Disability inclusive education

The Wilton Park dialogue on ‘Disability Inclusive Education’ gathered together over 50 leading academics, governments, research institutes, representative organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs), and industry representatives to explore how to effectively include learners with disabilities in fully inclusive education systems. The Dialogue was held in the midst of a global crisis in education with reduced funding, poor learning outcomes and increasing numbers out of school. The meeting was designed to build on commitments to Inclusive Education at the 2025 Global Disability Summit (GDS) and develop a roadmap leading to the 2028 GDS to translate evidence into policy changes. This report is a summary of important points raised during the dialogue.

Executive summary

This Wilton Park dialogue explored the current state of the evidence, remaining gaps and the opportunities that now exist for effective and cost-efficient implementation approaches for inclusive education. Often, funding to improve general education and learning is done in parallel with investments made to support learners with disabilities, creating inefficiencies, and a failure to effectively transform systems to improve learning for all children. Inclusive Education transforms school systems to cater to all students, including children with disabilities, by eliminating segregation and ensuring accessibility in environments, curricula, teaching practices, and cultures. Genuine inclusion can only be achieved by transforming the mainstream system, not by adapting parts of it to integrate learners with disabilities. Reasonable accommodation is an immediate, not a progressive, obligation and no child should be refused access on the basis of disability whilst the system transitions. The existence of special schools or integrated programmes does not comply with the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

A central message which reoccurred throughout the dialogue was that Inclusive Education is not about adapting mainstream schools to accommodate children with disabilities, but about transforming entire systems so that all children learn on an equal basis. Despite a legal obligation under the UN CRPD to improve education quality for every learner, children with disabilities remain among the most excluded, facing barriers ranging from inaccessible infrastructure and undertrained teachers to deep-rooted stigma and a lack of visibility in national data systems. The most common arguments used to delay reform (including insufficient funding, system complexity, and the need for specialist provision) must be confronted rather than continually accommodated.

The Dialogue identified several interlocking areas where urgent action is needed. Teacher preparedness is a critical systemic gap, with inclusive pedagogy still among the least covered topics in pre-service training. Data systems routinely fail to identify or track children with disabilities, meaning they rarely influence planning or financing decisions. In humanitarian and crisis settings, disability is almost entirely absent from education response planning despite crises actively increasing disability prevalence. Financing remains structurally inadequate, although co-financing models, Results-Based Financing tied to inclusion indicators, and the upcoming replenishment cycles for GPE and Education Cannot Wait represent real opportunities. EdTech and Assistive Technology hold promise but currently tend to reinforce segregation rather than inclusion. Across all of these areas, the gap is the same: disability is treated as a peripheral concern rather than a core design issue. The dialogue’s roadmap calls for a single agreed definition of Inclusive Education, broader coalitions beyond the disability sector, better-coordinated financing, and disability inclusion embedded from the outset in every education reform, research agenda, and funding decision.