Another key consideration in pushing for Inclusive Education has been the issue of cost. When investment in inclusion is seen as an add-on to existing costs, rather than a reallocation of existing costs for segregated programmes, it is hard to gain political traction. But this may be the result of current cost effectiveness measures being biased in how they are formulated. The tools used to measure literacy and numeracy are not designed specifically for use by learners with disabilities, and whilst they can be adapted or children’s needs can be accommodated, this requires additional processes to be in place which are familiar to the learners and assessors.
Broader research around quality education has not paid explicit attention to what this means in practice for learners with disabilities. An example of this is the Transforming Education Summit. Whilst the 2022 Summit covered lots of highly relevant issues for children with disabilities like pedagogy, teacher training, and the involvement of families, learners with disabilities were not embedded into these discussions. Considerable pressure was placed on the Summit from civil society to have the international community commit to ensuring disability-inclusive quality education and a Call to Action was launched. However, by 2024, Save the Children (amongst others) were reporting that very little had changed.[1]
There are also calls to broaden cost effectiveness measures to include more of a focus on social cohesion, participation, sense of belonging and identity that are present in all children as measures of success. That is, how does the inclusion of children with disabilities into schools bring positive impact to the whole school and the community and not just how well do children with disabilities do in relation to literacy and numeracy scores. This could mean finding out the extent to which both disabled and non-disabled children express a sense of belonging, of identification with the school community, and of having a broad network of friends for example. One example raised during the dialogue was in relation to Deaf students present in mainstream schools. Providing sign language interpreters will help in providing access to the curriculum but Deaf students sense of belonging could also be influenced by the extent to which they see their identity reflected in learning materials and activities. A key message is Inclusive Education should be at the core of all education programmes; disability inclusion should not be approached as a separate consideration. This indicates that disability expertise needs to be central to all education programmes, especially What Works programmes where generating evidence on disability inclusion should be core to research outcomes
[1] For more information see https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/blogs/2024/what-progress-has-been-made-since-the-2022-transforming-educatio#:~:text=Six%20reflections%20from%20the%20TES%20stocktake.&text=Save%20the%20Children%20has%20consistently%20called%20for%20the%20inclusion%20of