Policy with regard to children with special educational needs has been continuously discussed and revised over the last 25 years to try to ensure that all children receive their rights to appropriate educational opportunities. However, as Georgina Glenny argues in this article, these efforts have led to a focus on the assessment and definition of need at the expense of attention to the quality of the intervention that follows. This relative lack of attention to the quality of the intervention raises serious questions for teachers, schools and local authorities as to the nature of their responsibilities for the children entrusted to their care. It is proposed that more systematic monitoring of the effectiveness of interventions would assist in refocusing attention on to the quality of children's learning experiences.