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European Journal of Special NeedsEducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rejs20

The Dutch policy of integrationput to the test: differencesin academic and psychosocialdevelopment of pupils in specialand mainstream educationSjoerd Karsten , Thea Peetsma , Jaap Roeleveld &Margaretha VergeerPublished online: 15 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: Sjoerd Karsten , Thea Peetsma , Jaap Roeleveld & Margaretha Vergeer(2001) The Dutch policy of integration put to the test: differences in academic andpsychosocial development of pupils in special and mainstream education, European Journalof Special Needs Education, 16:3, 193-205, DOI: 10.1080/08856250110074364

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The Dutch policy of integration put to thetest: differences in academic and psychosocial

development of pupils in special and mainstream education

SJOERD KARSTEN, THEA PEETSMA, JAAP ROELEVELD AND MARGARETHA VERGEER

Division for Fundamental Research, SCO-Kohnstamm Institute, University of Amsterdam,Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Address for correspondence:Dr Sjoerd Karsten, Wibautstraat 4,

1091 GM Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 20-5251232 (work); + 31 20-6380863 (private);

Fax: +31 20-5251500; E-mail: Sjoerd@educ.uva.nl

ABSTRACT

After several failed attempts to rein in the growth of special education, the Dutchgovernment made a start in 1991 with a policy to accommodate pupils with problemsin regular education and to put a stop to the growth of special education. This paperexamines a large-scale study conducted by our research group at the University ofAmsterdam which attempted to answer the question whether pupils with problems arebetter off in special education where there are more resources and they can get moreattention than in mainstream schools. It was expected that the pupils in specialeducation would do better due to the specialist care and individual attention. However,with a few exceptions, few differences were found when comparable at-risk pupils inregular schools were compared with their counterparts in both types of special schools.There was a conspicuously large measure of variability in both regular and specialeducation. All school types had both at-risk pupils who were doing well from anacademic and/or psychosocial perspective and pupils whose progress left much to bedesired. There is little evidence to support the idea that at-risk pupils make lessprogress, in either their academic or psychosocial development, in regular schoolscompared with pupils in special schools. The general assumption that at-risk pupilswill do better in special education does not seem to account for its attractiveness.Contrary to the policy theory, the dual system, as it exists in The Netherlands, doesnot appear to be an obstacle to the provision of adequate care for pupils with specialeducational needs. However, the policy to equip regular schools to accommodate thiscategory of pupils appears not to be realized as simply as that. It has not proved

Eur. J. of Special Needs Education, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2001), pp. 193–205

European Journal of Special Needs EducationISSN 0885-6257 print/ISSN 1469-591X online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/08856250110074364

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possible to demonstrate the effects of the varying levels of specialist help provided byregular schools on the development of at-risk pupils.

KEYWORDS

Policy of integration, special education, pupils at risk, academic development,psychosocial development, study of matched pairs

INTRODUCTION

One of the most important issues that governments and educational experts have beenwrestling with for a long time is the question of where pupils with special educationalneeds can best be educated. Do these pupils need a speci�c form of care in specialeducation or should they be accommodated in regular education as far as possibleand given extra help and attention?

Over the past few decades, there has been a worldwide trend towards greaterintegration of pupils with special educational needs into mainstream schools. The UKand the USA are international trend-setters in this �eld, but there has also been a lotof support for this policy in other Western countries in recent years (OECD, 1995).After several failed attempts to rein in the growth of special education, the Dutchgovernment made a start in 1991 with a policy that goes under the name ‘Weer SamenNaar School’ (which translates as ‘Back to school together again’). The aim of thispolicy is to accommodate pupils with problems in regular education and to put a stopto the growth of special education.1 As the government cannot control the primaryprocess directly, it has attempted to use administrative, organizational and �nancialmeasures to support the process of mainstreaming or integration.

