Paul Hamill, of Strathclyde University, told more than 200 senior managers in North Ayrshire last week that mainstreaming and inclusion are not the same thing.

The drive to raise attainment had led schools to introduce setting and many pupils ended up in “colonies”, which were effectively special needs units or remedial classes.

Mr Hamill cautioned that streaming had to be thought through. “It can result in children with learning difficulties and special needs, perhaps 5-10 per cent, being in the same sections for all subjects, and some teachers may not come across them.” In striving for inclusion, of which he said he was a passionate advocate, there was a danger of building on “shifting sands”, including labelling and categorising children, which “permeates the whole system and is totally incompatible with inclusion”.

Differentiation was also crucial to the concept of inclusion and meeting the challenge of those with special needs, and had got to come back “with a vengeance,” Mr Hamill said. The most effective teachers did not treat children the same, they treat them differently.

He suggested that secondaries faced particular problems and may not be as inclusive in their approaches as primaries. “We must be careful what we are doing,” he said. “We do not yet have a definition of inclusion.”

The conference marked the launch of North Ayrshire’s individualised educational programmes (IEP) support pack, which has attracted interest from independent providers such as the Royal Blind School, Capability Scotland, the Church of Scotland and Quarriers.

Margaret Cooper, the council’s adviser in special educational needs and learning support, said that 450 children in the authority had a record of needs. But they were excluded from the target-setting and monitoring approaches that were applied to everyone else.

This position had been “completely transformed” by the introduction of a standard, council-wide IEP format.