The international moves to improve the quality of inclusive education provision for children with special educational needs / disabilities depend on the capacity of the general school system to recognise and respond positively to diverse educational needs. This involves appropriate organisational commitment and systems as well as relevant teacher knowledge, skills and attitudes (Ofsted, 2008). Preparing all teachers to teach a diversity of pupils in initial training is widely recognised as a key challenge in the UK and internationally (Lewis and Norwich, 2004). This paper examines issues concerned with these moves in relation to recent policy and practice developments in the English system. The immediate background are political moves that have called for a major review of the Special educational needs system. This was prompted by the House of Commons' Parliamentary Committee’s examination of the SEN field which led to a renewed focus on teacher education and training in this area as a major strand of Government policy in the area. The paper draws on work undertaken for the Governement Training and Development Agency (TDA). The aims of the paper are: i. to set out the policy and practice context for the research and development project about the initial training of all teachers as regards teaching children and young people with disabilities in England; ii. to summarise the design, finding and conclusions drawn from a two stage project a. to survey University teacher training programmes about their preparation of all teachers for this area of teaching and b. to develop a practical teaching activity supports the professional learning of all teachers as regards children and young people with disabilities, iii. to discuss the implications of the project and its implications and significance for teacher education generally.

The two aspects of the project are described: 1. A national survey of current initial training practices in the SEN / disability field in 49 university primary and secondary Post Graduate Certificate of Education 1 year training programmes and, 2. A trial and evaluation of a ‘personalised learning’ task (Golder, Norwich and Bayliss, 2005). This involved trainees in teaching an individual pupil with a SEN/disability for between 6-8 hours in a flexible way over several weeks with the support of a school based tutor and the practice school’s SEN Co-ordinator. The trial was conducted in 8 university programme covering some 500 trainees.

The findings and conclusions drawn from the survey, the trial and its evaluation are reported, including the outputs from the project and the response of the TDA as regards the national dissemination to University training programmes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical issues that arise in the initial training of teachers. It also includes some implications for the management of initial training of teachers and the contribution that preparing teachers from a SEN/disability perspective has for learning to teach in general.