The mainstreaming movement, as Madden and Slavin (1983) rightly observed, has its greatest impact in terms of numbers on the education of pupils with ‘mildacademic handicaps’ or ‘moderate special needs’. These pupils also make up the lion’sshare of pupils who traditionally have been taught in special classes or special schoolsand who are most eligible for mainstreaming. Other groups with more seriousproblems or handicaps generally involve much smaller numbers of children or thepolicy of mainstreaming is less suitable for them. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, thatthe Dutch government started this policy in schools for children with learning andbehavioural dif�culties and at schools for the mildly mentally retarded. These schoolsexperienced spectacular growth in The Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s, from1.48 per cent of all pupils in 1975 to about 2.84 per cent in 1995 (Pijl, 1997). It is partlydue to this growth that The Netherlands joined Germany and Switzerland as countrieswith the highest proportion of pupils outside regular education in Europe (OECD,1995).

Central to the theory behind the Dutch government’s ‘Back to school togetheragain’ (WSNS) policy, is the idea that regular primary education has not managed togive sufficient form and content to the desire to facilitate pupils’ continuousdevelopment (Meijer, Meijnen and Scheerens, 1993). The growing stream of pupilsout to the less specialized forms of special education would appear to indicate thatregular education has not been able to give pupils with problems adequate support andguidance. The main reason given for this has been the dual system as such, whichhinders effective care for at-risk pupils.

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Of course, this can also be argued the other way. Are pupils with problems betteroff in fact in special education where there are more resources and they can get moreattention? It would be reasonable to assume that if the balance comes out in favourof special education, there will be continued pressure to maintain the dual system andthe legitimacy of the most important principles of the policy will be undermined forgood.

This paper examines a large-scale study conducted by our research group at theUniversity of Amsterdam which attempted to answer this question (Peetsma andRoeleveld, 1998; Peetsma, Roeleveld and Vergeer, 2000). The aim of the study wasto obtain information about differences in the academic and psychosocial developmentof pupils in various forms of special schools and regular primary schools, as thecombination of problems with learning and psychosocial problems was the mainreason for referrals to special education. At the present time, as a result of the WSNSpolicy, pupils with learning and behavioural problems are not being referred to specialeducation as quickly. So, more of them are being accommodated in regular education.Consequently, the present situation can be described as a ‘quasi-experimental’situation, in which comparable (at-risk) pupils are found in different types of schools:(1) schools for children with learning and behavioural difficulties and schools formildly mentally retarded children (special education); and (2) regular primary schoolswhich use specialist care in the form of methods that effectively meet the educationalneeds of special needs students, and regular primary schools with fewer ‘adapted’provisions (regular education). This situation allows a variety of research methods tobe used to test a number of important basic assumptions behind the current policy.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we examine the underlying assumptionsand the design of the Dutch policy in comparison with other countries. Next we reportthe method and �ndings of our study. Finally, we discuss what those �ndings meanfor current policy and the general debate on mainstreaming and integration.

DUTCH POLICY AND PRACTICES IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

Policy-making is generally approached as a rational process, but it can also be seen as a process of making sense of things and of persuasion. The policy of integratingspecial education with regular education in The Netherlands and elsewhere has been vigorously pursued on the basis of normative arguments (Pijl, Meijer andHegarty, 1997). Often both approaches play a role at the same time. For that reason,the evaluation of legislation cannot be restricted to criteria on effectiveness in termsof visible real effects. It should probably also include (changes in) value patterns, and the like. Policy-making itself is based upon ideas that could be called a policytheory. By also subjecting the normative assumptions on which a policy is based toempirical tests, one is very likely to gain a better understanding of the correctness ofa policy.

First of all, one has to conclude that the WSNS policy, like most policies, has noclear starting-point and end-point. It is a developing, shifting policy programme witha long tradition. When the �rst outlines of the present WSNS policy were sketched inthe early 1990s, central government’s definition of the problem was endorsed byalmost all parties involved. The major villains were the divide in the system betweenspecial education and regular education, existing legislation (especially on funding) andthe divisions of responsibility. These were felt to hinder effective care for at-risk pupilsand were said to have already wrecked previous attempts at integration. At the sametime, a negative picture was being presented to politicians, schools and the public atlarge of the consequences of existing practice. For the pupils, it was said to interrupt

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their development, remove them from their friends, lead to a negative school experienceand increase the risk of underachievement and behavioural problems. For teachers inregular education, it was said to reduce the motivation to offer special care and, �nally,it was said to have negative consequences for the Treasury because the costs could notbe controlled.

