Abstract
This paper deals with the Whole School Approach to special needs education, which developed in the 1980s based on the criticism against the segregated educational system. This approach suggests that a school should have a responsibility to meet the needs of every child with special educational needs (SEN). The purpose of this paper is to explore why the Whole School Approach failed, and to reconsider its relationship with "segregation". In the late 1980s, the Whole School Approach had difficulties. Clark et al. argued for "Beyond the Whole School Approach", in which they tried to overcome "segregation" by reforming the curriculum and the school management system. This theory, however, did not work in practice, because both the parents and the government demanded special education according to children's SEN. Here, we need to note that they supported "segregation" because they felt that it worked as a good method of meeting children's needs. It is questionable whether the Whole School Approach is incompatible with segregation at all. People who practiced remedial education, which has been a type of "segregation", argued against physical and spiritual separation between remedial department and the main corpus of the school. They chose to broaden their role to meet all children's special needs in the schools. Thus there is a possibility of using the idea of "segregation" in order to promote the Whole School Approach. In conclusion, we should not criticize "segregation" at one aspect of it, but we should appreciate the other aspect of "segregation", which enhances the expertise of the staff and the resources and enables to meet individual SEN. The Whole School Approach will succeed only when it is regarded as a compatible approach with "segregation".
