Educationally subnormal

History

The 1913 Mental Deficiency Act pushed local authorities to find children they considered "mentally defective" and not suited for regular schooling, with institutional care offered when needed. A key factor in this decision was whether a child was seen as neglected, which meant those sent to institutions often came from poor families with few resources. Wealthier children were more likely to end up in Educational Sub-Normality (ESN) schools instead.

By 1955, over 141,000 people fell under the act, most registered as children. While the study of child development and psychiatry grew during this time, children who did poorly on intelligence tests or were labeled "defective" were often written off as hopeless, attracting little interest. Around World War II, new psychiatric diagnoses for children offered a different way to understand their struggles, but these ideas were controversial and the war pulled attention away from them.

The 1940s brought fresh insights into how separating children from their families harmed them, though this thinking rarely applied to those deemed "mentally deficient." The term "educationally subnormal" became official with the 1944 Education Act in England and Wales, and was used similarly in Scotland and Northern Ireland. After the 1959 Mental Health Act, "mental deficient" stopped being a legal term, and institutions for those children closed.

ESN school enrollment shot up in the postwar years; from 1953 to 1962, the number of pupils in England and Wales jumped from 19,000 to 36,000, mostly in day schools. During the 1950s through the 1970s, more scientific and public attention turned to children with intellectual disabilities, and immigrant and ethnic minority parents protested that their kids were overrepresented in ESN schools. A 1978 report suggested swapping "educationally subnormal" for "special educational needs" and integrating these children into mainstream schools whenever possible, a change made law by the 1981 Education Act.

ESN schools

A 1950 academic paper described a residential ESN school located in a settlement for adult "mental defectives", with children usually kept apart from adults. They lived in "homes" run by trained nurses of their sex and attended school five days a week, spending all term time at school, its playing fields, or their school-run homes, returning to family homes at Christmas and summer if one was "available and suitable". Older boys had opportunities for autonomy such as games against outside groups or jobs outside school, while such experiences were withheld from girls to prevent "sexual misbehaviour". Later anecdotal evidence suggests many ESN schools taught a limited curriculum focused on games and artistic activities with little academic work; according to a BBC report, while some ESN schools provided good quality education, many children had their needs neglected.

Demographics

From the 1910s to the 1950s, children deemed "mentally defective" were divided into two categories: those from poorer or unstable families were more likely to be institutionalised, while those from wealthier households more often attended ESN schools while remaining in parental custody. A 1962 study of a random sample of educationally subnormal children in South Wales found they were 61% boys and 39% girls; boys were disproportionately born later in the academic year, especially summer months.

The children were disproportionately from less wealthy households and appeared less likely to be firstborns than the general population. A significant minority had speech and sight difficulties, and almost half were deemed maladjusted. A 1967 Inner London Education Authority report found 28% of children in London ESN schools were black immigrant children, compared to 15% of the mainstream school population. During the 1960s and 1970s, black children generally underperformed white children at school, feeding a common belief in inherent intellectual inferiority; teachers frequently feared black children would depress class performance.

The needs of immigrant children from the Caribbean were often neglected: they frequently came to the UK after their parents, adjusting to a new environment in the care of virtual strangers, and spoke Jamaican English without the support they would have received had they spoken a different language.