Special needs: objective reality or personal construction? Judging reading difficulty after the Code of Practice

The Code of Practice shifts judgement about reading difficulty towards individual teachers, who are now using a range of measures, including personal judgement based on within-school comparisons, to define 'difficulty'. To discover how far these judgements are consistent across schools, a national sample of special needs coordinators was asked to say how many children with reading difficulties existed in their schools. Responses from schools where mean levels of reading were high were compared with those where mean levels were lower. Analysis indicates that perception of reading difficulty tends to vary with the level of reading in the school: in schools where mean levels are higher, a child is more likely to be considered to have a reading difficulty than an equivalent child in a school where mean levels are lower. It is concluded that increasing use of within-school assessment raises the danger of resources being diverted away from those most in need.