What is Inclusion and What is it Not

Understanding Universal Inclusion and Misinterpreted Definitions

• Inclusion is often defined philosophically as a "journey and not a destination" or a "process and not a place," language intended to correct the failures of prior "mainstreaming" or "integration" attempts (Runswick-Cole, $2011$; Danforth & Jones, $2015$).

• Inclusive education represents a way of thinking about people, diversity, learning, and teaching, rather than being reduced to a simple checklist of practices.

• In the absence of clear definitions, distortions of the concept flourish in both policy and practice, requiring authoritative definitions to correct them (Graham, $2023$).

• The Committee for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) addressed slow global progress by publishing General Comment No. $4$ (GC$4$) in $2016$.

The Legal Mandate: CRPD and General Comment No. 4

• Article $24$ of the CRPD articulates "The Right to Education," which legally binds ratifying countries like Australia to implement inclusive systems.

• GC$4$ is the most authoritative and comprehensive instrument explaining the human right to inclusive education, outlining steps for "immediate progressive realisation."

• Inclusion is defined verbatim in GC$4$ (United Nations, $2016$, para $11$) as: "a process of systemic reform embodying changes and modifications in content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers with a vision serving to provide all students of the relevant age range with an equitable and participatory learning experience and environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences."

Defined Patterns of Provision: Inclusion, Integration, Segregation, and Exclusion

• GC$4$ provides distinct definitions to differentiate between inclusion and antithetical practices:

  • Inclusion: A systemic reform process aimed at providing equitable, participatory environments for all students of a relevant age range by overcoming barriers.

  • Integration: A process of placing students with disability in existing mainstream educational institutions, provided they can adjust to the "standardised requirements" of those institutions.

  • Segregation: Providing education for students with disabilities in separate environments designed to respond to specific impairments, in isolation from students without disabilities.

  • Exclusion: Directly or indirectly preventing or denying access to education in any form.

• Much of what currently occurs in Australian schools is categorised as integration rather than inclusion, where schools remain largely unreconstructed and expect students to "adjust" to fit existing structures.

Key Conceptual Components of Systemic Reform

• Systemic Reform: Demands a total transformation of the education system, moving beyond "mainstream plus special." It involves reforming disability support funding, training all teachers to support students with disability, and making both learning experiences and environments accessible to all.

• Overcome Barriers: Refers to the "social model of disability," where disability is viewed as the interaction between a person with an impairment and the social, environmental, or political barriers that impede them.

• Equitable: Means "fair" rather than "the same." It involves providing more to those who have less to equalise opportunity, encapsulated in the concept of "reasonable adjustments."

• Preferences and Participatory: Refers to consultation, student voice, and inclusion in decision-making processes across all aspects of schooling.

• Requirements: A rights-based term that replaces "needs." The term "needs" (or the acronym "SEND") is seen as deficit-based language that positions people as burdens or dependents rather than rights-holders.

• Changes, Modifications, and Relevant Age Range: Involves "teaching to diversity" rather than the middle. This requires proactive universal design and adjustments to ensure access to grade-level curriculum alongside same-age peers, rather than utilizing "add-ons" or simplified scrapbooks.

The Evolutionary History of Educational Provision

• Pre-Late $1800\text{s}$: Period of total exclusion; children with disability were generally institutionalized or kept at home.

• $1860\text{s}$ to early $1900\text{s}$: Development of specialized institutions, such as the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in Australia ($1860$). Special education was considered a private concern.

• $1940\text{s}$ onwards: Governments took over from charities, establishing numerous special schools. This led to a period of rampant segregation where students labeled as "maladjusted," "feebleminded," or "educationally sub-normal" were directed to separate settings.

• $1968$ Concerns: Lloyd Dunn, President of the Council for Exceptional Children, criticized the overrepresentation of children from culturally, linguistically diverse, and low-status backgrounds in segregated special settings. He noted that approximately $60$ to $802016$ of pupils in "retarded" classes were from "broken, disorganised and inadequate homes."

• $1970\text{s}$ to $1980\text{s}$: International human rights frameworks began influencing policy. In the United States, the PARC v Pennsylvania ($1971$) case argued that segregation violated equal protection principles from Brown v Board of Education ($1954$).

• International Year of Disabled Persons ($1981$): Led to a national consensus in Australia that children should attend neighborhood schools. Between $1982$ and $1992$, enrollment in government special schools in Australia dropped by $372016$ (from $23,350$ to $14,768$).

Chronology of Key Events and International Milestones

• $1948$: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations).