The divide in the system is enormous in The Netherlands compared with othercountries. A recent study of trends in integration practice in 14 European countries(Meijer, 1998) showed that the percentage of pupils with special educational needwho are in separate facilities (special schools and special classes) varies considerablybetween countries in Europe. Some countries place less than 1 per cent of all pupils inschools and classes for special education, others more than 4 per cent. The countriesof north-western Europe, in particular, have more extensive systems for specialeducation than the countries of southern Europe and Scandinavia. The Europeanaverage for pupils taught in separate classes or schools is 2 per cent. The report alsoreveals that the laws governing education for pupils with problems have changed inalmost every European country during the past ten years. The most important changeshave been:

� the explicit de�nition of special education as support for regular education; � parental choice is increasingly regulated by law; � countries with separate laws governing special and regular education are increas-

ingly developing one statutory framework for both systems. This development isproceeding more rapidly in regular primary education than in secondary education,but initiatives are being developed for secondary education as well;

� in some countries the way special education is funded has been reformed.

The Dutch ‘Back to school together again’ (WSNS) policy that got off the groundformally in 1991 is characterized by its large number of goals and interim goals. Meijer,Meijnen and Scheerens (1993) distinguish social, educational and financial goals, as well as goals at pupil level. Combining the two education systems, regular andspecial schools, is no more than an interim goal in this process. The expectation is that pupils will eventually benefit from the policy both academically and from apsychosocial perspective, that pupils with problems will be able to make a morecontinuous progress in their development, their school careers will be more effectiveand the whole system will become more �nancially manageable. Two measures havebeen used to achieve these ends. First, an organizational measure affecting the wayschools are governed, namely the setting up of cooperative arrangements between oneor a few special schools and a number of primary schools. These groups of schoolshave to collaborate in developing plans and measures to accommodate children withlearning and behaviour dif�culties in the regular primary schools as far as possible.These groups of cooperating schools, in turn, are a condition for the second mainmeasure, namely a new funding system that supports integration. The most importantelement in the new funding system is that the resources that used to be destined forthe special care provided by the special schools is now transferred to the groups ofcollaborating schools.

Meijer’s report (1998) on the situation in Europe, referred to earlier, demon-strates that the integration policy is highly dependent on the organization of theexisting education system. Countries that only have a small number of special schoolshave naturally invested less energy in bringing special education closer to regulareducation. In countries with quite a large-scale special education system, cooperationbetween special and regular schools is an important element of the policy, as in The Netherlands. The problem here is that integration policy can be a threat to the

196 European Journal of Special Needs Education, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2001)

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continued existence of special schools and so can lead to job losses among specialeducation teachers. In addition, the way the schools are funded can be anothersigni�cant obstacle to integration. In some countries funding is not linked to pupils,but to the place where they receive their education. In practice, this means that areferral to a special school is rewarded. There is not suf�cient incentive to keep childrenwith special educational needs in regular education or to move them back from thespecial school to the regular school. This kind of funding system awards a bonus forsegregation, whereas integration is penalized �nancially.

Despite obstacles in the form of fears about job losses, negative images, fundingmethods and other potential obstacles, expectations about the integration process are high in many countries. Although there has not been much research into the successof the various policy programmes, there are studies which point to positive effects. Anexample of such a study is the meta-analysis by Baker, Wang and Walberg (1995),which reports that ‘special needs students educated in regular classes do betteracademically and socially than students in non-inclusive settings’. Lipsky and Gartner(1996) also report that evaluations of inclusive education programmes report positiveeffects on academic, behavioural and social outcomes for students with disabilities,while no negative consequences for the non-disabled students are reported; althoughthey also refer to other studies, which present a less positive picture. Several researchstudies have indicated the importance of implementing inclusive learning carefully(Baker et al., 1995; Scruggs and Mastropieri, 1996; Zigmond and Baker, 1996;Waldron and McLeskey, 1998).

