Education Welfare Officer:  person employed by an LEA to help parents and LEAs meet their respective statutory obligations in relation to school attendance.  Education Welfare Officers also carry out related functions such as negotiating alternative educational provision for excluded pupils.  In some LEAs Education Welfare Officers are known as Education Social Workers.

Funding Authority:  the Education Act 1993 provides for the establishment of two funding authorities: in England, the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS), which was established on 1 April 1994; and in Wales, the Schools Funding Council for Wales (SFCW), which the Act empowers the Secretary of State for Wales to set up by Order.  No Order has yet been made.

The FAS is responsible for calculating and paying grant to grant-maintained and grant-

maintained special schools and has responsibilities for the provision of school places in areas where there are significant numbers of grant-maintained schools.  The SFCW, when established, will have similar responsibilities.  Before the SFCW is set up, these functions

will be carried out in Wales by the Secretary of State for Wales.

Independent school:  a school neither maintained by a local education authority, nor a

grant-maintained school, and which is registered under section 70 of the Education Act

1944.  Section 189 of the Education Act 1993 sets out the conditions under which an independent school may be approved by the Secretary of State as being suitable for the admission of children with statements of special educational needs.

Information Technology (IT):  covers a range of microcomputers, both portable and

desktop; generic or integrated software packages, such as word processors, spreadsheets,

databases and communication programmes; input devices such as keyboards, overlay keyboards, specialised access switches and touch screens; output devices such as monitors, printers and plotters; storage devices such as CD-ROM, and microelectronics controlled devices such as a floor turtle.

Integration:  educating children with special educational needs together with children

without special educational needs in mainstream schools wherever possible, and ensuring that children with special educational needs engage in the activities of the school together with children who do not have special educational needs.

Maintained school:  for the purposes of this Code, any county school, grant-maintained school, grant-maintained special school, voluntary school or maintained special school.

Modification:  amendment or alteration of a programme of study, attainment target,

assessment or any other component of the National Curriculum in order to give the child access to that area of the Curriculum (see also Disapplication).

Named LEA Officer:  the person from the LEA who liaises with the parents over all the

arrangements relating to statutory assessment and the making of a statement.  LEAs will

inform parents of the identity of the Named Officer when they issue a notice of a proposal to make a statutory assessment of a child.