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Autonomy, Rights and Children
with Special Educational Needs
Understanding Capacity
across Contexts
Sheila Riddell
Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special
Educational Needs
Sheila Riddell

Autonomy, Rights
and Children with
Special Educational
Needs
Understanding Capacity across
Contexts
Sheila Riddell
Moray House School of Education
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-55824-6    ISBN 978-3-030-55825-3 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55825-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Acknowledgements

This book is based on findings from an ESRC-funded research project


entitled Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New
Paradigm? (Ref. ES/P002641/1). This project was conducted by research-
ers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester between 2017 and
2019, under the joint directorship of Professor Neville Harris and myself.
I am very grateful to the ESRC for their support of this work.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Neville Harris, Emeritus
Professor of Law in the Department of Law, University of Manchester,
who provided endless insights into the intricacies of the legal framework
surrounding children’s rights across the UK. Thanks are also due to Dr
James MacAllister, Edinburgh University, who worked as Co-Investigator
throughout the project and Dr Amanda Gillooly, University of Glasgow,
who worked on the later stages of the project and produced the figures
and tables which feature in Chap. 4. Dr Gail Davidge, University of
Manchester, undertook the bulk of the fieldwork in England, forging
strong relationships with students, parents and teachers. Thanks are also
due to Dr Duncan Carmichael and Dr Lucy Dix, who contributed to the
early development of the work.

v
vi Acknowledgements

Major thanks are due to Dr Grace Kong, who provided technical sup-
port throughout the project and formatted this book through its various
iterations.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my granddaughters, Sylvie and Cora
Jessop, who are already knowledgeable experts on children’s human
rights—as well as being fairly tough negotiators.
Contents

1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the


Scene  1

2 Research Methods 15

3 Special and Additional Support Needs Policy and the


Rights of Children and Young People 31

4 Children’s Rights, Categorisation and Disproportionality 49

5 Translating Grand Designs into Grassroots Policy and


Practice 73

6 Children and Young People’s Participation Rights in


Schools and Classrooms 95

7 Participation by Children and Young People in


Representative Bodies113

8 Children and Young People’s Involvement in Formal


Educational Planning133

vii
viii Contents

9 School Choice and the Rights of Children, Young People


and Their Families161

10 Participation in Dispute Resolution by Children, Young


People and Their Families189

11 Conclusion215

Appendix A: Glossary and Explanation of Key Terms229

Appendix B: Profiles of Children and Young People233

Index247
List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Children with SEN/ASN as a percentage of the total school


population in England and Scotland (Source: Department
for Education. Special educational needs in England: January
2019. National Tables: Table 1; Scottish Government, Pupil
Census 2019, Table 1.6.) 52
Fig. 4.2 Percentage of whole school population with a statutory
support plan in England and Scotland (Source: Department
for Education. Special educational needs in England: January
2019. National Tables: Table 1; Scottish Government, Pupil
Census 2019, Table 1.7.) 54
Fig. 4.3 ASN pupils by type of need, Scotland, 2019 (rate per
thousand pupils) (Source: Scottish Government, Pupil
Census 2019, Table 1.8. Note: Entries per category are not
discrete; a child may be recorded in multiple categories) 55
Fig. 4.4 SEN pupils by type of need, England, 2019 (rate per
thousand pupils) (Source: Department for Education. Special
educational needs in England: January 2019. National
Tables: Table 8. Note: The DfE records primary need only) 56
Fig. 4.5 Percentage of pupils with SEN/ASN by gender in England
and Scotland, 2019 (Source: Department for Education.
Special educational needs in England: January 2019.
National Tables: Table 3.) 58

ix
x List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 Pupils with SEN by type of need and gender, England 2019
(Source: Department for Education. Special educational
needs in England: January 2019. Additional Tables: Table A) 59
Fig. 4.7 ASN identification by type of need and gender, Scotland
2019 (Source: Scottish Government, Pupil Census 2019,
Table 1.8)60
Fig. 4.8 Percentage of pupils within each ethnic group identified with
SEN in England, 2019 (Source: Department for Education.
Special educational needs in England: January 2019.
National Tables: Table 6) 61
Fig. 4.9 Percentage of pupils within each ethnic group identified with
ASN including English as an Additional Language in
Scotland, 2019 (Source: Scottish Government. Pupil Census
2019: special request data.) 62
Fig. 4.10 Percentage of pupils within each ethnic group identified with
ASN excluding English as an Additional Language in
Scotland, 2019 (Source: Scottish Government. Pupil Census
2019: special request data.) 63
Fig. 4.11 Pupils with ASN by SIMD decile, 2019 (Source: Scottish
Government, Pupil Census 2019, Table 1.16) 64
Fig. 4.12 Percentage of ASN pupils per category of need in the most
and least deprived areas, 2019 (Source: Scottish Government.
Pupil Census 2019: special request data.) 65
Fig. 4.13 Percentage of ASN pupils with a CSP per SIMD decile, 2019
(Source: Scottish Government, Pupil Census 2019, Table 1.16) 66
Fig. 4.14 Percentage of children with a CSP by type of difficulty, 2019
(Source: Scottish Government, Pupil Census 2019: special
request data) 67
Fig. 4.15 Registered appeals in England 2018–2019 (type of appeal by
percentage of total) (Source: Ministry of Justice. Tribunals
and Gender Recognition Statistics Quarterly, July to
September 2019. SEND tribunal tables 2018–2019) 68
Fig. 4.16 Registered appeals in Scotland 2018–2019, (type of appeal
by percentage of total) (Source: Tribunal Additional Support
Needs Forum, 8 May 2019: 13th Annual Report 2018) 69
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Scottish Key Informants 22


Table 2.2 English Key Informants 22
Table 2.3 Scottish local authority socio-economic and education profiles 24
Table 2.4 English local authority socio-economic and education profiles 25
Table 3.1 Summary of new rights accorded to children (C) and young
people (YP) with special educational needs in England (post
Children and Families Act 2014) 44
Table 3.2 Summary of new rights accorded to children aged 12–15
(C) and young people (YP) with additional support needs in
Scotland (post Education (Scotland) Act 2016) 45

xi
1
Children’s Independent Rights
in Education: Setting the Scene

Introduction
Traditionally, little attention has been paid to the independent educa-
tional rights of children and young people, with parental rights being
seen as paramount. Recently, however, the focus has shifted, with chil-
dren’s rights moving to centre stage. Policy and legislative changes have
been driven in part by international treaties such as the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which was ratified by
the UK in 1991, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), ratified in 2009. Children and
young people are no longer seen as passive recipients of education, but as
central to decision-making processes. In both England and Scotland,
those with special and additional support needs have been prioritised and
now enjoy enhanced and legally enforceable rights under the terms of the
Children and Families Act 2014 and the Education (Scotland) Act 2016.
The new legislation is of major significance because of the size of the
population currently identified as having special educational needs (SEN)
and additional support needs (ASN). Data from the Department for
Education for 2019 show that in England, 15% of the school population

© The Author(s) 2020 1


S. Riddell, Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Educational Needs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55825-3_1
2 S. Riddell

was identified as having SEN, while Scottish Government data for the
same year show that 31% of children were identified as having ASN (see
Chap. 4 for further discussion). The central question considered in this
book is whether these changes indicate a great leap forward in terms of
realising children’s rights in practice, or whether they are merely cosmetic
and aspirational. Additional issues arise in relation to accessing the views
of children and young people with little or no speech, and those lacking
information and advocacy. Furthermore, given that parents have tradi-
tionally taken on the role of principal advocate for their child, questions
arise about the relationship between the wishes of the child and those of
their parent, particularly where these may be at variance with each other.
Finally, prioritising the wishes of children and young people throws into
question the role of local authority officers and school staff, given their
responsibility to ensure fairness in resource distribution.
This chapter begins with an overview of recent thinking about chil-
dren’s rights in education, including the upsides and downsides of the
focus on children as autonomous rights bearers. This is followed by a
brief overview of the legislation and of the empirical work informing the
later chapters and finally, a summary of each chapter is provided.

