Looking through the kaleidoscope of inclusion in policy on students with intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT

In Sweden, the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilites (CSSID) is currently experiencing political change, as this type of school is being renamed and is undergoing organisational changes. The inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in schooling, and in general society, has been challenged and debated for decades; such debates are at the heart of some of these changes. In this study, we have systematically investigated the policy work (e.g. government reports and statements) preceding and governing the changes. Hence, the purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on how policy documents inscribe meaning to the inclusion of children with ID. Results show that discourses on inclusion are connected to neoliberal values and practices, such as assessment, global comparison, and accountability. It has been suggested that this may have a profound and long-term effect on how children with ID are fabricated and hence, how the child with ID and their education can be understood in terms of being included in the idea of ‘all students’ in policy, and in addition, in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Word; policy
• inclusion
• equity
• participation
• child and student with ID

Introduction

In Sweden, the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilites (CSSID) was re-named in Swedish, from Grundsärskola and to Anpassad Grundskola, as of 2 July 2023. This is part of an ongoing policy change including a new organisation, and a new approach to standards, merits and targets in education which can be seen for example in the implementation of a revised curriculum content (Ministry of Education 2021^*195). In addition to new governing documents, a guarantee will come into force by 1 July 2024 regarding support to enable the achievement of national learning goals in reading, writing and mathematics in the third school year. The change in policy is an expression of ongoing discourses on education and children with ID. The methodology in the study derives from a Foucauldian understanding of discourse as representations of knowledge that discipline people through technologies of power (Foucault 1994).

Furthermore, there is a lack of educational research on how the politics of schooling affect people and who they are, who they can be and can become (Popkewitz 2012). This could be said to be especially true for already marginalised groups in society, such as people with ID, a group where there is a lack of research both in Sweden and internationally (Moljord 2018). Research on policy change has shown that alignment in school systems towards standardisation, is not always positive for children with ID (Ayres et al. 2011) and that the right to education for everyone, does not always include people with ID (Berhanu 2011).

The current study investigates policy out from a perspective of sociology on education. Following from this, policy in education is understood as constantly negotiating and transforming knowledge of learners and schooling and impacting who these can become or be. This is dependent on the time, history, and context at hand. Hence, policy is understood as mediating meaning (Ball Stephen 2017; Popkewitz 2014) and policy documents are understood as inscription devices which inscribe meaning and attribute characteristics, hopes and prerequisites to various kinds of people and phenomena, and thereby fabricates different kinds of people (see Popkewitz 2013, 2014). The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on how policy fabricates meaning in the inclusion of children with ID. This is done by answering three research questions:

1. How are characteristics, hopes and prerequisites attributed to children with ID in the policy documents?

2. How are characteristics, hopes and prerequisites for inclusion inscribed in the policy documents?

3. How are discourses on inclusion activated in the policy documents related to the fabrications of children with ID?

Swedish history and context on policy change for children with ID

During the mid 20^th century, children with ID in Sweden were still depicted as partly uneducable in policies and their education was not governed by the same legislation and agencies as other children. However, this approach has changed and important steps towards inclusion in education for students with ID has been a clear intention in educational policy (Bagger 2022). Hence, teaching has gone through a process of normalisation (Mitchell and Sutherland 2020). Therefore, one can say that the education for children with special needs has moved towards how other children are educated in terms of governing, organisation, time, and content but also with an increase of segregated settings (SOU 2020:28^*15). This decrease in equity and increased segregation can be understood as a shift in educational discourse following an advanced marketing of the school system and political intentionality regarding children’s diversity (Magnússon 2019, 2020, 2023; Magnússon and Pettersson 2021).

To counteract inequalities and segregation, and to fulfil the promise made in the Salamanca agreement and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNESCO 1994, 2005) on inclusive schooling, political actions are now being taken (Ministry of Education 2021^*195; SFS 2010:800; SOU 2021:11^*194). The policy change analysed in the current study represents a political intention to address inequalities, a change which follows from successive government reports on children with ID where it is stated that they are not treated as proper students, as they do not have the opportunity of choice or the right to be assessed (Bagger 2022).

