Educational psychologists, remedial teachers and others working with children who are considered to have learning difficulties tend to regard the problem as being within the child and disregard the importance of the social/educational context. This paper argues that contextual factors are very important and classifies these factors in terms of the subsystems within the educationalsystem.Typical subsystem structures and interactions are discussed and illustrated with case studies. The roles and interventions of the therapist working within the educational system are described. The numerous difficulties in working with a large system are discussed as well as some strategies for dealing with them.