Record One in Five Pupils Has Special Educational Needs

A record one in five children is classified as having special educational needs at school, official figures revealed yesterday.

The numbers have nearly doubled over the past 20 years to 1.65million as pupils are increasingly labelled as having behavioural or speech difficulties.

The trend has triggered warnings that a growing culture of entertaining children with TVs and computer games and a lack of boundaries at home or family troubles are increasingly manifesting themselves in class as disruptive behaviour.

However, sceptics said the increase was fuelled by a growing tendency to label anti-social traits as medical conditions to excuse poor behaviour or academic underachievement.

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