How inclusion became exclusion: policy, teachers and inclusive education

ABSTRACT

It is almost two decades since a concept of inclusion as selective segregation was proposed as an alternative to the concept of full inclusion and inclusive education was reconfigured as providing children with varied educational settings in order to meet their needs. A version of this model of inclusive education subsequently gained political traction in England where the issue of segregated or mainstream provision is now constructed as a matter of parental choice and child voice. Meanwhile, the implications of this latest model of inclusive education for teachers and schools in a rapidly changing wider educational landscape have largely been ignored or reduced to a question of training. This paper explores how the inclusive education landscape has changed in England in recent years, charting recent key developments in areas such as policy, statutory guidance and teacher training, with particular reference to teacher workload and the positioning of teachers within political and polemical educational discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• special educational needs
• performativity
• teacher workload

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth J. Done

Elizabeth J. Done is a lecturer on the SENCo and Masters in Education Programmes at the Plymouth Institute of Education and a Visiting Research Fellow in the University of Exeter’s Graduate School of Education. Liz previously taught at the A.U.W. in Khartoum and has published widely in the field of inclusion and poststructuralist theory.

Mandy J. Andrews

Mandy J. Andrews manages the SENCO Programme at the Plymouth Institute of Education and is a lecturer in Early Childhood Studies.