The Dutch education system was originally probably one of the most clear-cut dualsystems, but the current integration policy �ts in with a general trend to work towardsgreater integration and more inclusive education. The fact that this aspiration, oftenbacked up by normative arguments, is not exclusive to The Netherlands, is evident,for instance, from The Salamanca Statement: Framework for Action for Special NeedsEducation (1994), adopted by representatives of 92 governments and 25 internationalorganizations. This Statement expresses, for example, that regular schools with aninclusive orientation ‘provide an effective education to the majority of children andimprove the ef�ciency and ultimately the cost-effectiveness of the entire educationalsystem’ (pp. viii–ix).

DESIGN OF THE STUDY

Propositions

The general proposition, that educational policy must create the conditions thatguarantee the continuous and optimal academic and psychosocial development of children with mild handicaps, is examined here using data on the PRIMA cohort(we will come back to this later) on pupils in mainstream and special education. First,we formulated some explorative questions:

� To what extent do pupils in special education (differentiated into two types) and inregular primary education differ in their academic performance and psychosocialfunctioning?

� To what extent are academic performance and psychosocial functioning relatedand are there differences in this respect between pupils in special education andregular education?

The next stage in our study was to investigate the academic performance and

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psychosocial functioning of comparable pupils in different settings. To do this wematched pupils from the PRIMA cohort database for risk factors, gender, ethnicbackground, educational standard and, as far as possible, age. This method producedover 400 matched pairs of at-risk pupils in special and regular education. We startedthe analyses with two hypotheses:

� that at-risk pupils in regular education would make less progress in their academicdevelopment and/or psychosocial development than comparable pupils in specialeducation;

� that pupils in regular schools which operate internal differentiation and have otherspecial provisions for at-risk pupils will make better progress in their academicdevelopment and/or psychosocial development than pupils who have notexperienced these ‘adaptations’.

Finally, we selected a group of 34 pupils with varying degrees of development to investigate the possible causes of clear developmental differences between pairs ofat-risk pupils who at �rst sight seem to be very similar (for further details see Peetsmaet al., 2001).

Data

The PRIMA cohort is a multipurpose database containing longitudinal data fromevery alternate year after 1994 on 40,000 pupils in Dutch (private and public) primaryschools: 5,000 pupils from special education and 35,000 from regular education. Thesample was nationally representative. The database contains information on pupils,teachers, school principals and parents.

Using the PRIMA cohort data has a number of advantages. First, the de�nitions are clear and commonly understood across settings. Secondly, large-scale andrepresentative analyses can be carried out. However, there is at least one disadvantage.Analyses must of necessity be con�ned to the instruments used in the cohort.

Instruments

The instruments used in our studies were:

— Tests on pupils’ academic functioning: language, arithmetic and non-verbalintelligence, the same tests being used in regular and special education.

— Questionnaires on pupils’ psychosocial functioning: academic self-concept, well-being in school, social behaviour, motivation, health, family culture regardingeducation, underachievement and need for individual treatment. For the youngerpupils we have only teachers’ assessments on these variables. For the older pupilsthe teachers’ assessments were supplemented with the pupils’ own assessments of well-being and academic self-concept. The psychometrical quality of theinstruments is satisfactory. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of thedifferent scales lay between 0.68 and 0.94. However, in special education we �nda limited internal consistency on the two assessment scales by the pupils themselves(0.56–0.58), compared to 0.62 and 0.73 in regular education (see also Jungbluthet al., 1996).

— Control variables: gender, age, ethnic background and SES.