Children’s Autonomy: Possibilities and Pitfalls


As reflected in the English SEN and Scottish ASN Codes of Practice,
most education experts assume that taking account of children’s wishes
and views will lead to better decision-making. However, the idea of chil-
dren’s autonomy as the over-riding principle is contested in areas such as
medical and family law (Freeman 2007; Taylor 2005; Rutter 1989). In
the following sections, I provide a brief overview of current debates
around the primacy of autonomy in legal and administrative decision-­
making concerning children and young people.
At the heart of the discussion is the extent to which children should be
allowed to make independent decisions and whether, in deciding whether
to act on children’s preferred course of action, account should be taken of
any potentially negative consequences on their future life chances.
Onora O’Neill (1988), for example, has argued that although children
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 3

should be seen as rights-bearers, their vulnerability and need of protec-


tion makes them inherently different from adults. Whereas adults with
capacity are expected to make choices and accept the consequences,
O’Neill suggests that children may be unable to understand the future
implications of choices made at an early stage in their lives, and therefore
adults must always mediate children’s expressed wishes with a view to
determining what is in their best interests. In addition, children generally
lack the power to use formal mechanisms to enforce their rights, and as a
result, they should not be expected to act as fully autonomous rights-­
holders. O’Neill does not seek to undermine the importance of chil-
dren’s rights:

We may begin with a reminder of the appeal and importance of thinking


in terms of children’s rights. Children easily become victims. If they had
rights, redress would be possible. Rather than being powerless in the face of
neglect, abuse, molestation and mere ignorance they (like other oppressed
groups) would have legitimate and (in principle) enforceable claims against
others. (O’Neill 1988, p. 445)

At the same time as arguing for the importance of children’s rights,


O’Neill urges pragmatism in recognising the limitations of children’s
autonomous decision-making, since, in her view, adults have a duty to
ensure that children avoid making life-limiting choices. In addition,
responsibility for the institutions and services supporting children lies
with adults, not children themselves.
These arguments are broadly in line with Article 12 of the UNCRC,
which suggests that the rights enjoyed by children should gradually
increase in relation to their age and maturity. Rather than arguing that all
children of a particular age should have exactly the same rights, the
UNCRC reflects the view that rights should increase in line with the
individual child’s growing maturity and ‘evolving capacities’ (Lansdown
2005). Post-Gillick1 case law in the UK confirms the principle that deci-

1
The Gillick case arose as a result of a health department circular which stated that a doctor could
prescribe contraception to a minor without parental consent. In 1985, Victoria Gillick mounted a
legal challenge against West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority on the grounds that
parents retained the right to determine what was in the best interests of a child under the age of 16.
4 S. Riddell

sions on a child’s capacity hinge on an assessment of his or her maturity


and understanding. However, as noted by Archard (2004, 2015), there is
an unfair asymmetry in the treatment of children and adults. All adults,
other than those who are deemed incapable, are permitted to exercise
autonomous choices irrespective of whether these are objectively wise or
not. By way of contrast, children are required to demonstrate capacity in
order to have their views taken into account, and in some areas (for
example, voting) are judged as a group to be ineligible. By virtue of their
age, adults are always in a position to make judgements about whether
children’s views are in accordance with their ‘best interests’, even if the
adult’s beliefs and judgements may objectively be against a child’s inter-
ests. With reference to legal decision-making in health in the UK and
child protection in Norway, Archard and Skivenes (2009) argue that the
child’s views are not authoritative, but neither should they be treated as
merely consultative, as suggested by Brighouse (2003).
Criticising these types of approaches on grounds of paternalism, those
adopting a children’s liberation perspective, such as Farson (1974), main-
tain that children should be regarded as fully autonomous rights holders
with a similar status to adults. Along similar lines, Holt argues that:

The rights, privileges, duties, responsibilities of adult citizens [should] be


made available to any young person of whatever age who wants to make
use of them. (Holt 1974, p. 15)

At the other end of the spectrum, some writers have questioned the
utility of autonomy as an over-arching principle in education, law and
medical ethics. In the context of medical rights, Foster (2009) has
described autonomy as a ‘tyranny’, which, if applied in an uncritical
manner, has the potential to work against service users’ best interests. He
suggests that ‘… autonomy flounders when it comes to the question of
the treatment of and withdrawal of treatment from children’ (Foster
2009, p. 121). In the use of the best interests test, Foster argues that the
law is ‘appropriately paternalistic’. He explains:

Lord Scarman determined that ‘As a matter of Law the parental right to determine whether or not
their minor child below the age of sixteen will have medical treatment terminates if and when the
child achieves sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand fully what is proposed’.
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 5

The child’s view of where its best interests lie should of course be ascer-
tained, and the older the child is, the greater the weight they will have, but
best interests, say the courts, are an objective matter: the child’s views are
pertinent but certainly not determinative. (Foster 2009, p. 123)

Eekelaar (1986) also discusses the tensions between different orders of


rights owed to children. He notes that within the broad legal framework,
children have basic, development and autonomy rights. Basic rights per-
tain to ‘general physical, emotional and intellectual care within the social
capabilities of his or her immediate caregivers.’ These are linked to the
child’s development rights, associated with access to resources in order to
maximise future life chances. Duties associated with basic and develop-
ment rights are held by parents and the state, with the state having pow-
ers to assume the role of corporate parent if birth parents fail in their
responsibility to ensure that children are adequately cared for and edu-
cated. Autonomy rights are understood as the freedom of the child ‘to
choose his own lifestyle and to enter social relations according to his own
inclinations uncontrolled by the authority of the adult world, whether
parents or institutions’ (Eekelaar 1986, p. 171). The problem, however, is
that the deployment of autonomy rights by children may rob them of the
opportunity to mature into rationally autonomous adults. In Eekelaar’s
view, the direction of travel in legal judgements is towards autonomy
rights, so that:

Children will now have, in wider measure than ever before, that most dan-
gerous but precious of rights: the right to make their own mistakes.
(Eekelaar 1986, p. 182)

An ongoing debate across many social policy fields concerns the age at
which children and young people should acquire specific rights. The
UNCRC suggests that rigid age limits should be avoided, and that deci-
sions should be made based on an individual child’s degree of maturity
and understanding. However, chronological age is still used in many
areas. For example, in the UK young people normally have the right to
vote at the age of 18, but in the Scottish referendum on independence in
2014, the voting age was reduced to 16. In the opposite direction, the age
6 S. Riddell

of criminal responsibility in Scotland was recently changed from 8 to 12.


In other areas, subjective assessments of competence and capacity are
used to decide which children can exercise their rights of participation.
For example, in medical law, the concept of Gillick competence is used to
decide whether a child under 16 years of age is able to consent to his or
her own medical treatment, without the need for parental permission.
Broadly, if a child is judged to have sufficient understanding and intelli-
gence to fully comprehend the treatment which is proposed, then paren-
tal consent may not be required for particular procedures. At the same
time, the court may overrule a child’s power to consent to or refuse medi-
cal treatment.
Overall, it is clear that while there is broad agreement on the need to
promote children’s rights in education and other social policy arenas,
there is uncertainty about the extent to which autonomy should be the
only or the over-riding principle. A major concern of this book is to
explore the way in which autonomy rights are reflected in legislation and
policy, and subsequently translated into school and classroom practices.
Recent developments in children’s rights are placed in the wider context
of approaches to educational decision-making and administrative justice
in England and Scotland, where the discourse of rights has often been in
tension with professional duties to safeguard children’s wellbeing and
ensure equity in resource distribution.

Autonomy or Dependence: A False Dichotomy?


The sociology of childhood, which emerged in the 1980s, tended to
emphasise the separation between the worlds of adults and children, with
each group having different and often conflicting interests. More recently,
writers such as Oswell (2013) have argued that we need to develop more
nuanced ideas about the inter-connections between the lives of adults
and children. For example, playgrounds are conceived of and built by
adults, but they are transformed by children who shape the physical and
social space. ‘The capacities of children’, he argues, ‘are dependent on
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 7

their locally situated interrelations with other children or with adults’


(Oswell 2013, p. 264). Debates about autonomy as opposed to depen-
dency are fundamentally misplaced, since no one lives in a world detached
from others.
For disabled children, interconnections between children and adults
may be particularly important. Ryan and Runswick-Cole (2008) note
that the independent living movement has sought to promote disabled
people’s autonomy and parents and carers have been seen as unhelpfully
exerting control over the lives of their children. However, the danger of
insisting on the autonomy of disabled children is that the ‘special compe-
tence’ of parents, who are often non-disabled, may be overlooked. In
particular, the role of the activist mother may easily be denied, resulting
in the side-lining of children’s most determined advocates:

Mothers of disabled children have occupied a complex, contradictory and


marginal position within both disability studies and the disabled people’s
movement. This marginalisation is related to the (often) non-disabled sta-
tus of the mothers which propels them into the difficult and contentious
debates about the role of non-disabled people within the lives of disabled
people and within disability studies. This tension is further complicated by
the relationship between mothers and their children in which the actions
of mothers have been interpreted as constraints within their children’s lives,
limiting their opportunities and aspirations. (Ryan and
Runswick-Cole 2008)

There is a significant body of literature, they suggest, which ‘interprets


the experiences of parents of disabled children as either delusional or is
couched in terms of grief, loss or denial (or self-interest)’ (Ryan and
Runswick-Cole 2008). They also note that mothers, more than fathers,
are the subjects of societal scrutiny and surveillance in relation to their
parenting skills, and mothers are often blamed for producing a dysfunc-
tional child. Alliances for change, they suggest, may develop when there
is a better understanding of the inter-connectedness of the lives of adults
and children, and disabled and non-disabled people, rather than consign-
ing groups of people to separate spheres. Along similar lines, Shakespeare
(2000) argues that there is a need to transform the social relations of care,
8 S. Riddell

so that instead of dividing the population into those who receive or give
help, we recognise humanity’s interdependence.
To summarise, central to the critique of autonomy is the recognition
that the lives of children and adults are deeply intertwined and affected
by wider structural inequalities including those based on disability, social
class, gender, ethnicity, religion and age. The idea of the autonomous
child, like the myth of the autonomous adult, may have dangerous con-
sequences in terms of encouraging the view that individuals are respon-
sible for any adversity they may encounter, rather than recognising the
unequal distribution of risk in society. Ignoring the social, economic and
cultural factors affecting families may reinforce rather than challenge
social injustice. The idea of autonomy rights, taken to an extreme, has the
potential to foster dystopic rather than benign societal outcomes.
Despite objections to the reification of autonomy in the literature,
there is also a recognition that more needs to be done to ensure that chil-
dren are involved as central actors rather than bit-players in important
decisions affecting their lives. As noted above, international treaties have
been translated into domestic legislation in order to ensure that this hap-
pens. In the paragraphs below, I provide an over-view of the measures
which have been put in place in England and Scotland to further the
rights of children with SEN and ASN, outlining the rationale for com-
paring the two jurisdictions.