Educational policy on inclusion as a kaleidoscope

The definition of inclusion varies in research and practice (Black-Hawkins 2012; Haug 2017; Magnússon 2019), from spatiality and placement to belonging and community (Göransson and Nilholm 2014). Furthermore, it often needs to be fluent in its meaning and is required to be adaptable to various educational contexts, for education to be fair (Göransson and Nilholm 2014; Mitchell 2008). Consequently, inclusion cannot have a fixed and uniform meaning but needs to be adapted to and re-defined in harmony with different contexts and individual needs (Loreman 2014). This approach facilitates an inclusive culture and practice where differences and diversity can be valued and enacted (Ainscow, Slee, and Best 2019). A weakness in the Swedish context of educational policy is that the concept of inclusion is not explicitly mentioned in the policy documents (Bagger and Öhman 2021).

We join Magnússon (2023) in our approach to inclusion as the result of ‘ … traveling international educational policy embedded in a national and local policy context.’ (386). Our interest lies in how policy travels and negotiates meaning on children with ID, and their inclusion in education. How a change in policy impacts practice is dependent on national and contextual factors. For example, a similar policy change in Australia and the United States to follow the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNESCO 2005) caused a decrease in inclusion in Australia and an increase in the United States (de Bruin 2019). Hence, policy change and education for children with ID, must be studied in national contexts and in international discourses.

We were inspired by Mitchell (2008) and Mitchell and Sutherland’s, 2020 understanding of inclusion as multifaceted, complex, and fluent. Hence, we understand inclusion as a kaleidoscope through which certain images of the learner will be made visible, and others not. This image is dependent on the context/the mirrors behind the lens of the kaleidoscope and will also vary with the perspective stemming from the angle, movement, and direction of the kaleidoscope. This implies that we will make a discursive reading of policy texts by analysing how children are fabricated through the lens of the kaleidoscope(s) that discourses on inclusion represent.

Fabrication of kinds of people through discourses of inclusion

In our approach to identifying and analysing discourses of inclusion, we draw on Michael Foucault’s thinking on discourse as representations of knowledge that discipline people through technologies of power. Through this, discourse governs what can be said and done, by whom and when and, essentially, who people are and become through making certain subject positions available for certain kinds of people in certain contexts. In the light of the study (Foucault 1994; Popkewitz 2012, 2014), policy documents are understood as the governing of practice and society and as relying on societal and institutional discourses. Hence, policy texts are understood as core in the politics of schooling and as fabricating children with ID through discourses on inclusion. According to Popkewitz (2012), attention to these aspects is lacking in policy studies and research on exclusion in school:

The fabrication of humankind engages a way of considering the politics of schooling that is rarely considered in policy studies, school research about social exclusion, and even less in defining issues of measurement and assessment. (Popkewitz 2012, 187)

Policy texts that govern schools and teachers’ work are understood as inscription devices that ascribe meaning, conditions, opportunities, qualities, and identity characteristics to different kinds of children. In doing so, they re-produce power and knowledge in relation to children through contemporary, public, and accepted social epistemologies. Through this, policy documents exist within, emerge from and at the same time are constitutive of discourses on inclusion, which are in turn both constructive and reconstructive (see Popkewitz 2012). Hence, embedded in the way children with ID are written about in policy documents, there lies a fabrication of these children as certain kinds of children (Hacking 1999; Popkewitz 2012; Valero 2017).

The process of fabrication thereby derives from categorisation and explanations of different kinds of people and is strongly connected to abjection: ‘Abjection is the way in which exclusion is generated as the effect of defining the norms of inclusion, and the hope of those who are on the margins of the norm’ (Valero 2017, 117). Hence, abjection is at the core of the process of in(ex)clusion through categorising which kinds of people and circumstances matter (or not). The categorisations and in(ex)clusions inherent in the fabrications have the power to normalise categorisations of people over time. At the same time, the fabrication becomes intrinsic, normative, and taken for granted over time and is thereby hard to identify and distance oneself from (Popkewitz 2012). Our choice of theoretical underpinning allows us to unravel the discourses on the inclusion of children with ID, and to explore how they impact what can be said, done and considered about the child with ID.

