ABSTRACT
The use of the term moderate learning difficulties in the UK reflects much of what is loosely defined and lacking in clarity in the system of additional and different provision for children with difficulties and disabilities. The term was recommended in the Warnock Report (DES, 1978) to replace the term educationally sub-normal with the more positive sounding term learning difficulties, and then to qualify this phrase by moderate and severe to correspond to the terms moderate and severe ESN. However, the Warnock Committee also recommended the term mild to correspond to slow learning as part of its adoption of the continuum notion, so connecting severe ESN with slow learning. However, the term mild learning difficulty has never come into common usage. It could be that the term MLD has come to be used beyond the range of what was the coverage of the ESN(M) term, to include those who were slow learners, or who more recently have been called low attainers.