 xtensions of Children and Young People’s


E
Rights in Scotland and England
The historical background to recent policy on the rights of children and
young people with SEN/ASN are discussed further in Chap. 3. In both
jurisdictions, international human rights treaties have recently come to
the fore, and both the UK and Scottish Governments are broadly com-
mitted to ensuring that the principles of the UNCRC and the UNCRPD
are reflected in domestic legislation. However, the rights-focused reforms
are significantly different north and south of the border.
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 9

The Education (Scotland) Act 2016, commenced in January 2018,


made important changes to the 2004 Act in order to advance children
and young people’s rights. As explained in the revised Code of Practice
(Scottish Government 2017), children aged 12 or over with ASN who
are judged to have capacity (‘sufficient maturity and understanding’) now
have almost the same rights as those currently held by parents and young
people (with the exceptions of requesting mediation and making a school
placing request). A child aged 12 or over, with capacity, is able to make a
reference to the Additional Support Needs Tribunal (ASN Tribunal2),
provided the tribunal is satisfied that the child’s wellbeing would not be
adversely affected. Disputes over questions of capacity and wellbeing
have been brought within the ASN Tribunal’s jurisdiction.3
In England, there is also a new emphasis on the rights agenda, although
young people aged 16–25, rather than children, appear to have been the
main beneficiaries. Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 seeks to
promote a culture of engagement and ‘co-production’ so that children,
young people and their families have a sense of control over local author-
ity provision (Department for Education 2011). The central principles of
the legislation summarised in the Code of Practice (Department for
Education and Department of Health 2015) state that local authorities
must have regard to:

• The views, wishes and feelings of the child or young person, and the
child’s parents;
• The importance of the child or young person, and the child’s parents,
participating as fully as possible in decisions, and being provided with
the information and support necessary to enable participation in those
decisions;
• The need to support the child or young person, and the child’s parents,
in order to facilitate the development of the child or young person and
to help them achieve the best possible educational and other outcomes,
preparing them effectively for adulthood.

2
Now embedded in the Health and Education Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland.
3
Via amendment of s.18(3).
10 S. Riddell

Local authorities are required to provide information, advice and sup-


port services, publish a local offer indicating various educational options
for those with SEN, offer parents and young people a personal budget,
and consult with parents and young people over local policy. Education,
health and care needs have been linked more formally and systematically
than in the past, in particular through Education, Health and Care Plans
(EHCPs), which replaced Statements of SEN. While extending rights of
appeal to young people, the Act also aims to make the process of resolv-
ing disagreements between families and local authorities over SEN mat-
ters less adversarial by promoting mediation as an alternative to an appeal
to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SEND
Tribunal).4 All of these measures are intended to enhance the rights of
children and young people with SEN with a view to giving them ‘greater
control … to make them authors of their own life stories’ (Department
for Education 2012).
On the face of it, the Scottish legislation appears to go much further
than its English counterpart in recognising children’s autonomy. However,
in Scotland the new rights may not be quite as far reaching as they ini-
tially appear since tests of capacity and impact on wellbeing are applied
by the local authority before any right may be exercised. In England,
there is also a threshold of capacity as determined by the Mental Capacity
Act 2005, however, there is no specific requirement for the local author-
ity to be involved in this assessment. Given these differences in the scale
of the new rights accorded to children and young people in England and
Scotland, a major focus of the book is to explore whether these national
differences are evident on the ground.
In engaging with the conceptual issues outlined above, the book draws
on findings from an ESRC funded research project entitled Autonomy,
Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm?(Ref. ES/
P002641/1), which was conducted by researchers at the Universities of
Edinburgh and Manchester between 2017 and 2019. The study used a
mixed-methods approach to examine the implementation of the new leg-
islation in English and Scottish schools and classrooms in order to
investigate:

4
Now embedded in the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal.
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 11

• The extent to which children (defined here as those of aged under 16)
and young people (those aged 16–24 inclusive) with SEN/ASN are
able to realise their participation rights effectively
• The degree to which the autonomy rights of children and young peo-
ple intersect with those of parents/carers and are driven by, or influ-
ence, the decision-making of schools and local authorities
• The way in which capacity for autonomous decision-making is under-
stood and acted upon in different social contexts
• The factors which promote or inhibit the realisation of autonomy
rights by children and young people with SEN/ASN, including those
who are looked after by the local authority
• The impact of a children’s rights-based approach on the broader educa-
tion and social policy landscape

Structure of the Book


Throughout the book, children’s rights and social justice provide the cen-
tral analytical focus. Having outlined the background to the study in
Chaps. 1 and 2 explains the nature of the research methods and the type
of data used. Chapter 3 then traces the historical development of
approaches to protecting the rights of children, young people and their
parents in England and Scotland, drawing out some important differ-
ences between the jurisdictions. This is followed, in Chap. 4, by a review
of administrative data, focusing on which groups of children and young
people are identified as having special and additional support needs,
which children receive a statutory support plan and which groups use
formal dispute resolution mechanisms. Patterns emerging from the data
are analysed by key social variables including type of difficulty, gender,
ethnicity and social deprivation. Informed by the analysis of official sta-
tistics, Chap. 5 draws on key informant interviews to analyse, at meso-
level, the way in which the grand designs of policy and legislation are
understood and enacted by central actors including local authority offi-
cers, educational psychologists, children’s rights officers and those respon-
sible for information, advice and dispute resolution procedures.
12 S. Riddell

Subsequent chapters use in-depth case studies of children, young peo-


ple and their families to explore the implementation of policy and prac-
tice at grass roots level. Chapter 6 looks at the nature of children and
young people’s participation in everyday decision-making in schools and
classrooms, while Chap. 7 investigates their engagement in school and
local authority representative bodies, questioning the extent to which the
envisaged co-production of policy and practice is actually taking place.
The participation of children, young people and their parents in educa-
tional planning processes, including decisions around statutory support
plans, is the subject of Chap. 8. In Chaps. 9 and 10, the focus shifts to
children, young people’s and parents’ involvement in major education
decisions, including school choice and dispute resolution. Finally, Chap.
11 draws together the central themes of the book, returning to the central
question of whether the new legislation on the rights of children with
special and additional support needs may be regarded as a great leap for-
ward, a reinforcement of existing practice, or a dangerous move at a time
of economic retrenchment to shift responsibility for service provision
from the state to children, young people and their parents.

References
Archard, D. (2004). Children, rights and childhood. London: Routledge.
Archard, D. (2015). Children, adults, autonomy and well-being. In A. Baggatini
& C. Macleod (Eds.), The nature of children’s well-being: Theory and practice
(pp. 3–14). Dordrecht: Springer.
Archard, D., & Skivenes, M. (2009). Balancing a child’s best interests and a
child’s views. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 17(1), 1–21.
Brighouse, H. (2003). How should children be heard? Arizona Law Review,
45(3), 691–711.
Department for Education (DfE). (2011). Support and aspiration: A new
approach to special educational needs and disability (Cm 8027). London: DfE.
Department for Education (DfE). (2012). Support and aspiration: A new
approach to special educational needs and disability: Progress and next steps.
London: DfE.
1 Children’s Independent Rights in Education: Setting the Scene 13

Department for Education, & Department of Health (DfE & DoH). (2015).
Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0–25 years.
London: DfE&DoH.
Eekelaar, J. (1986). Emergence of children’s rights. Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies, 6(2), 161–182.
Farson, R. (1974). Birthrights. London: Macmillan.
Foster, C. (2009). Choosing life, choosing death: The tyranny of autonomy in medi-
cal law and ethics. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Freeman, M. (2007). A commentary on the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child Article 3: The best interests of the child. Leiden:
Martinus Nijhoff.
Holt, J. (1974). Escape from childhood: The needs and rights of children. New York:
E.P. Dutton & Co..
Lansdown, G. (2005). The evolving capacities of the child. Florence: UNICEF.
O’Neill, O. (1988). Children’s rights and children’s lives. Ethics, 98(3), 445–463.
Oswell, D. (2013). The agency of children: From family to global human rights.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rutter, M. (1989). Pathways from childhood to adult life. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, 30(1), 23–51.
Ryan, S., & Runswick-Cole, K. (2008). Repositioning mothers: Mothers, dis-
abled children and disability studies. Disability & Society, 32(3), 199–210.
Scottish Government. (2017). Supporting children’s learning: Statutory guid-
ance on the Education (Additional Support For Learning) Scotland Act 2004
(as amended). Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
Shakespeare, T. (2000). Help. London: Verso.
Taylor, J. (Ed.). (2005). Personal autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and
its role in contemporary moral philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
2
Research Methods

