Children with learning difficulties are not all the same. There is a big difference between a child who is a bit slow and a severely retarded paraplegic. There is a need for flexible thinking. It is marvellous that Bob Black's child, Morwenna, has done well in mainstream schools. But there are some inner city comprehensive schools where even ordinary children are bullied. It would be taking a terrible risk to send a Down's Syndrome child to such a place. Morwenna may not have been bullied but that does not mean that many other disabled children have not been, and badly.

It is true that a child with problems can sometimes benefit from the example of more able children in a mainstream school. The presence of such a child might also improve the attitude of other children, making them more accepting of disabled people. But let us remember hard fact number two: mainstream schools do not have special training in all the different disabilities. I am a governor of a state primary school which has six children with 'statements' of 'special educational needs'. Each one is different. The staff cannot possibly be well versed in them all.

Then there is the grotesque 'special needs' bandwagon that has built up. The proportion of children with the worst problems who have 'statements of need' has tripled since 1991. This is a farce and a scandal, as Baroness Warnock now admits. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that schools get more cash when a child is 'statemented'.

The proportion of children with less acute problems has also jumped - at least by a third and probably far more. Astonishingly a fifth of children in school years three to seven are now supposed to have 'special educational needs'. This is simply beyond belief. There has not really been a mass outbreak of childhood learning difficulties. In many cases, the problem is not the children but the teaching. Schools for the last two decades have been infected by poor methods of teaching children to read and write.

There is terrible waste in a new 'special needs' industry. Vast amounts of expert time and paperwork goes into drawing up the 'statements' of need. Far less is spent actually giving children useful things such as speech therapy. A vast army of support assistants sits next to 'statemented' children. It is far from clear that all the children who are given this expensive attention truly benefit.

In Florida, parents of disabled children can get vouchers which enable them to get their children out of their state schools and into different state schools or private schools instead. Fifteen thousand children have taken advantage of the programme. Surveys have revealed that the children have become significantly safer from bullying, happier and have done better academically. If we really want to look after children who have difficulties, we should give parents here the same choice.

(A useful source on the subject is the essay What are special educational needs? by Dr John Marks which was published by the Centre for Policy Studies in 1999. The government's latest figures for children defined as having special needs are here. The fall in the figures in recent years looks rather strange and there is some hint in the notes that this might be due to different methods of collecting the figures. If anyone has further information on why the official figures have fallen, I would be glad to hear of it.)