• $1954$: Brown v Board of Education (United States), declaring separate facilities inherently unequal.

• $1971$: PARC v The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (United States); Universal Declaration on the Rights of Persons with Mental Retardation (UN).

• $1975$: Education for All Handicapped Children Act (United States); Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons (UN).

• $1978$: The Warnock Report (United Kingdom), recommending teacher training in disability.

• $1990$: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, United States); World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien).

• $1992$: Disability Discrimination Act (Australia).

• $1994$: Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO).

• $2005$: Disability Standards for Education (Australia).

• $2006$: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, UN).

• $2016$: General Comment No. $4$ on Article $24$ (UN).

• $2018$: Queensland Department of Education Inclusive Education Policy Statement.

Critiquing "The Mainstream" and Integration Models

• The terms "inclusive" and "mainstream" are mutually incompatible because "the mainstream" was designed with the "average" student in mind and relies on a parallel special education system for those who do not fit.

• In $2017$, Senator Pauline Hanson suggested removing students with disability and autism from mainstream schools, sparking debate. Experts clarify that what Hanson observed as a failure was "integration" (unreconstructed schools that do not work), not "inclusion."

• Integration is often "business as usual with add-ons," where work is planned for a year level and then adjusted only for individual students with "verified" disabilities.

• Integration examples include providing noise-canceling headphones in a visually overwhelming room or using "developmentally inappropriate vocabulary" in classrooms.

Fauxclusion Case Studies: Distorting Practices in the Classroom

• Fauxclusion: A term used by Cátia Malaquias to describe the "rebadging" of exclusionary or segregatory practices as inclusive.

• The "Inclusive Class" in School $5$ ($2018$): Observations revealed two separate classes in one room. On one side, "mainstream kids" learned Grade $4$ geometry; on the other, "SEP kids" worked on a number line with a separate special education teacher. A teacher aide sat in the middle as a human barrier. There was no interaction and the noise level was high as teachers competed to be heard.

• The Case of "Daniel" in School $3$: Daniel sat at a separate desk with a teacher aide, ignored by the class teacher who rarely left his chair. Daniel doodled in a scrapbook unrelated to the lesson (a poem from a Russian website). In Grade $3$, he was placed on a "Prep Individual Curriculum Plan" (ICP) to "experience success," but his reading scores dropped from below average in Grade $1$ to "very poor" by Grade $3$ because of a lack of targeted intervention.

• Consequences: These students are physically present but academically and socially isolated, often leading to later referral to "Responsible Thinking Rooms," distance education, or exclusion.

The Current State of Inclusive Practice in Secondary Education

• The "Accessible Assessment Project" (ARC Linkage Project) studied secondary schools using eye-tracking to measure accessibility.

• Results indicated limited evidence of quality accessible teaching and few adjustments made for students, even when identified under the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD).

• Consultation is a significant failure; approximately one-third of the $63$ students with disability in the study received NCCD funding, but neither they nor their parents were consulted on adjustments.

• Current legislation lacks a "positive duty" on providers to deliver the reasonable adjustments they are obligated to provide under the Disability Standards for Education (DSE).

Governmental Reviews and Independent Inquiries ($2000$-$2023$)

• $2002$: Senate Inquiry into the Education of Students with Disabilities (National).

• $2010$: NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Provision of Education for Students with Disability.

• $2012$: Review of the Disability Standards for Education (National); Review of Victorian schools regarding disability experiences.

• $2015$: ACT Expert Panel on Students with Complex Needs; SA Select Committee on Access to SA Education System.

• $2016$: "Access to Real Learning" Senate Inquiry; NSW Audit Office on supporting students with disability.

• $2017$: Review of Education for Students with Disability in Queensland State Schools (Deloitte Access Economics).

• $2020$: Inquiry into Suspension, Exclusion and Expulsion Processes in SA Government Schools.

• $2019$–$2023$: Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (DRC).

• $2022$: Review of the National School Reform Agreement (Productivity Commission), identifying students with disability as a priority equity group representing up to $402016$ of students in some regions.

Contemporary Forces Driving Inclusive Transformation

• Educators are increasingly building grassroots networks, such as the School Inclusion Network for Educators (SINE) on Facebook, which has over $6,500$ members.

• Successive governments have invested in the NCCD, allocating disability loadings based on the adjustments teachers make.

• There is an emerging "condition of possibility" (Foucault, $1972$) where recipients of substandard education and their families are using media and legal avenues to demand legislative rights.

• Australia remains legally bound by the United Nations GC$4$ to implement systemic reform and abandon the outdated "special education" paradigms of the past.