Material and methods

We conducted a database search in the open data archive of the Swedish Parliament, (OpaL¹). Initially, the search term Grundsärskola, the former name of CSSID, was used with the timeframe set for the period 2011 to 2021. This initial search resulted in documents from different types of parliamentary texts, such as Motions, Reports, and Committee Directives. We thereafter limited the search by combining Grundsärskola CSSID with eight different labels in Swedish sequentially. The reason for this is that the concept of inclusion has multiple interpretations and is seldom defined or stated in policy documents, but broadly it concerns aspects of integration, exclusion, participation, equity, equal treatment, and gender equality. Consequently, these concepts were the additional labels used in a sequential search to narrow down policy documents that concern inclusion. When adding the term inclusion to the database search 61 documents were identified. When adding the term integration this resulted in 55 texts, which partially overlapped with the texts that referred to inclusion, where any doubles were deleted. The remaining collection included Propositions, Government Public Investigations, Opinions, Ministry Series and Decisions. This procedure was continued with all the labels, and double hits were deleted gradually. After the material was reduced, that which remained consisted of 55 texts (Appendix I, Supplementary Material). These were given a unique ID number in the Appendix, and they are in the reference list marked with a ^[*] and their number.

The first stage of the analytical procedure involved an exploratory content analysis (see Creswell 2007). Through this, we identified meaningful segments of texts on inclusion and the student with ID within the body of policy texts. To identify ID students, the diagnosis and the type of school were applied as codes. To identify inclusion, there was a need to apply broad coding to include concepts connected to inclusion, the same as when we made the selection of documents. This coding resulted in sorting content in several collections that were similar in how they talked about inclusion and the student. These collections were given thematic labels very close to the content, for example: assessment; learning; curricula; adaptions and choice. This initial coding confirmed the ambiguity and multifaceted state of inclusion and the student with ID.

The content analysis was followed by an interpretative analysis of the discourses on inclusion and the fabrication of the children with ID. We then used an analytical framework developed previously for the analysis of discourses on the inclusion and fabrication of students in newspaper content (Bagger and Lillvist 2021). We thereafter explored the themes from the content analysis and construed a discourses on inclusion and fabrications of the student by a discursive reading of the thematised content. The discursive reading was performed by systematically posing the questions: Inclusion in what? What does inclusion do? What are the values and assumptions being promoted or pushed? What is being pushed and for whom? Claims made about inclusion in and between the themes were interpreted and described in terms of discourses on inclusion. Within these themes, we also explored fabrications through how the texts connected to a certain discourse on inclusion ascribed characteristics, rights, obligations, and responsibilities to the ID student.

Discourses on inclusion

The discourses presented here are not analysed or presented in terms of hierarchy, volume, or gravity. The demarcated discourses of inclusion occurred simultaneously as did the fabrication of the ID student and they often overlapped each other. Demarcations were conducted in terms of the claims made in the policy texts regarding the role and function of inclusion, its values and assumptions. Three discourses were construed: Inclusion as normality, Inclusion as being evaluated and finally, Inclusion as an economic strategy. These three themes are presented in terms of the meaning of inclusion as inscribed by policy texts, which are understood as discursive representations of knowledge, truth, and power (Foucault, 1993, Foucault 1994). Furthermore, how the policy documents attribute meanings, conditions, and characteristics to the student with ID in connection to inclusion, is also understood as these prevalent discourses make certain categorisations and fabrications possible, and others do not (see Hacking 1999; Popkewitz 2012; Valero 2017). In other words, the result demonstrates how discourses on inclusion that are activated in policy documents fabricate the student with ID and simultaneously generate in(ex)clusions regarding the student.

Inclusion as normality

Within this discourse, the policy documents suggest mainly structural and organisational changes to the adapted compulsory school, towards a direction of normalisation towards the mainstream compulsory school. The question of ‘inclusion in what?’ here applies to the type of school itself, it is supposed to be included in the compulsory schools’ organisational structures. What then ‘is pushed and for whom?’ can be seen in the arguments and values stated. Namely, that this will strengthen the quality and equity of education. In sum, these changes concern the alignment of curricular subjects between compulsory school and the CSSID, as well as the level of education of staff, which is described in terms of children’s equal rights to schooling and the right of all students to have educated teachers.