Introduction
This book draws on empirical data gathered as part of an ESRC-funded
project exploring the independent rights of children with special and
additional support needs. The research used a mixed-­methods and cross-
border comparative approach, which I discuss below before turning to a
more detailed description of the specific elements of the research and
their links to the central theoretical focus of the study.

 he Rationale for Adopting a Mixed-Methods


T
Approach
As noted by Ritchie and Ormston (2014), the paradigm wars between
quantitative and qualitative social researchers have largely abated, with
general agreement that different methods may be usefully combined to
provide depth and breadth of understanding of social phenomena.
However, some methodologists, such as Creswell (2011), continue to
argue that the epistemologies underpinning each approach are

© The Author(s) 2020 15


S. Riddell, Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Educational Needs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55825-3_2
16 S. Riddell

fundamentally incompatible. Ritchie and Ormston (2014) are broadly


supportive of mixed-methods research but argue that there needs to be a
clear rationale for adopting this approach. In this research, the quantita-
tive methods (analysis of administrative data and local authority survey)
were used to explore the associations between key social variables in rela-
tion to the identification of different types of difficulties, use of statutory
support plans and rates of tribunal appeal. These data provide a sense of
the over-arching influence of a range of social and economic factors shap-
ing the material reality in which individuals live their lives. At the same
time, the qualitative methods (key informant interviews and case studies
of children, young people and their families) remind us that structural
factors, though powerful, are not entirely deterministic and that indi-
vidual actors are able to exercise a degree of freedom in constructing their
biographies. For example, the administrative data show clearly that social
deprivation and sex are strongly associated with the identification of cer-
tain types of difficulty—boys from socially disadvantaged backgrounds
are much more likely to be identified with social, emotional and behav-
ioural difficulties compared with other pupils. However, the case studies
reveal that some children from less deprived backgrounds, for example,
Claire and Aiden, may be categorised as having behavioural difficulties
and, in their struggle for respect and recognition, may experience broadly
similar struggles to those living with social disadvantage. In this way, the
qualitative data constantly remind the reader that while broad patterns in
human behaviour may be shaped by wider structural factors, there are
always exceptions whose experiences must be taken into account in inter-
preting the bigger picture. While social research is about identifying
broad patterns in experience and behaviour, the exceptional cases act as a
reminder that individual lives are not determined by immutable universal
laws and that neat moulds and models cannot capture the full complexity
of social reality.
An obvious danger in using mixed methods is that different types of
data are analysed separately and never fully synthesised. In this study, the
researchers began the process of data analysis by writing up a series of
working papers providing a discrete account of each element of the
research. The project final report (Riddell et al. 2019) was the first attempt
at data synthesis and this book represents a further step in the process of
2 Research Methods 17

triangulation and synthesis. In terms of timing, the survey and analysis of


administrative data preceded the qualitative elements, and contributed to
the case study sampling framework. Central themes emerging from the
quantitative data were used to interrogate the qualitative data, helping
the researchers to identify typical and atypical cases and make sense of
apparently conflicting experiences. The chapters which follow deliber-
ately draw on different types of data, for example, Chap. 10, addressing
the rights of children and young people in dispute resolution, begins with
an overview of local authority survey findings to remind the reader of the
context in which families are seeking to resolve disagreements.

Opportunities and Challenges


of Comparative Research
A further central element of the research was to use the opportunities for
policy learning provided by England and Scotland. The education sys-
tems of the two nations clearly have certain commonalities, but there are
marked differences in their respective approaches to the promotion of
children’s educational rights. Following administrative and political devo-
lution in the UK from the 1990s onwards, a growing body of work has
explored the nature and extent of policy convergence and/or divergence
across different UK jurisdictions and policy areas (Greer 2009). In the
field of special and additional support needs, this comparative work has
included studies of educational decision-making (Riddell et al. 2000)
and of dispute resolution (Harris and Riddell 2011). Despite growing
differences in education policy between Scotland and England, for exam-
ple, academisation in England compared with comprehensive schooling
in Scotland, there are also strong similarities, including the extent of
inequalities in educational experiences and outcomes (Wyness 2013;
National Equality Panel 2010).
Within the field of SEN/ASN, there are both parallels and contrasts
between the systems of the home nations (Beaton and Black-Hawkins
2014), but there is broad commonality in recent policy rhetoric in rela-
tion to the extension of children’s rights. This book explores the way in
18 S. Riddell

which these rights are realised within increasingly divergent school sys-
tems, drawing on sociological perspectives on the social construction of
choice and the impact of individual choices on education systems
(Vincent et al. 2013; Vincent and Ball 2006). Different educational gov-
ernance regimes in England and Scotland therefore provide the backcloth
for a natural experiment, allowing an exploration of the type of educa-
tional governance arrangements which are more or less conducive to the
realisation of children’s rights in SEN/ASN.
Despite the opportunities afforded by comparative studies of educa-
tional policy, there are also pitfalls. These pertain to different understand-
ings of central concepts, reflected in the use of different terminology and
categorisation systems. As argued in Chap. 3, SEN policy and practice in
the post-Warnock era of the 1980s developed along broadly parallel lines.
However, from the mid-1990s onwards, the promotion of parents as edu-
cational consumers advanced more quickly in England, reflected, for
example, in the establishment of the SEN tribunal, a modified version of
which was instituted in Scotland a decade later. As noted in the following
section, fundamental definitions of special and additional support needs
have diverged between the two nations, calling into question the reliabil-
ity and validity of cross-country comparisons. This book reflects the view
that, despite the undeniable differences in policy and practice, cross-­
border comparisons are still interesting and relevant, as long as the reader
bears in mind the growing divergence across UK jurisdictions.

Definitions of Key Terms


In order to illustrate the complexity of cross-border comparisons, I briefly
review fundamental differences in definitions of SEN and ASN and cat-
egories of difficulty in England and Scotland. The Education (Additional
Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (amended in 2009 and 2016)
includes the legal definition of ASN. In Scotland, a child is said to have
ASN if they need more, or different support to that which is normally
provided in schools or pre-schools to children of the same age. This broad
definition includes difficulties associated with linguistic, social, physical
or cognitive factors. Children with English as an additional language are
2 Research Methods 19

counted as having ASN, and make up an increasingly large proportion of


the ASN population. Since 2004, there has been an increase in the types
of difficulty recognised, and 25 categories are now used. About 31% of
children in Scottish schools are identified as having ASN, an eightfold
increase in the proportion identified as having SEN prior to 2004.
Under the additional support for learning legislation, local authorities
have a duty to assess the requirements of any child needing extra help to
benefit from education. Pupils with multiple, complex and ongoing
needs requiring significant input from more than one external agency
may be eligible for a Coordinated Support Plan (CSP), a statutory docu-
ment prepared by the education authority summarising the nature of the
child’s difficulties, measures proposed by the local authority to meet the
child’s needs and the name of the proposed institution for the child’s
education.
Children who have additional support needs but who do not meet the
criteria for a CSP may be provided with a different type of plan by the
local authority, such as an Individualised Education Programme (IEP).
An IEP is a written plan setting short-term and long-term targets which
the child is expected to achieve. These plans are solely advisory and carry
no legal status. An IEP should contain details of the child’s additional
needs, learning objectives and information regarding resources and sup-
port. A pupil with a CSP and/or an IEP may also have a Child’s Plan,
developed as part of the Scottish Government’s Getting it Right for Every
Child (GIRFEC) programme, which focuses on child wellbeing. In addi-
tion, Scottish local authorities also use a range of local plans, including
Multi-agency Support Plans, Education Support Plans, Behaviour
Support Plans and Looked After Children Support Plans. As with IEPs,
none of these plans has a standardised format or legal status.
In England, the most recent special educational needs and disability
(SEND) provisions are defined in the Children and Families Act 2014,
introduced on 1 September 2014. From this date, newly assessed chil-
dren with special educational needs are categorised as requiring within-­
school SEN support or an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan,
encapsulating the support to be provided by a range of agencies. SEN
support replaced the previous categories of School Action and School
Action Plus and is defined as support provided to the child that is
20 S. Riddell

additional to the school’s usual curriculum. SEN support is advisory and


is not legally binding.
Under the terms of the 2014 legislation, Education, Health and Care
Plans (EHCPs) replaced the previous Statement of Needs. EHCPs are
documents which describe the child’s needs and additional help they
require. By law, a formal assessment must be carried out by the local
authority if the child has, or may have, special educational needs and if it
may be necessary for provision to be made for that child in accordance
with an EHCP. However, the local authority may decide to refuse an
assessment request. If a decision is made to assess, the local authority is
required to seek advice and information from a range of appropriate
sources (e.g. the child and their parent, as well as obtaining educational,
medical and psychological advice). Based on this advice, the local author-
ity can decide to issue an EHCP or not. EHCPs are legally binding and
subject to ongoing monitoring and assessment. In general, children with
Statements issued prior to 2014 were moved on to EHCPs.
As discussed in Chap. 4, these definitions have resulted in radically
different rates of SEN/ASN identification, with roughly twice as many
children in Scotland as in England being viewed as requiring extra sup-
port compared with normal educational provision. However, compared
with Scotland, ten times as many children in England are given statutory
support plans. These definitional differences must constantly be borne in
mind when cross-county comparisons are made. In addition, the aim of
this book is not to argue that one system is fundamentally better than the
other, but rather to explore the implications of these differences in terms
of the realisation of children’s rights.

