I had a phone call the other day from one of the editors of TES. He was worried about some words in a blog post - words that are typically used to insult and refer to people with learning disabilities. Because my son has the learning disability referred to (Down’s syndrome), he asked me whether the author’s reasoning - that the words were included in the article to highlight prejudice - justified their use.

I thought it did. It needs to be talked about, because this is the kind of prejudice people with learning disabilities come up against all the time. Words that refer to them are used every day to insult and put people down. Everyone does it: parents, children, popular comedians. Words like “retard”, “mong” and “moron” are depressingly familiar.

They can also be familiar in the classroom. Being an intervention teacher for the past four years has given me plenty of opportunity to challenge the language that children use. Working in small groups lends itself to guards being dropped, defences being lowered and a lessening of the formality of the whole class.

So how do you challenge the use of words that are used to disparage those with SEND?

Check your own vocabulary

First of all, check your own attitudes. It might be that you have never considered why certain words might be deemed offensive by others. If you don’t see anything wrong, it is unlikely that you will challenge offensive language in your lessons because you are not offended yourself. Review your language use and run it by colleagues.

Monitor language

It’s easy to block out the hum of low-level chatter in your classroom, but you have to tune in. Be aware of how language is used.

Challenge it when it happens

When you spot it, act immediately. Take the opportunity to remind everyone of the standards you will (or won’t) accept. Use the opportunity to explore why some words are less acceptable than others. The pastoral and philosophical side of teaching is possibly easier for primary teachers to organise, being as we have the children all day, every day, and we teach them all of the subjects. A sit down and a chat together at the end of the day is not a difficult thing to fit in, not really, and if done straight away, saves hours and hours later in the year.

Escalate the issue

Discuss language use with your colleagues and raise it with the senior leadership team. If it’s happening in your classroom, you can pretty much guarantee that it’s happening across the school. Spend a moment outside in the playground and you’ll probably hear it out there, too. If it’s going to be changed, it needs to be a whole-school policy, and there needs to be an understanding of what acceptable language is and isn’t.

Know why it is important

It might seem like political correctness gone mad, or feel a bit like removing people’s right to free speech - but on the other hand, there is the right of vulnerable people in minority groups to live without hate-speech directed towards them and about them. Their daily lives should not be made more difficult than they need to be.

Nancy Gedge is a consultant teacher for the Driver Youth Trust, which works with schools and teachers on SEND. She is the TES SEND specialist, and author of Inclusion for Primary School Teachers. She tweets @nancygedge