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RESULTS

Explorative Phase

First, we investigated the extent to which pupils in different forms of special primaryeducation and regular primary education differ in their academic development. Pupilsin special education turn out, not surprisingly given the criteria for referring pupils tospecial schools and classes, to be behind pupils in regular classes in academic skills(language, mathematics and non-verbal intelligence). However, the pupils from schoolsfor mild mental retardation are much further behind pupils in regular education thanpupils from schools for learning and behavioural dif�culties. The lag is greatest in thescores for non-verbal intelligence. This �nding is consistent with the placement ofpupils in special education: pupils with learning dif�culties are referred to schools formild mental retardation if it is presumed that the main cause of their problems isinsuf�cient intellectual capacity. For all three aspects of academic performance in thisstudy (language, mathematics and non-verbal intelligence), the difference between the pupils in both types of special education and regular education increases as the pupils get older. We also found that the performance differences are greater in mathe-matics than in language skills. Mathematical skills seem, therefore, to be more closelyconnected to the difference between special and regular education than language skills.

Secondly, we investigated the extent to which pupils in special education and regulareducation differ from a psychosocial perspective. For the young children we used theteacher’s assessment only, and for the older children (from Years 6 and 8) we used theirself-assessments as well. Teachers in special education judged the children’s homebackgrounds, meaning the support they got at home for their schooling, less favourablythan teachers in regular education. This difference compared with regular educationis considerably greater for the schools for pupils with mild mental retardation thanfor schools for learning and behavioural dif�culties. It is conspicuous that the teachersreported far more ‘underachievers’ in schools for learning and behavioural dif�cultiesthan in both other types of school. This can be explained by the fact that when pupilsare referred to this type of special education, there is an assumption that their poorperformance results from factors other than their intellectual capacity. The aim withthese pupils is to offer them an adapted learning environment, so that they makeprogress and no longer need to be labelled as ‘underachievers’. We have not got thereyet, according to the teachers. Teachers in special education still judge their pupils asdoing less well in self-con�dence, social behaviour and attitude to work than pupilsin regular education. The teachers in special education also judge their pupils as beingless healthy than pupils in regular education. Finally, there is very little differencebetween special and regular education in either the teachers’ assessments of the pupils’well-being or the pupils’ self-assessments. This means that special education issucceeding in giving pupils a comparable experience at school to pupils in regulareducation, often following experiences in regular education prior to referral which didnot give them a sense of well-being. The adapted provision or special schools or classesseem to be ful�lling their purpose: pupils feel good (again) at school. The same can besaid of the pupils’ academic self-concept: there is not much difference between thetypes of education. Regarding self-concept, schools for the mildly mentally retardedseem to do exceptionally well in giving pupils a high estimation of their own abilitiesdespite their limited capacity to learn, compared with pupils from regular educationand schools for children with learning and behavioural dif�culties.

Thirdly, we investigated the connection between the pupils’ academic functioningand their psychosocial functioning. In regular education there is a positive connection:better academic performance goes hand in hand with a better assessment of

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psychosocial functioning by both teachers and the pupils themselves. This link, whereit exists at all, is much weaker in special education, being even weaker in schools forthe mildly retarded than in schools for learning and behavioural dif�culties. Furthertesting of the points of agreement in psychosocial and academic functioning showthat only in regular education is there a stable pattern that persists over the year groups.In special education the points of agreement between psychosocial and academicfunctioning are different from those in regular education, but there are also differencesbetween the two types of special education and between the (year) groups withinschools for special education. In short, there really is no pattern in the relationshipbetween the academic and psychosocial functioning of pupils in both types of specialeducation.

The Study of the Matched Pairs

After our explorative analyses of the differences in academic performance andpsychosocial functioning, we concentrated our investigation on comparable at-riskpupils in regular and special education. Pupils are de�ned as being at-risk when theyperform badly in standardized language or mathematics tests, when they are judgedby teachers as having a poor attitude to work or a poor academic self-concept or whena combination of these criteria apply. Central to this stage of the research was thehypothesis that these pupils are better off in special education than in regulareducation. In order to investigate this hypothesis, three types of education weredistinguished: (1) regular education classrooms, (2) special education for studentswith learning disabilities and behavioural dif�culties and (3) special education formildly retarded students.