Analysis of Administrative Data


Scottish statistics discussed in Chap. 4 are derived from the annual school
census conducted by the Scottish Government and the UK Department
for Education, and cover the academic year 2018–2019. The broad aim
of the analysis of administrative data was to explore the relationship
between being identified as having SEN/ASN and a range of social vari-
ables, including type of difficulty, gender, ethnicity and social depriva-
tion. As noted above, the complexity of cross-border comparisons are
2 Research Methods 21

immediately evident in the analysis of official statistics reported in Chap.


4, for example, in the much longer list of categories used in Scotland (25)
compared with England (12). As a result, separate figures are generally
presented for the two jurisdictions, with the narrative drawing attention
to the limits of the inferences which may be drawn.

Local Authority Surveys


In order to obtain a broad overview of officers’ perceptions of recent leg-
islative changes in SEN/ASN and their impact, an online survey was used
with all local authorities in England and Scotland (152 in England and
32 in Scotland). An early version of the questionnaire was piloted with
two local authority contacts in both jurisdictions. After revisions, an elec-
tronic link to the final version of the questionnaire was emailed to the
named person with overall responsibility for ASN/SEN in the two juris-
dictions. Two email reminders were sent out and the remaining non-­
responses were followed up by telephone calls. In England, 56 people
responded (a 37% response rate) and in Scotland 18 responded (a 56%
response rate). Survey findings are referred to at various points in the
book, including Chap. 5 which focuses on policy development with
regard to children’s rights, and Chap. 6, which deals with children’s par-
ticipation rights in schools and classrooms.

Key Informant Interviews


In order to understand the way in which children’s rights policies are
understood and mediated by different social actors, interviews were con-
ducted with key informants in Scotland and England (21 in both juris-
dictions). Interviewees were from a range of professional backgrounds
with experience in the field of SEN/ASN, including central government
officers, teachers, educational psychologists, local authority managers,
school governors, tribunal judiciary, an ombudsman, lawyers, voluntary
sector representatives and parents. In terms of their roles, a slightly differ-
ent range of individuals were interviewed in England and Scotland, as
shown in Tables 2.1 and 2.2.
22 S. Riddell

Table 2.1 Scottish Key Informants


Commissioner, Children and Young People’s Commission for Scotland
Officer, Equality and Human Rights Commission
Education law consultant
President, First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, Health and Education Chamber
Practitioner Royal College Speech and Language Therapists
Consultant, Independent special schools
Head teacher, Special Unit, Council 6
Head teacher, Independent Special School
Director, Voluntary organisation: parents
Officer, Voluntary organisation: children with learning disabilities
Officer, Voluntary organisation: looked after children
Manager, Mediation Service
Manager, Advice and Information Service
Principal Educational Psychologist, Council 1
Principal Educational Psychologist, Council 2
Principal Educational Psychologist, Council 3
Principal Educational Psychologist, Council 4
Principal Educational Psychologist, Council 5
Senior Officer, Scottish Government
School Improvement Officer, Education Scotland
Senior Inspector, Education Scotland

Table 2.2 English Key Informants


Local Authority Senior Officer
Mediator
Local Authority SEND Strategic Lead
Local Authority Parent Engagement Officer
Local Authority Service Manager Vulnerable Learners
Local Authority SEND Development Manager
Voluntary Sector, Independent Support Services Provider
Further Education and Sixth Form College, Post-16 Head of SEND
Voluntary Sector, Ambassador for Children with SEN
Inclusion Manager Primary School
Chair of Governors of Primary School
Deputy President, First-tier Tribunal, Health Education and Social Care Chamber
Barrister
Voluntary Sector Organiser
Parent 1
Parent 2
Primary School Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO)
Primary School Governor (SEN)
DfE Policy Officer
LA Principal Educational Psychologist
Ofsted Adviser
2 Research Methods 23

The semi-structured interviews, which lasted between 60 and 90 min-


utes, were generally conducted face to face, with a small number carried
out by telephone. They were digitally recorded and transcribed, with
attention being paid to capturing local accents. Children and young peo-
ple were not interviewed as key informants, since their accounts were
gathered in the case study phase of the research. The same broad ground
was covered in all the interviews, but the precise framing of the questions
varied in relation to the role of the interviewee. Questions covered the
individual’s perceptions of recent policy and legislative developments in
children’s rights, including the policy impetus behind the reforms; the
likely impact on the realisation of participation rights in schools and
classrooms; possible tensions between children’s and parents’ rights and
local authority duties; children and young people’s involvement in judi-
cial processes; issues around the assessment of capacity; and general views
of children’s autonomy rights.
Central findings from the local authority survey are used to contextu-
alise the analysis of key informant interviews reported in Chap. 5.

Local Authority Overviews


As a prelude to identifying case studies of children, young people and
their families, six local authorities were selected, three in England and
three in Scotland. The aim of this stage of the research was to understand
the way in which local SEN/ASN policy impacted on the experiences and
outcomes of children, young people and their families. In terms of demo-
graphics, the local authorities were selected to reflect socio-economic and
geographical differences across the two jurisdictions, as well as varying in
their approach to SEN/ASN identification, use of statutory support plans
and rates of tribunal appeal. Further insights were obtained by examining
their SEN/ASN policies and interviewing key personnel.
In Scotland, Sea City and Eastshire emerged as the most advantaged
with regard to employment rates, proportion of the workforce in higher
level roles and educational attainment. Sea City also had the highest pro-
portion of pupils identified as having ASN and the highest rates of tribu-
nal appeals (Tables 2.3 and 2.4).
24 S. Riddell

Table 2.3 Scottish local authority socio-economic and education profiles


Sea
City Eastshire Coalshire Scotland
Total population 513,000 104,100 371,400 5,425,000
Type of LA Urban Accessible Accessible N/A
rural rural
Workforce
Economically active 72.9% 81.3% 78.1% 77.3%
In employment 76.6% 78.6% 75.8% 73.9%
1–3: Professional/managerial 57.1% 43% 42.1% 42.8%
4–5: Admin/skilled trade 16.3% 21.9% 17.6% 21.2%
6–7: Sales/service 14.6% 20.9% 21% 18.4%
8–9: Manual 12.1% 14.2% 19.4% 17.7%
Education
NVQ4 and above 57.8% 46.1% 45% 43.9%
No qualifications 3.2% 6.3% 7.3% 8.7%
School population with ASN 26.2% 21.5% 21.1% 27%
School population with CSP 0.26% 0.26% 0.35% 0.3%
Tribunal cases 2018 12 4 1 2.47
(rate/10,000 school
population)
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Scottish Government, First-tier Tribunal for
Scotland, Health and Education Chamber

In England, Greenshire had the highest rate of employment, but


Bigtown had the highest level of educational attainment and at the same
time the highest rates of SEN identification and tribunal appeals.

 ase Studies of Children and Young People


C
with SEN/ASN and Their Families
Within each of the local authorities, six case studies of children and
young people with SEN/ASN were conducted (36 in total). Case studies
were selected to reflect differences in age, type of difficulty, sex and socio-­
economic background. In order to ensure that the case studies broadly
reflected the characteristics of the wider SEN/ASN populations, case
study pupils were selected in relation to the largest categories of SEN/
ASN (autistic spectrum disorder; social emotional and mental health
2 Research Methods 25

Table 2.4 English local authority socio-economic and education profiles


Great
Bigtown Northshire Greenshire Britain
Total population 545,500 1,201,900 317,500 64,169,400
Type of LA Urban Urban/Rural/ Urban/ N/A
Coastal Rural
Workforce
Economically active 72.9% 79.6% 81.0% 78.4%
In employment 69.1% 76.5% 77.7% 75.0%
1–3: Professional/managerial 44.1% 40.2% 41.8% 45.9%
4–5: Admin/skilled trade 18.7% 22.0% 23.2% 20.4%
6–7: Sales/service 18.3% 21.0% 16.4% 16.7%
8–9: Manual 18.9% 16.8% 18.5% 17.0%
Education
NVQ4 and above 39.9% 33.2% 31.9% 38.6%
No qualifications 11.1% 6.7% 6.6% 7.7%
SEN England
School population with SEN 15.9% 12.9% 14.5% 14.6%
School population with 3.1% 3.0% 3.5% 2.9%
EHCP
School population on SEN 12.9% 9.8% 11.0% 11.7%
Support
SEND appeals registered 44(4.9) 60 (3.4) 2 (0.5) 4725 (5.5)
2018 (rate/10,000 school
pop.)
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Department for Education and First-tier
Tribunal, Health Education and Social Care Chamber

difficulties1; moderate learning difficulties; speech language and commu-


nication difficulties).
In each authority, case studies included primary and secondary aged
children as well as those in the post-compulsory school age group. In
England the sample was deliberately selected to include a slightly greater
number of young people aged 18–24 in order to reflect the extension of
education rights to this group. Most of the Scottish sample were in the
12–15 age group, reflecting the fact that these children were the major
beneficiaries of the new rights. In addition to these variables, children

