Professor Sue Buckley:

This is an answer to the Deputy's question about what models work. A child can only have difficulty across a range of developmental areas: autistic child, social impairment - other children can have social or emotional difficulties - physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, speech and language. These all can happen to a child with a high IQ. Of course, the other big piece of this is properly training teachers so they know what to do quickly about a child who has got a dyslexic profile, has additional behavioural issues in the classroom or whatever. There are two sides to it. It is recognising the right model works for everybody, particularly that group with whom are not doing very well, once one has that inclusive view.

In my experience, it is about attitude change. For our group of children, we found very early that I needed to go and change people's attitudes and we would do a bit of training before the child hit the system. One needs the school to believe this is the best place for the child to be and to want the child to be there.

There are issues associated with specific disabilities, but if we got this right and if we spent our resources properly, one would have flexible staff teams in schools so that one can do the individual small-group work quickly when it is needed. If one could afford for all those staff to be fully qualified teachers, that would be wonderful. However, most staff are not. The teaching assistants are predominantly women who want to come in and work with children, and they are often brilliant. In the case of many of our children who have gone right through the system and done so well, it has been because of the support assistant teams, as well as good teachers. Does that make sense?