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,