Arguments for this concerning the student with ID, the questions ‘inclusion in what’ and ‘what is pushed by and for whom?’, point towards inclusion in the same regulations regarding teaching time for students with ID, as stipulated for various subjects in the mainstream compulsory school (SOU 2020:43^*140; SOU 2021:30^*88).

Since it is not a homogeneous student group that belongs to the target group of compulsory special education, flexibility is required in the timing of admission. Therefore, the investigation does not propose any changes to the current regulations regarding the timing of admission. (SOU 2021:33^*6, 309)

This fabricates that the students with ID are students who will study the same subjects, with lower targets, during the same amount of time. One argument for this organisational alignment is that it facilitates smooth transitions between the two school forms (SOU 2011:8^*85; Ministry of Education 2017). This is seen in expressions like: ‘ … it is important that the transitions are handled in a well-thought-out manner so that students have equal opportunities to progress towards the goals of the curriculum’ (SOU 2021:33^*6, 320). Implicit is the idea, that it should be easier for students in the CSSID to attend the mainstream one, and not the opposite direction of students in compulsory school attending CSSID. This fabricates the ID student to be included in making educational choices at school.

In several of the analysed policy documents, the lack of educated staff in CSSID is put forward as a factor that hinders equal educational rights for all children (Ministry of Education 2021^*195; SOU 2020:28^*15; SOU 2021:11^*194). The values here encourage that the ID students are included in high-quality teaching. Overall, statements and claims of inclusion within this discourse stress that adaptation, opportunities, and rights in compulsory schooling for students with ID should mirror the regular compulsory school. This idea of inclusion in school can for example be seen in the Ministry Series (2020^*190) in which the petitioners propose a reform of the idea of inclusion in school, such that all students should learn the same thing, at the same time and in the same classroom. The form of inclusion has led to exclusion, however, as many students are left without extra support and help in large classes (Ministry Series 2019^*44).

Inclusion as being evaluated

Is a discourse in which claims and values put forward regarding inclusion are symptomatic of a prevalent neoliberal ethos that governs education today and especially for students with disabilities (see Waitoller Federico 2020). Policy documents that talk about this discourse emphasise the need for increased quality controls to make schools more equal. ‘While quantitative evaluation is indispensable, it must be conducted, interpreted, and used judiciously. Judgement, in turn, requires competence in terms of methodology and an understanding of the nature of the activity’ (SOU 2020:28^*15, 114). Equity can thus be interpreted as something measurable and controllable, in terms of factors such as the professionals’ educational level, time allocated for each subject, assessment regimes, degree of alignment with compulsory school and so on.

Other claims within this discourse emphasise the need for increased assessment practices in CSSID and that students with ID also are included in the national assessment. The ‘inclusion in what?’ and ‘for whom?’ is interpreted as inclusion in the assessment for the ID student. It is for example stated that assessment practices for children with ID have been lacking or not well developed and that this needs to further be strengthened, to be comparable with what is provided for children attending compulsory school (Ministry Series 2020^*190; SOU 2011:8^*85).

This is particularly evident from the limited availability of assessment supports for compulsory special education and the deficiencies in the national-level monitoring and evaluation of compulsory special education. To some extent, it is also reflected in how compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities has been taken into account in changes to the curriculum and teaching plan and in the support for interpreting the school’s governing documents. (Ministry of Education 2019^*51, 6)

Inclusion is through this and other similar statements fabricated in terms of students being assessed. Through this, the question of ‘what values are promoted?’ is the value of equity, which is presented as measurable factors of quality which can be used to hold schools accountable. Hence, inclusion is fabricated as measurable, caught between balancing the specific conditions of the CSSID and the obligation to offer the same kind of assessment and monitoring as in mainstream compulsory schools. Without specific quality standards for CSSID, their quality will be judged in terms of the quality standards of the compulsory school, as indicated in the following quote:

The compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities has such specific conditions. A difficulty with evaluations in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities is that they often require special evaluation questions and questionnaires in order for the analysis to be fair. It is therefore not possible to simply include the compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities in a study that is mainly aimed at compulsory school, according to the government. (Ministry of Education 2019^*51, 11)

