4) Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

Teachers failing to spot Special Educational Needs (SEN) among students, according to this expert http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/06/pupil-behaviour-school-discipline forgive me, but I see no such nuanced difficulty, the key to this ‘difficult problem’ is the percentage difference, noted in the article, between expected and actual statements of special educational needs in the student population. Every statement of SEN I ever saw, recommended greater expenditure on the assessed child’s education, usually in terms of allocating them teaching assistant time. As the recommendations of special needs assessments carry legal force, they have to be implemented by schools. So, in practice, schools and local authorities try desperately to avoid carrying out full assessments in order to avoid the inevitable extra cost that a statement will bring. Hence the enormous gap between the estimated level of SEN in the student population and the actual number of assessments being carried out. Mild autism being missed by teachers; baloney, this is the self justifying guff of a guilty liberal conscience; this problem is not new and teachers are not missing it. It is the old problem of rationing. It’s about keeping the costs of special needs within existing education budgets, which is achieved by ignoring the bulk of special needs among the student population. Who runs this process - Headteachers.