This chapter provides a picture of the educational provision in Britain for children with specific language impairment (SLI). It also discusses the characteristics of language units and the children who attend them, alternative placements for children with SLI, and potential problems and strengths of different placement types. SLI is an exclusion-based description of children who have language impairments, but also have normal cognitive ability and no identifiable cause for their difficulties. The most likely alternative placement for children who are recommended specialist language provision but for whom such a placement is not available is a mainstream school setting. Communication centres may provide a better placement for some of these children, especially those with more pervasive difficulties. This would also enable a proportion of language units to offer effective, short-term intervention to children with more transient difficulties who will integrate to mainstream education within primary education.
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