1
In Scotland, referred to as Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties.
26 S. Riddell

and young people were drawn from different deprivation quintiles,2


although those from more affluent areas were slightly over-represented.
Cases were drawn from different types of school (local authority main-
tained mainstream and special; academies (England only); and other spe-
cial schools). Short vignettes of each of the case study children and young
people, providing a summary of their social characteristics and biogra-
phies, are included in Appendix 2.
In each of the 36 case studies, a member of the research team inter-
viewed the child or young person where this was possible and observed
them for at least a day in their education and home setting. In three cases
in Scotland, observation rather than interview was used to access the
views of children with little or no speech. Documents relevant to each
case were also gathered, such as statutory support plans and care plans.
Parents were interviewed in their preferred setting, generally at home or
in a social setting such as a café, but sometimes at school. Two or more of
the adults involved in supporting the child or young person were inter-
viewed, such as the class teacher, special needs coordinator or social
worker. These interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed.
During the period of observation, the researcher focused on how the
child or young person engaged in decisions and processes related to
school and classroom life, curriculum and planning and the support they
needed to enable them to participate effectively. The researchers also
probed the nature of children and young people’s involvement in major
educational decisions such as choice of school. Where relevant, questions
were also asked about the nature of the child or young person’s involve-
ment in dispute resolution processes. Contrasts between different social
actors’ perspectives were identified in areas such as understanding of
capacity, the relationship between children’s and parents’ rights, and the
degree of autonomy which children should be allowed to experience.
Knowledge and awareness of the new legislation in both jurisdictions was
considered, as well as assessments of its potential longer term impact.

2
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and the English Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD) are neighbourhood measures of deprivation based on seven domains: income,
employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing. SIMD1/IMD1 refers to the
20% of areas with the highest levels of deprivation, and SIMD5/IMD5 refers to the 20% of areas
with the lowest levels of deprivation.
2 Research Methods 27

Throughout this stage of the research, the research team adopted a


nested case study approach (Chong and Graham 2013), based on an
understanding of children as actors located within specific families,
schools, local authorities and national jurisdictions. The aim was to
understand the way in which policy on children’s rights was understood
at each level and in the context of a particular set of social circumstances.
The thematic data analysis contrasted the views of children and young
people with those of adults, as well as examining adults’ views of children
and young people’s capacity to exercise choice, the ways in which dis-
agreements between adults and children/young people are resolved and
how children and young people’s rights shape, and are shaped by, educa-
tional environments. For each case study, a pen portrait was written
drawing on semi-structured interviews and observations with children
and young people and significant others. The headings were common
across the case studies, reflecting the policy and theoretical concerns of
the research in relation to children’s rights and social justice. Each pen
portrait began with a brief biographical overview of the child or young
person, followed by an overview of the extent to which they were able to
use their rights across a range of domains, including participation in
schools, classrooms and representative bodies,educational planning,
school choice and dispute resolution. This approach allowed the research
team to make both vertical and horizontal comparisons across and
between case studies.
Methods adopted throughout the research were participatory and
responsive to the particular child or young person’s age, type of difficulty
and learning environment. The central aim was to develop insight into
children and young people’s understanding of their new rights and their
sense of whether these rights made any material difference to their lives.
At the same time, simplistic ideas of capturing the child’s voice were
avoided, recognising that inevitably the researcher mediates and inter-
prets the voice of research participants, and multiple versions of an indi-
vidual’s voice may be possible (Mazzei and Jackson 2009). This is
particularly likely to be the case where children and young people have
little or no speech, and adults are involved in mediating their views.
These case studies provide the main source of data in Chaps. 6, 7, 8, 9
and 10. In each of these chapters, we focus on those children, young
28 S. Riddell

people and families whose experiences best illuminate the particular


aspect of rights of participation and redress under discussion. Twenty
seven out of our 36 case studies appear at some stage in the book and
three appear in more than one chapter. The form of the data reported in
these chapters also varies: some data are transcripts from interviews while
other data are excerpts from researcher field notes describing events where
the use of an audio recorder would have been either impossible or
inappropriate.

Conclusion
The use of quantitative and qualitative data provides a rich pool of evi-
dence, allowing the research team to develop an in-depth understanding
of the experiences of particular children and young people and their fam-
ilies, while at the same time recognising how each case fits into the bigger
picture provided by the administrative and survey data. The analysis is
informed by a desire to understand the nature of the barriers to participa-
tion faced by children with different types of difficulty (Franklin and
Sloper 2009; Callus and Farrugia 2016) and from different socio-­
economic backgrounds. Overall, data presented in the following chapters
illuminate the extent to which children and young people’s educational
rights are realised in practice, and what needs to change to translate pol-
icy rhetoric on children’s rights to action on the ground.

References
Beaton, M. C., & Black-Hawkins, K. (2014). Editorial: Changing policy and
legislation and its effects on inclusive and special education. Special issue.
British Journal of Special Education, 41(1), 340–343.
Callus, A.-M., & Farrugia, R. (2016). Disabled child’s participation rights.
London: Routledge.
Chong, P. W., & Graham, L. J. (2013). The ‘Russian doll’ approach: Developing
nested case-studies to support international comparative research in educa-
tion. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 36(1), 23–32.
2 Research Methods 29

Creswell, J. W. (2011). Controversies in mixed methods research. In N. K. Denzin


& Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Sage handbook of qualitative research (4th ed.,
pp. 269–284). London: Sage.
Franklin, A., & Sloper, P. (2009). Supporting the participation of disabled chil-
dren and young people in decision-making. Children and Society, 23, 3–15.
Greer, S. (2009). Devolution and social citizenship in the UK. Bristol: Policy Press.
Harris, N., & Riddell, S. (2011). Resolving disputes about educational provision:
A comparative perspective on special educational needs. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Mazzei, L. I., & Jackson, A. Y. (2009). Introduction: The limit of voice. In
A. Y. Jackson & L. I. Mazzei (Eds.), Voice in qualitative inquiry: Challenging
conventional, interpretive, and critical conceptions in qualitative research
(pp. 1–13). Abingdon: Routledge.
National Equality Panel. (2010). An anatomy of economic inequality in the
UK. London: LSE. Retrieved from https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28344/1/
CASEreport60.pdf.
Riddell, S., Adler, M., Farmakopoulou, N., & Mordaunt, E. (2000). Special
educational needs and competing policy frameworks in England and
Scotland. Journal of Education Policy, 15(6), 621–635.
Riddell, S., Gillooly, A., Harris, N., & Davidge, G. (2019). The rights of children
with special and additional support needs in England and Scotland. Edinburgh:
Centre for Research in Education, Inclusion and Diversity (CREID),
University of Edinburgh.
Ritchie, J., & Ormston, R. (2014). The applications of qualitative methods to
social research. In J. Ritchie, J. Ormston, C. McNaughton Nicholls, &
R. Ormston (Eds.), Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science stu-
dents and researchers (pp. 27–46). London: Sage.
Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2006). Childcare, choice and class practices: Middle-­
class parents and their children. London: Routledge.
Vincent, C., Rollock, N., Ball, S., & Gillborn, D. (2013). Raising middle class
black children: Parenting priorities, actions and strategies. Sociology,
47(3), 427–442.
Wyness, G. (2013). Educational attainment and inequality in Scotland: How does
Scotland compare to the rest of the UK? Edinburgh: Centre for Research in
Education, Inclusion and Diversity (CREID), University of Edinburgh.
Retrieved from http://www.docs.hss.ed.ac.uk/education/creid/Projects/34ivf_
ESRCF_Seminar_PPT_Wyness.pdf.
3
Special and Additional Support Needs
Policy and the Rights of Children
and Young People

Introduction
In this chapter, recent policy developments on children’s rights in the
field of special and additional support needs are placed within a wider
historical context. I begin by providing an overview of the discourses
informing the development of UK special education policy and practice,
initially focusing on early developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, when medical and education officers decided which children
should be separated from the rest of the population for special educa-
tional treatment. Subsequently, I provide an overview of the complex
forms of administrative justice emerging in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, as the traditional frameworks of professionalisa-
tion and bureaucracy were joined by legality, managerialism, consumer-
ism and marketisation. Finally, the impact of recent international human
rights treaties on administrative justice in SEN/ASN, and the implica-
tions for the rights of children, young people and their families, are
discussed.

