age of 25 (Section 16.31) and the requirement for councils to maintain an âup-to-date handbook of local special education provisionâ (Section 6.15) â a nascent âlocal offerâ.
By the time the 1981 Act was implemented, the Conservative government had introduced a market-style approach to public services management, based on principles of individualism, competition and efficiency. There was, then, a marked difference in the social, political and economic contexts in which the reportâs recommendations would be enacted from that which prevailed when the committee was set up less than a decade earlier. As Lunt (2007) notes, this introduced âa bleak contradiction between the aspirations of the report and the subsequent legislationâ. The operational siloing and poor lateral working that are features of this approach to public administration are perhaps a reason why, as Mary Warnock describes in Chapter 2 of this book, multi-agency working has been so difficult to achieve.
Warnock reconsiders
Thirty years after the enquiry, Baroness Warnock (she was made a life peer in 1985) famously began estranging herself from the reportâs recommendations, calling for further moves towards inclusion to be resisted (Warnock, 2005). Ruth Cigman (2007), who worked with Mary Warnock on her 2005 pamphlet âSpecial educational needs: A new lookâ, claims that the mediaâs characterisation of this as a U-turn was âpoliticsâ, âa response to a phrase⌠which had been subjected to the soundbite treatmentâ.
Warnockâs (2007) concerns lay in criticisms of the framework of provision that had been put in place since the 1981 Education Act. This framework, she concluded, âwas failing some children disastrouslyâ. Calling for the government to set up a committee of enquiry to âconsider the case for radical reformâ, War...
