Listening skills are mostly undeveloped and the ability to concentrate is very limited. A pupil may be able to tell the time, but might not be able to recognise conceptually the difference between five minutes and five hours. Notions such as behindin front, underover, thennow are simply not grasped, and even if they are, the child will have difficulty operating the concept practically. If you were to show the average 13-year-old a picture of Roman Britain with a big red London Transport bus trundling through it they would spot the incongruity. This is not the case with many mixed learning needs (MLN) pupils, and teachers new to special education can be taken aback by the level of cognitive and language deficiency. Pupils often do not comprehend even the simplest instruction. They may appear to have understood but it later becomes apparent that they were merely responding to the teacher’s expectation or facial expression.

As financial constraints and special schools re-organisation begin to bite, class sizes have grown. Many local education authorities have cut down the number of special schools some so drastically that they now send their special needs pupils to schools outside their local authority area. Class sizes might vary from ten to 16 and consequently teacher-pupil relationships tend to be more intense. Students have specialist subjects and subject teachers but their class teacher is usually responsible for teaching three or four curriculum subjects.

The whole basis of special education is the same as in mainstream, but the timescale is considerably longer. MLN secondary schools can also offer their pupils a security which could not possibly be vouchsafed in their larger mainstream counterparts. The classroom is primarily a place to learn and to develop social skills. A lot of time can be spent responding to a child’s emotional needs but it should not be at the expense of the rest of the class.

Special education can sometimes seem to be a world turned upside down. In the language of assertion, there is a need for negative attention. A child who feels neglected at home or in school will do anything to get the teacher’s attention. A telling-off is, after all, some recognition of that child’s existence. For the teacher entering special education one of the hardest things is to recognise and find the correct response to that need.

At the same time it is important to remember that children do not leave their problems at the classroom door and pick them up when it is time to go home. The most successful teaching techniques are based on negotiation and avoidance of confrontation. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The secret of education is respecting the pupil.”

When the need for disciplinary sanctions does arise, a graduated response, tailored to the individual child, works best. To threaten with exclusion a pupil who has difficulty in establishing relationships with his or her peer group is counter-productive.

Somewhere between the hopelessly high expectations of the national curriculum and the chronic undervaluing of children by some teachers is a mean which is right for each child; it has to be the aim of each special needs teacher to find that balance, one that neither leaves the child feeling undervalued nor sets impossible goals. Attaining that mark is a fine mix of human and material resources.

The national curriculum and the legal requirement for secondary MLN pupils to follow that curriculum, albeit in a modified form, have increased the pressure on teachers to adapt and produce materials on what are, for special needs children, quite complex topics. The lack of suitable, age-appropriate resources is a constant problem. Teenagers with reading difficulties, for example, are not well catered for. The sort of books available are the standard early learning material more suited to young first time readers. They are the sort of primers these pupils have already struggled with unsuccessfully in their own primary education, thus compounding their sense of failure.

The same problem exists in information technology. There is not much incentive for software houses to produce material tailored for such a small market, and as many educational packages originate in the United States they often lack a particular, local interest. Computer hardware tends to have a shorter life than in mainstream schools. Children with special needs often have difficulty with handeye co-ordination and are, in a word, clumsier than their mainstream counterparts. Pupils working with computers need to be closely supervised, although this in itself can be a strain on the teacher because each student requires constant guidance.

Special education teachers are expected to keep detailed records on academic progress and social development and also on concerns and worries about individuals. This data is invaluable when the teacher attends case conferences and reviews. The consequences of not keeping a record, or having a witness to some behaviour, can be much more damaging when working with small groups of adolescents. Teachers soon learn not to put themselves in a compromising position in the classroom.

Writing and attending annual reviews and the teacher’s contribution to FA2s, the legal statements of a pupil’s special educational needs, can be onerous. You may be required to produce a detailed report on a new pupil’s academic and social development at very short notice. What is for most mainstream teachers, a rarity becomes quite common for teachers in special education contact with a whole support structure of social workers, police and doctors, each with different priorities and perspectives. This area has been recognised as one needing a multi-disciplinary approach and some local authorities now offer courses to develop cohesive working practices in this field.

Smaller staff groups mean special needs teachers may find themselves working with colleagues with whom they have little in common. This can mean a lack of communication. The necessity to co-operate with all staff members is far greater than in mainstream where, with large staffrooms, most teachers can find their niche. On the positive side, it is rumoured there are those in special education who not only know what their headteacher looks like but who have actually conversed with them!

In all likelihood, at the end of their first term, the teacher new to special education won’t feel anything other than that dull fatigue endemic to the rest of the profession. There are teachers who insist that their first 12 months in special needs was as tiring as their probationary year.

The new teacher may miss the satisfaction of working with more academically capable students but this is compensated for by the development of an all-round teaching technique. Education is, after all, as B F Skinner famously said, “what survives when what has been taught has been forgotten”.

Kate Angel teaches in special education (secondary mixed learning needs) in London.