© The Author(s) 2020 31


S. Riddell, Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Educational Needs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55825-3_3
32 S. Riddell

 rovision for Children with Special Educational


P
Needs: Early Developments
Educational provision for disabled children in the UK emerged in the
eighteenth-century, often funded by wealthy philanthropists. Early pro-
vision focused on children with sensory impairments. For example, in
1791, the Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind was founded, followed
in 1793 by the Asylum for the Industrious Blind in Edinburgh. These
schools aimed to provide vocational training for future employment and
relied upon profits from workshops to cover running costs. Mr
Braidwood’s Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in Edinburgh, established
in 1760, was the first school for the deaf in Great Britain, catering for a
small number of fee-paying pupils and pioneering the use of British Sign
Language. In 1792, the first English school for the deaf opened in London
and other Braidwood schools subsequently opened in major cities.
Education for children with learning difficulties was slower to emerge,
and the terminology of the time focuses on individual deficit and devi-
ance. A school for the education of ‘imbeciles’ was established in Dundee
in 1852, followed shortly afterwards by the foundation of an institution
for ‘defectives’ in Edinburgh. In the mid-nineteenth century, legislation
was passed recognising the educational needs of the ‘mentally handi-
capped’. Charitable institutions were granted licenses to provide care and
training of ‘imbecile’ children. The 1886 Idiots Act made provision for
the education of ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’.
Early provision was justified in terms of protecting the state from the
burden of supporting disabled people, rather than a concern for the edu-
cational rights of disabled children. In 1886, the Royal Commission on
the Blind and Deaf was set up, chaired by Lord Egerton, an aristocrat
with interests in the West Indian sugar business. The Commission report
of 1889 argued that:

The blind, deaf, dumb and the educable class of imbecile … if left unedu-
cated, become not only a burden to themselves but a weighty burden on
the state. It is in the interests of the state to educate them, so as to dry up,
as far as possible, the minor streams which must ultimately swell to a great
torrent of pauperism. (Egerton Commission 1889, para. 7, p. xii)
3 Special and Additional Support Needs Policy and the Rights… 33

Mental deficiency legislation passed in England and Scotland in 1913


required school boards to identify ‘defective’ children in their area who
were classified as idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons or moral imbe-
ciles. Those who were considered capable of benefiting from education
were placed in special schools, while the incapable received minimal
vocational training often in residential institutions. For example, in the
north of England, the Starnthwaite Colony and Epileptic Boys’ Home
was established in 1906 at a bobbin mill in order to ‘save youths and men
from the listless apathy of workhouse life’.
Following the passage of legislation in 1918, which made basic educa-
tion compulsory for all children, parents were often coerced into submit-
ting their children for disability assessments, and a cadre of professionals
and officials began to emerge in order to facilitate categorisation and seg-
regation of disabled children. Unsurprisingly, a growing number of par-
ents refused to present their children for assessment, fearing that they
would be removed from the family home and incarcerated. The rights of
children to have some involvement in educational decision-making was
not on the agenda at this point in time.

Developments Between 1945 and 1978


During the post-war period, educational decision-making continued to
be rooted in the assumptions of bureaucracy and professionalisation,
with little focus on legality and rights (Riddell et al. 2000). Legislation in
the early years of the welfare state placed a general duty on local authori-
ties to provide education for children in accordance with their age, apti-
tude and ability. Local authorities were placed under a specific duty to
establish which children, as a result of disability of mind or body, might
require special educational treatment at school, and which children were
too handicapped to benefit from any form of education or training.
Parents of disabled children were required to submit their children for a
medical examination, and from 1969, a psychological assessment, but
they had little input into the process. In theory, they could appeal to the
sheriff court against the imposition of a medical certificate stating the
34 S. Riddell

need for a special school placement, but in practice very few parents were
able to do this.
Alongside these developments, the bureaucratic processes of assess-
ment, categorisation and segregation continued. For example, Scottish
regulations issued in 1954 defined the following nine legal categories of
handicap for which special educational provision should be made: deaf-
ness, partial deafness, blindness, partial sightedness, mental handicap,
epilepsy, speech defects, maladjustment and physical handicap. The cat-
egories did not include children with milder learning difficulties, nor
those whose difficulties stemmed from such factors as absenteeism or fre-
quent change of school. There continued to be uncertainty about how
best to educate children regarded as disruptive and challenging. From the
1930s onwards, approved schools, providing basic education and train-
ing, were established catering for children and young people with a court
order. These were in effect a type of junior prison. Children with pro-
found and complex learning difficulties were also segregated from their
peers. From 1947, children described as uneducable but trainable were
placed in junior occupational centres, whereas those deemed untrainable
were consigned to long stay hospitals. It was not until the late 1970s that
all children were recognised as capable of benefiting from education, irre-
spective of their degree of disability.
Overall, during the post-war period, the lives of disabled children were
increasingly subject to state regulation. Local authorities were expected to
provide some sort of educational provision for all children, but parents
and children had little involvement in decision-making. The overall
objective was to produce ‘docile bodies and minds’ (Foucault 1991), with
little focus on rights.

The Warnock Watershed


The Warnock report (Department of Education & Science 1978) was
seen as a watershed in thinking about provision for children with learning
difficulties. As described above, before 1978, children were ascertained by
medical officers as in need of special educational treatment and were allo-
cated to one of the legal categories of handicap. There was growing
3 Special and Additional Support Needs Policy and the Rights… 35

dissatisfaction with the medical view of a fixed disability of mind and


body and the Warnock report argued that an all-embracing category of
special educational needs should replace the former statutory categories.
Warnock suggested that about 20% of children were likely to experience
learning difficulties at some time during their education, and for about
2% of children these difficulties would be significant and enduring. For
children in the latter group, the local authority should arrange a multi-­
disciplinary assessment and a legally binding statement should indicate
how the authority intended to address these needs. The main recommen-
dations of the Warnock report were enacted in England and Scotland in
the early 1980s.
A key theme of the Warnock Report was the need for greater partner-
ship with parents, and both policy and legislation were infused with a
discourse of needs rather than rights (Tisdall and Riddell 2006). However,
major criticisms of the Warnock report and the post-Warnock legislation
centred on the vagueness of the idea of partnership, and the absence of a
rights perspective. Professional and bureaucratic power continued to
expand, while parents and children were afforded few opportunities for
equal participation in decision-making and legal redress in the case of
disagreements. Kirp, for example, noted that members of the Warnock
committee were highly critical of the US system, particularly its perceived
over-reliance on administrative hearings and litigation. According to
Kirp, the committee felt that legal processes would:

… breed controversy when consensus was the objective. In the framework


of the Warnock report, the idea of rights would war with the idea of effi-
cient service provided by professionals acting to the best of their abilities;
hence it was pernicious. As committee chairwoman Mary Warnock
declared: ‘There is something deeply unattractive about the spectacle of
someone demanding their rights’. (Kirp 1982, p. 160)

Despite its focus on children’s needs rather than deficits, the Warnock
report reflected many of the traditional values of the post-war welfare
state, with the emphasis on local authorities making key decisions on
resource allocation, with little regard for the rights of children, young
people and their families.
36 S. Riddell

 ducational Reforms and the Emergence


E
of the Citizen-Consumer
The election of a Conservative government in 1979 led to a gradual ero-
sion of local authority power, with a growing tendency to see parents as
consumers of educational services whose choices could be harnessed to
drive the education market. The publication of performance information
was seen as an essential component in the creation of the ‘citizen-­
consumer’ (Clarke et al. 2007) and local authorities were obliged to pro-
vide information on school and individual pupil performance. Although
there were broad commonalities in education policy north and south of
the Border, marketisation was pursued more enthusiastically in England
than Scotland. The Education Act 1993 enhanced the rights of parents of
children with SEN and disabilities, instituting a Code of Practice on
SEN, extending school choice to the independent school sector and
introducing a new dispute resolution mechanism in the form of the
Special Educational Needs Tribunal. Subsequently, under the Special
Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, local authorities were obliged
to arrange and fund independent mediation and the tribunal’s jurisdic-
tion was extended to include disability discrimination claims.
In Scotland, reforms strengthening parental rights were instituted a
decade later by the Education (Additional Support for Learning)
(Scotland) Act 2004. This wide-ranging legislation replaced the category
of special educational needs with the much wider concept of additional
support needs, replaced Records of Need with Coordinated Support
Plans (CSPs) and instituted independent mediation, adjudication and a
tribunal as additional forms of dispute resolution. However, Scottish
local authorities were resistant to the growth in parental rights, respond-
ing to consultations on the 2004 legislation by lobbying for the removal
of statutory support plans and opposing the establishment of the ASN
tribunal (Riddell and Weedon 2010). Earlier work on dispute resolution
in England and Scotland showed that the growing emphasis on parents’
rights was not extended to a discussion of the rights of children (Riddell
et al. 2010; Harris and Riddell 2011), although the English and Scottish
Codes of Practice referred to the need for pupil participation in
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
BIG BEAUTY
By W. J. Bowman

This giant may puzzle you in several ways. At the first


glance it looks as much like a maze as a cross word
puzzle. You’ll find it a cross word puzzle all right.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43
44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
73 74 75 76 77 78 79
80 81 82 83 84 85
86 87 88 89
90 91 92 93 94 95 96
97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105
106 107 108 109 110 111 112
113 114 115 116 117 118 119
120 121 122 123 124 125 126
127 128 129 130 131 132
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141
142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149
150 151 152 153 154 155 156
157 158 159 160 161 162
163 164 165
[64]

