The Assessment of Special Educational Needs and the Proletarianisation of Professionals

This article reports our recent ESRC funded research on the identification of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties under the procedures of the 1981 Education Act. It is argued that the concepts of ‘deskilling’ and ‘proletarianisation’ provide a useful framework of analysis when examining the role of teachers and other professionals involved in the assessment process. However, we discuss evidence suggesting that negotiations between these professionals may focus upon teachers’ attempts to define the nature of their professional activity as ‘skilful’. One consequence of this may be the deskilling of outside professional ‘experts’.