IntroductionThe revised Code of Practice (DfEE, 2001), like its predecessor (DfEE, 1994), is based on a clear, sensible strategy to support pupils with special educational needs. Examining a child's individual learning needs in detail; consulting staff and outside specialists; and involving parents in an individual education planning process that consists of setting specific targets, reviewing progress and updating the plan are all highly desirable and worthwhile. The aim of the Code is to make the child's individual needs a priority and ensure that an effective strategy is implemented.

Tony Lingard has developed an approach he calls Literacy Acceleration. Here he gives the rationale underpinning the strategy and details of its component parts. Lingard admits there is nothing particulary new in this but claims that the consistency and intensity of its application has yielded some significant results. This echoes the experience of others who feel that standards of literacy have slipped and this relates directly to the amount of time teachers are able to give to addressing learning difficulties.

Tony Lingard, Head of Learning Support, Camborne School and Community College, Cornwall, questions whether the National Literacy Strategy is raising the achievement of lower attainers and suggests adaptations, based on his own Literacy Acceleration programme, which he argues could make the Strategy far more effective.

Although it is generally believed that secondary students with special needs should be given full access to the secondary curriculum, most literacy specialists claim that regular, specific help is essential for young people with reading and writing difficulties. In a research project undertaken by Tony Lingard, a principal teacher for learning support in a comprehensive school, the effectiveness of an experimental curriculum, which provided such students with daily, individual help in small groups, was compared with alternative postWarnock approaches. IntroductionDespite the obvious merits of rejecting the unnecessary segregation of students with special educational needs, it is perplexing that so many secondary schools have greatly reduced, or even completely abandoned, small group teaching for low attainers in literacy. The literature highlights an apparently irreconcilable anomaly. Many writers have argued that segregation is highly damaging to students' self-esteem (eg, Simmons 1986) and suggested that the needs of secondary age students are best met by giving them as full as possible access to the normal secondary curriculum (DES,

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