My early years as a teacher were concerned with children labelled as slow learners. In the light of what many of them have achieved over the years – ranging from skilled trades to self-employment – I sometimes wonder whether we limit our educational horizons on occasion to expectations based on faulty or imprecise data, or to a process of conditioning; what to expect in given localities or among certain groups of children.

Fortunately, my professional reading at that time led me to Kirk and Johnson: “Educating the Retarded Child”, and to their concept of “belongingness”. They argued that the teacher accepts the child as he is, with all his imperfections and educational blemishes, his deprivations, disadvantages and differences. It is all too easy for us to hang the child’s lack of motivation and interest on the peg of social, housing or health services deficiency, and to avoid the personal and professional involvement that is a prerequisite of the committed teacher.

Unfortunately, our educational practice is such that we continue to identify minority-group children on western-oriented tests of general ability. No allowance is made for the fact that the child is unfamiliar with the language of the test administrator or indeed, of the items of the test; and yet it is well known in psychological circles that test results are only valid if the children being tested are as familiar with the test items as was the group on whom the test was normed.