HORIZONTAL

Others 1 Edible
88 bivalve mollusk
Device 5 to carry a gun Nothing
89
Call 10
loudly Bend90
Bends14 Cad 92
Possessive
16 pronoun Sketched
94
Press17for payment Past96
Box 19 Negative
97
Abraham’s
20 birthplace Recesses
99 in walls
Small22davenport By 101
Sing24in a low undertone Inherent
103 power
Average
26 Mixed
105type
Sun 28
god Arid106
Female
29 rabbit Jogging
108 pace
Close31 Tramp
109
Shrub32 Genuine,
111 loyal
Change
34 direction Obtain
112
Automobile
35 Beseech
113
Deliver
36 By 115
Geometric
38 ratio Set116
free
Consumed
39 Unit118
of type
Touch40gently Stout
119
Pronoun
42 Native
120 of Arabia
Paper43containers Head122
Cut feloniously
44 Black
123
Den 46 Wharf
125
Spank48 Child
127
Finished
50 Vehicle
128
Curves
51 Help129
Affectedly
53 precise Catholic
131 sisters
Render
55 senseless Sinless
133
Note134of scale
Something
56 granted for Snake-like
135 fish
temporary use Before
137
Evil 57 Part138
of verb “to be”
Neuter
58 pronoun Small
140secluded valley
Barren
60 One,142 indef.
Mother
62 Earth
143
Small63child Those
145 who color cloth
Comrade
65 Small
147nail
Slipped
66 River
149(Spanish)
Rock68 Thing
150
Printed
69 piece of paste- City151
in Mass.
board Part153
of head
Catch71(colloq.) A boisterous
154 preacher
For example
73 Preposition
156
Changes
74 Mold157
Prosecute
76 at law Plaything
158
Mean,77 vile Female
160 chicken
Exist79 Frozen
161 particles of
Distorted
80 vapor
Falling
81 water Marks
163
Units83of electrical Provoked
164
resistance Is full
165
Egg 84
of insect
Pastries
86
Ardor87

VERTICAL

Thumps
1 Portion
77
Upon 2 Dirty78
Wireless
3 signal for help Net 80
Paradise
4 The 82
head (slang)
To hasten
5 Aged83
Bone 6 Also85
Low district
7 Humor 91
Edition
8 (abbr.) Bullet92
Intoxicating
9 liquor Half 93
(prefix)
Whirled
10 rapidly Part 95
of “to be”
Cured11pork Time96
Else12 Eye 98
Lachrymose
13 Crustacean
100
exudations A long
101 staff
Small15distance To 102
rage
Fem.16pronoun Buttocks
104
Snare18 Fondle
105
Father
19 Annually
107
Egg 21
masses Snared
109
Appendage
23 Prevents
110
Color24tint Gather
112
Crazy25 A color
114
Unload
27 by tilting Attempt
116
Uncontrolled
28 anger Loose
117outer garment
Necessitate
30 A private
119 quarrel
Walks32with affected By 121
dignity Father
122
Fortress
33 Point
124of compass
Implement
35 of war Within
126
To mend
37 Skeletal
127 piece
Desires
39 To 128
incline
A color
41 Marsh
130
Water43conveyance Narrow
132 opening
Before
45 Christ Rodents
133
Like 47 Ultimate
134
Indef.
49article Caustic
136
Perform
50 Sin137
Alluvial
52 detritus Interweaves
139
Obtains
54 Aspects
141
Without
55 Diminution
143
Grease
56 for frying Small
144mark
Bend57 Not146
west
Row59 Prohibit
147
Uproar
61 Depression
148
Spoils
62 To 151
obstruct
Tag 64 Negative
152 prefix
Binder
65 stones Color
154
Artfully
66 cunning Fish
155
eggs
Term67 used when Note
157of scale
hunting a criminal Pronoun
159
Criticism
69 Pronoun
160
Noise70 Us 162
Be of72service to
Malicious
74 firing of a
building
Places
75 to store grain

[67]
[Contents]
Puzzle No. 77
TRY THEM OVER IN YOUR DAILY
CHAT
By Irvan Neckerman

There are several dozen words in this puzzle that


you can use and your best girl won’t know what you
are talking about. This is not misogyny. It merely
supposes that she does not follow cross word
puzzling. Or maybe that is misogyny.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15
16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29
30 31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39 40 41
42 43 44 45
46 47 48 49
50 51 52
53 54 55 56
57 58 59 60 61
62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70
71 72 73
[66]

HORIZONTAL

Discover
1 Observes
42
Ordinary
4 language Slacken
44
Story 9 Eighth
45 of a fathom
Knot13 Dressed
46 with
The 14
nobility, ornaments
collectively Heed48
Young15 fish Peruse
50 again
Character
16 in musical With52
less delay
notation Rested
53
Imbecile
18 Squalid
54 place
Agitation
19 Make56turbid
Exclamation
20 Sets58
back
Figurative
21 Adapts
62
Preposition
24 Elevate
64
Vending
25 Equable
65
Gain27superiority Beverage
68
Throw28 with violence Reduce
69
Piece31of ground Cool70
Small33aperture Merriment
71
Serpent
35 Milestone
72
Robbers
37 Boundary
73
Anger40

VERTICAL

Engrave
1 Guard
34
Pits for
2 storing fodder Dry 36
Bill of3an anchor Color38
Loud 4sound Viscous
39 fluid
Make5over Stock41
Pristine
6 Weapons
43
Apartment
7 Married
45 person
Scene8 of Head 47
Wallenstein’s Any 49
assassination, 1634 Refresh
51
Repeated
10 Earthenware
54
Estuary
11 Pert.55
to one’s birth
Novice12 Brook57
Drop17 Dregs59
Recite19 metrically Head 60(Fr.)
Move 22swiftly School
61
Certain
23 days of Tire 62
months Elevation
63
Seems 26 Contend
66
Compensation
29 Born67
Article
30 of food
Jaded 32
Irritates
33

[69]

[Contents]
Puzzle No. 78
POLYANGULAR AND POLYSYLLABIC
By Harold E. Vreeland

This constructor managed to fit together a well-joined


construction, central vertebrae and a neat outer shell.
Decorative and full of nice words.
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12
13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25
26 27 28
29
30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37
38 39 40 41
42 43
44
45 46
47

[68]

HORIZONTAL
Pale 1 Performing
29 a service
Insignificant
5 part An alloy
30
A circle
7 Wine32
Brag10 Places
34 of confinement
A river
13 in Italy Conjunction
35
Absconders
14 South
37American
A musical
15 note ruminant
A size
17of type A shield
38
To slip
19 Princes
39
Furnished
20 with a To goad
41
guard Seed42of North
Not the
22 same American plant
Refusal
24 Expressing
44 surprise
Do not
25 (Scotch) Brown
45
Divided
26 Decay
46
A richly
28 laden ship A president
47 of Orange
Free State

VERTICAL

A coral1 island Beckonings


20
A native
2 of Pacific The 21
star of dawn
islands Tears
23
A common
3 given Bore25
name (Prefix)
27 through
Saltpeter
4 A bow
28
A maiden
5 loved by Loiter
31
Jupiter Large
33birds
Poem6 A fabric
35 of asbestos
To talk8 nonsense Sad 36
A hypothetical
9 force A short
39 sword
American
10 explosive A counter-irritant
40
for shells Perform
42
Sacrifice of principle to Spot43
11circumstances
Scientific
12 description
of races
Marrow
13
Compounds
16 of atoms
A Government
17
revenue
Collecting
18 wives

[71]

[Contents]
Puzzle No. 79
WEDDING RING
By Mil-Wal

The contributors of this construction are husband and


wife. This fact is symbolized by the wedding ring you
see in the middle of the form. Cross-grained cross
worders may complain that the ring is not a solid
mass of words. Well, is a ring ever a solid mass?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12
13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36
37 38
39 40 41 42 43
44 45 46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53 54
55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64
65 66
67 68

[70]
HORIZONTAL

Slender
1 Indicate
38
Time 5 Heavenly
39 body
Small10boat Female
40 deer
Invades
11 Born42
Healing
13 medicine Consumed
44
Quicken
15 Exclamation
45 of pain
Termination
16 Exist47
Wrap17 Deer48
Beast18of burden Negative
50
To soak
19 in water One51 who dislikes
Preposition
21 Note54of scale
Taut22 Weight
55
Ourselves
24 To gain
57 success
Highest
25 point Tank58
Personal
27 pronoun Distant
60
Therefore
28 White,
61 translucent
Employ
30 Riddle
63
Garment
31 Withers
65
Stir 33 Basket
66
Vessel
35 Depressions
67
Classified
37 Polish
68

VERTICAL

Fat 1 Cry of
32sheep
Tavern2 Calculate
33
Work 3 Open34
Tri-formed
4 Greek Single
36 unit
goddess Crouches
39
Blots 6out Cereal
41
Large7number Page43of a book
Hole 8 Insect
44
Poems 9 Conjunction
46
Religious
10 singer Part 47
Frozen
12 precipitates Rubbish
49
Anthropoid
14 Some 52
Possesses
15 Time53immediately
Consume
16 preceding
An equal
20 Require
56
Bow23 A small
57 bird
The 26
Ottoman court Periphery;
59 cover
Paris27subway Sign60
Believe
29 Part 62
of “to be”
Talk 30 A command
64 to draft
animals

[73]

[Contents]
Puzzle No. 80
NOT SO DIFFICULT
By Robert S. Holzman

The beginner should have a good time with this neat


construction. There are no lurking terrors in the wood
here for the adventurous explorer of cross word
puzzledom. Try this one against time.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39
40 41
42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53
54 55 56 57
58 59 60 61 62 63
64 65 66 67 68
69 70 71 72 73
74 75 76

[72]

HORIZONTAL

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