In the �rst place, we investigated whether at-risk pupils in regular schools mademore progress in their academic and psychosocial development over a two-year periodthan comparable pupils in the two types of special education we distinguished. Few if any differences were found in the development of academic skills (language and mathematical performance) or the development of psychosocial functioning of at-risk pupils in regular primary schools and special schools. In both regular andspecial schools, the number of pupils whose functioning improved was about the sameas the number of pupils whose functioning deteriorated in the period between theassessments. There are some indications that the at-risk pupils in regular educationmade more progress in mathematics than pupils in special education for students withlearning or behavioural dif�culties. The attitude to work of at-risk pupils in regulareducation seemed to deteriorate more often than that of pupils in special educationfor the mildly retarded.

In the second place, we looked at the relationship between methods for effectivelymeeting the needs of students with disabilities and the development of the at-riskpupils. To do this, we relied on teachers’ reports on the broad characteristics of theeducation provision such as the extent that class teaching is differentiated accordingto pupils’ varying needs, the presence of specialist help to assist the teacher with pupilswho have learning difficulties and the use of action plans to improve the pupils’functioning. Little connection was found between these characteristics of the educationprovision and the progress made by the at-risk pupils. When connections were found,there was certainly no systematic pattern. Only in special education for students withlearning or behavioural dif�culties did we �nd indications of the following:

� more internal differentiation in the class is associated with less progress of at-riskpupils in mathematics, attitude to work and self-con�dence;

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� teachers working more with specialist teachers and action plans is associated withbetter development of at-risk pupils in language and attitude to work.

From this can be concluded that not all measures that are taken to help weak pupilshave a clear effect on the academic and psychosocial development of at-risk pupils inspecial education and regular education. Some measures do seem to be effective, butonly for pupils in special schools and classes for students with learning disabilitiesand behavioural problems.

The Qualitative Phase

As mentioned earlier, the �nal part of the study looked in more detail at a selectedgroup of pupils of varying developmental levels, to investigate differences indevelopment between pairs of at-risk pupils who at first sight seem to have a lot in common. As far as the psychosocial development of the pupils is concerned, thefocus was again on their attitude to work and academic self-concept and, as far asacademic development is concerned, we concentrated on language and mathematicalskills. What strikes one from this more qualitative phase of the study is that the moreadvanced pupil of the pair usually made progress on all fronts, whereas there was nopattern to be found among those lagging behind. We found improvements in someareas, while they went backwards in others. No clear �ndings emerged on the causesof differences in development. Things that have a positive effect on the developmentof one pupil can hinder another. Development seems to be determined by combinationsof factors that are unique to each pupil, consisting of characteristics of the pupil, thehome situation and the situation at school. We did find signs that pupils whoseproblems are (almost) entirely con�ned to the problems in their academic developmentusually do better than pupils with psychosocial problems or a combination of academicand psychosocial problems. Pupils with problems in their psychosocial developmentseem to do somewhat better in special education than in regular education.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper reports on a research study which attempted to answer the question as to what education policy should be pursued for pupils with special educational needs. The explorative part of the study has looked at differences in academic andpsychosocial development at the level of the whole population of pupils in regularand special education. It was found that pupils in special education do less well inacademic performance than pupils in regular education. It is noticeable that thedifferences between special and regular education increase as the pupils get older. Theincreasing lag in development observed among pupils from both types of specialeducation would seem to indicate that pupils learn less in special education than theydo in regular education. The existing lost ground is not caught up in special education,and in fact the gap gets bigger as the years go by.

