Does being friendly help in making friends? The relation between the social position and social skills of pupils with special needs in mainstream education

Pupils with special needs can have difficulties in building relationships with peers in inclusive education. An important condition for developing positive relationships with peers is having the age‐group appropriate social skills. It seems likely that pupils with an insufficient set of social skills face a larger risk of being excluded. This study describes the social skills of pupils with special needs and relates these to their social position in inclusive classrooms. In total 989 pupils from the 4th and 7th grades participated in the data collection. The analyses are based on three different indexes for social inclusion: peer acceptance, friendships and membership of a cohesive subgroup. The results show that 20% to 25% of the pupils with special needs are not socially included in their peer group. In general social position and social skills show low correlations, but that does not hold for pupils with behaviour problems. Their social position strongly relates to their social skills. For this particular group, social skills training can support them in maintaining contacts, relationships and friendships with their peers.