The current global socio-economic and political environment is making the argument for disability inclusive education increasingly challenging because of shifts in tolerance for difference, and a move away from identity politics and inclusion generally. What is needed to move the debate on in such a climate is to broaden it out from its current narrow focus on the difference Inclusive Education makes to children with disabilities, to its impact on the quality of general education, broader social cohesion, peaceful communities and the sustainability of systems. The constant focus on ways to adapt the system to accommodate children with disabilities should make way for how to build inclusion into systems from first principles. It should be about transformation, so learning is done on an equal basis for all, in one cohesive system.
Discussions around Inclusive Education are widely articulated as an approach to include children with disabilities, but this has always missed its broader principles. There may now be an opportunity to shift this dialogue more towards one of pluralism. Most Inclusive Education frameworks start with the preservation of the norm, the mainstream classroom, the standard curriculum, and the typical developmental pathway for example, and then consider how children who deviate from the norm can be brought into it. A pluralist approach inverts this logic. Rather than asking how children with disabilities can access a pre-existing system, it challenges whether the system itself can be designed to reflect the diversity of the way children learn and interact. Difference is not a problem to be accommodated; it is the starting point from which education should be designed. This shifts the ideological framing from charity to justice, and from integration to transformation.
Working applications of this exist in approaches like Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is an educational framework that promotes the need for flexible curricula from the outset to meet the needs of all learners, rather than looking to make individual accommodations to existing systems. Portugal centred UDL as the pedagogical basis for Inclusive Education in its 2018 Inclusive Education Act. Critical to the change has been its assumption that 85% of children will have their learning needs met through accessible schools, curricula and pedagogy. Where learning needs are not supported by universal measures, additional, specialist resources can be accessed, but crucially, the pre-identification or diagnosis of children is not required before interventions start (in effect reducing the stigma associated with labelling). All students can achieve a common profile of competencies through different learning pathways.
UDL can’t happen at classroom level without significant changes to the system, which requires considerable political backing. In Portugal, this happened because the government recognised the need for significant education reforms but had limited finances. So, this was not only about how to include children with disabilities, it was a much broader education reform issue which may have contributed to the political support for UDL.
There have been issues with the implementation of UDL in Portugal which are worth learning from. There is critical need for buy-in from teachers across the system, so significant reforms like this require broad consultations. There were issues with teachers not feeling sufficiently prepared to work in inclusive environments with such a diverse range of learning needs. Many did not feel able to work with children with disabilities and whilst special needs teachers were tasked with helping train and support their mainstream peers, they too felt ill-prepared as teacher educators.
Another example of trying to work to break the norm comes from Sierra Leone. In 2023, the National Policy on Radical Inclusion in Schools became the legal basis for Inclusive Education. They deliberately titled this ‘radical inclusion’ because of a genuine intention to take a ‘last first’ approach (i.e. those who are most marginalised which includes children with disabilities). It has been kept deliberately broad, so this inclusion policy does not put the focus on disability but rather on dismantling previous exclusionary practices. It has been co-created with representatives from marginalised communities which included children with disabilities alongside many other education stakeholders.
The effect has been to strengthen the legislative framework for inclusion to make it easier to focus resources on where they are most needed. This has led to greater inputs around teaching resources, training, and Assistive Technology. As with Portugal, implementation has come up against some significant limitations as highlighted by some recent research on progress (2023-2025). There are still issues with teacher skills, substandard facilities, poor data and high levels of stigma in relation to children with disabilities, although there has been a lot more success in relation to enrolment and retention of young mothers and pregnant girls. This offers a good example of how having a strong legal basis for Inclusive Education is critical, but that skills and infrastructure require sustained investments.