As far as psychosocial development is concerned, the self-concept, social behaviour,attitude to work, health and support from home of pupils in special schools and classesis clearly less favourable than that of pupils in regular education. Parents and teachersusually expect that referral to a special school will have positive effects on thepsychosocial development and well-being of the pupil, but these expectations seem notto be realized. The differences in the assessment of psychosocial functioning could,however, be associated with differences in expertise between the teachers evaluating

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these aspects. Sabornie (1994) has reported that special and regular education teachersdiffer widely in how they perceive the social behaviour of students with learningdisabilities. Pupils from schools for learning and behavioural dif�culties turn out tobe assessed by their teachers as underachievers more often than do pupils in regularschools and schools for the mildly retarded. This may be accounted for by the fact thatpupils are referred to schools for learning and behavioural dif�culties if the (learning)dif�culties are not due to low intelligence. These pupils are expected to be able toachieve a comparable standard of performance to their counterparts in regular schoolsin response to the special education. However, a considerable number of pupils areonly referred to schools for children with learning and behavioural dif�culties afterspending several years in regular education.

Teachers consider that the parents of children in regular education support theirlearning more than do the parents of children in special education. These assessmentsare considerably less favourable for pupils from schools for the mildly retarded thanfor pupils from schools for children with learning and behavioural dif�culties. It is notsurprising, given the fact that children from families with low socio-economic status,including many migrant workers, are over-represented in schools for the mildlymentally retarded. Parents are often unable to offer their children much help withtheir school work if they have had little or no education themselves.

In contrast with regular education, there does not seem to be an unequivocal linkbetween academic and psychosocial functioning in special education. In regular schoolspupils’ academic performance can usually be predicted from their psychosocialfunctioning, while this is far less often the case in special education. The importanceof psychosocial functioning for academic performance in regular education has beendemonstrated in other studies (Fad and Ryser, 1993; Sabornie, 1994).

The explorative phase of the research focused on characteristics and associations in the general population of pupils in regular and special education. In order to gatherspecific information on the target group for the WSNS policy, the functioning of at-risk pupils in regular education was compared with a matched pupil in both typesof special education. It was expected that the pupils in special education would dobetter due to the specialist care and individual attention. However, with a fewexceptions, few differences were found when comparable at-risk pupils in regularschools were compared with their counterparts in both types of special schools. Therewas a conspicuously large measure of variability in both regular and special education.All school types had both at-risk pupils who were doing well from an academic and/orpsychosocial perspective and pupils whose progress left much to be desired. There islittle evidence to support the idea that at-risk pupils make less progress, in either theiracademic or psychosocial development, in regular schools compared with pupils inspecial schools. This concurs with the �ndings of three meta-analyses into the ‘issueof the most effective setting for the education of special needs students’ conducted byBaker, Wang and Walberg (1995), although it should be noted that the effects ofinclusive education they found were rather more positive than those found by thisstudy. They conclude that there is ‘a small-to-moderate bene�cial effect of inclusiveeducation on the academic and social outcomes of special needs children’. Lipsky andGartner (1996) also report, based on the �ndings of the National Studies of 1994 and1995 and other evaluation studies, positive effects of inclusive education on academic,behavioural and social outcomes for students with disabilities, while no negative effectswere reported for their non-disabled classmates.

The hypothesis that the degree of specialist care being offered in regular educationunder the WSNS policy is indeed associated with at-risk pupils making better progresscould not be con�rmed. One �nding worthy of note was that in schools for children

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with learning and behavioural dif�culties, which already offer a great deal of specialisthelp, more care was associated with better language development and a better attitudeto work. One might ask whether the amount and form of the specialist help introducedin regular schools as part of the WSNS policy goes far enough. Various studies haveshown that teachers in regular education need a considerable amount of support torealize inclusive education effectively (Baker et al., 1995; Stevens and Slavin, 1995;Lipsy and Gartner, 1996; Scruggs and Mastropieri, 1996; Zigmond and Baker, 1996;Waldron and McLeskey, 1998). There also seems to be a positive connection betweenthe attitudes of teachers to inclusive education and the use of effective mainstreamingstrategies (Bender, Vail and Scott, 1995). Likewise in schools for children with learningand behavioural difficulties, greater internal differentiation has been found to be associated with less progress in mathematical skills, attitude to work and self-con�dence. This �nding raises the question of whether extensive differentiation maynot have undesired effects.

