Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2016
New Zealand has much of real quality to be proud of in special education. On numerous international surveys of education, New Zealand schools continue to rank highly - especially with respect to reading and written language, and were such surveys to focus on special educational matters, my guess is that the picture would be equally positive. There are very real difficulties in developing special educational provisions for a country with New Zealand’s geographical characteristics. New Zealand has a relatively small total population, which is scattered widely across a rather large and geographically well separated area, and these factors make for real problems in providing for children with difficulties which occur infrequently - as do most conditions associated with exceptionality and special education.