The third part of the study, the qualitative investigation into the causes of thedivergent development of comparable at-risk pupils in regular and special education,found that developmental differences are associated with a combination of factors,unique to each pupil, consisting of characteristics of the pupil, the school situation andthe situation at home. In this qualitative study, psychosocial problems turned out tooffer poorer prospects of positive progress than purely academic problems, and pupilswith psychosocial problems were found to do better in special education.

The policy theory underpinning the WSNS policy presumes that the existence of an extensive system of special schools was one of the main causes of the growth of special education. This dual system was felt to be standing in the way of effectiveprovision for pupils with special educational needs. One of the main aims of the WSNSpolicy was to accommodate pupils with mild academic handicaps within the regulareducation system and thereby to put a stop to the growth of special education. Settingup cooperative groups of regular schools and special schools was meant to equipteachers in regular schools to better cater for pupils with problems within regulareducation. The present quasi-experimental situation in the Dutch education systemallows the effects of this policy to be tested. Although the investigations into regularand special education as a whole demonstrated that pupils in special education performless well in academic tasks and function less well psychosocially, the study ofcomparable at-risk pupils found that taken as a whole these pupils do not make lessprogress in regular education than in special education. Both investigations intocomparable at-risk pupils illustrated the contention, observed by Waldron andMcLeskey (1998), of the critics of inclusion, ‘that while inclusion may work for somestudents with learning disabilities some of the time, it will not work for all of thesestudents all of the time’. However, the same reasoning seems to apply to specialeducation. It too was found to have positive effects on the academic and psychosocialdevelopment of some pupils, while other pupils derived little bene�t from the specialistcare. The intensive study of a limited number of pupils and their teachers in thequalitative study makes clear that pupils’ development is determined by many factorswhich, moreover, can have different effects on the development of each child. It alsoturned out to be important to take account of teachers’ perception of the type ofproblem when choosing the educational setting which would suit the child best. Thegeneral assumption that at-risk pupils will do better in special education does notseem to account for its attractiveness. Contrary to the policy theory behind WSNS,the dual system does not appear to be an obstacle to the provision of adequate carefor pupils with special educational needs.

On the other hand, the policy to equip regular schools to accommodate this categoryof pupils appears not to be realized quite so simply as that. It has not proved possible

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to demonstrate the effects of the varying levels of specialist help provided by regularschools on the development of at-risk pupils. Perhaps the methods used were toocrude. However, evidence has also emerged in recent years that mainstream teachersdo not utilize strategies that are known to facilitate successful mainstreaming and onlymake relatively minor adaptations for low achieving children (Bender, Vail and Scott,1995). The importance of developing and implementing effective teaching methodsand supporting teachers whose classes include students with disabilities has often beenremarked in the literature. The �ndings of research into effective educational practicesdocumented in research literature on non-disabled children are useful in organizingeducation for children with special educational needs (Walberg, 1993; Lipsky andGartner, 1996; Waldron and McLeskey, 1998). Baker et al. (1995) formulate thechallenge as follows: ‘The concern is not whether to provide inclusive education, buthow to implement inclusive education in ways that are both feasible and effective inensuring schooling success for all children, especially those with special needs.’ Thefact that this research study found that some at-risk pupils made progress demonstratesthat it is possible to improve the success rate of education for at-risk pupils. In orderto engineer positive effects on the development of at-risk pupils, it would seem to benecessary to strengthen those aspects of the policy relating to the professionaldevelopment of teachers and the provision of support to teachers when organizing theeducation provision.

NOTE

1. The term integration is used for the Dutch policy of accommodating pupils with problemsin regular education to put a stop to the growth of special education. However, whenreferring to the situation in other countries the term inclusion is used as well. Although thisterm usually is not well de�ned, it generally is reserved for situations of ‘ending all separatespecial education placements for all students’ (Bender, Vail and Scott, 1995).

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