This signals the challenge of using the same, often quantitative, forms of evaluation for different types of schools and the need for the CSSID to advocate appropriate measures. Above all, the policy documents identify support for assessment as lacking for the CSSID and, due to that, follow-up and evaluation at a national level gets delayed:

The Swedish National Agency for Education reasons that it is hardly possible to achieve any absolute levels in terms of equal access to education and training of equivalent quality, without the comparison that can be made mainly to measure whether the equivalence is more or less strong over time, or in comparison with other countries. Today, however, there is a lack of systematic and continuous follow-up of the development. SOU 2020:28^*15, 175

Claims regarding inclusion and values that point to the discourse Inclusion as being evaluated put forward the need to document educational practice in CSSID and to develop strategies for a systematic quality control process in schools. Documentation can thus be seen as ‘proof’ of achievement – that equal conditions are being met, or not, and further as proof of accountability. Within this discourse, a lack of management and a clear division of responsibilities are described as barriers to the Swedish school system’s efforts to achieve equity in education (SOU 2016, 94*²⁹). Shortcomings in systematic quality work are depicted as contributing to the absence of measures, as well as the prerequisite for improving children’s knowledge development. Shortcomings in the work of addressing teaching quality are depicted as contributing to the absence of evaluation and action (SOU 2016:94^*29, 29):

… that it was common for the principal not to take a clear lead in the work and that the work that was nevertheless done, was of an ad-hoc nature and without documentation. According to the review, it rarely occurred that the principal took overall responsibility for the entire chain of follow-up, evaluation and action.

Inclusion as an economic strategy

Was a discourse in which claims were made about CSSID as aligned or not to the focus of the mainstream compulsory school in terms of budget. Deviations from this was taken to imply that children and teachers in CSSID need more resources in terms of time, materials, or assessments, in comparison to compulsory schools. Several of the policy documents proposed that schools need more resources to be successful and in the future society also needs:

A knowledge-based economy requires investments in schools. A modern country that invests in the future must invest in elementary schools today. To achieve success with the school, we prioritise three areas: investments in teachers and better teaching, policies for increased equality and reduced school segregation, and a focus on future skills that students need for their future working lives. (Ministry of Education 2021^*110, 48)

Another aspect of inclusion as an economic strategy was expressed in the form of claims that municipalities have a public mission to provide schooling but have very different financial resources to do so. ‘The opportunity of finance and the conditions for conducting school activities is of course affected by e.g., the demographic and economic conditions which are available locally’ (SOU 2020:28^*15, 35). Socioeconomic factors were demarcated as a subset within the focus on municipality budgets. Furthermore, these factors were both depicted as a cause and effect on aspects of inclusion in educational settings for the broad variety of learners:

At an aggregated level, there are clear connections between the students’ socioeconomic background, especially the parents’ level of education, and the students’ school results, also differences between municipalities on what applies to socio-economic variables are of great importance for school operations. (SOU 2020:28^*15, 140)

The in(ex)clusions of the child with ID

When the discourses on inclusion were activated in the policy documents, it was in terms of indirect or direct claims regarding inclusion. Hereby they also talked about what children were to be included in, what inclusion does, what values there were to be promoted and for whom. Simultaneously, they inscribed meanings, characteristics, and conditions for the children with ID and thus fabricated certain kinds of children. Within the three discourses, inclusions, and exclusions of the student with ID are made simultaneously; what this child should and could be included in and how that can take place. In other words, the discourse on inclusion brings possibilities and limitations of what is doable and preferable. In the following section, we propose the fabrications of the children with ID within the discourses on inclusion:

The children as being assessable and being evaluated. Both the discourse on inclusion as normality and the discourse on inclusion as being evaluated fabricated the child as someone whose development and learning must be governed through assessment. Being included here equates to being assessable and having knowledge that fits within the norms of what is to be assessed. This fabrication is put in relation to the assessment of knowledge in compulsory school, and the types of assessment advocated there:

Teachers in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities, like teachers in elementary schools, need support that contributes to an equivalent assessment and there should be no unjustified differences between the school forms in this regard. In compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities, there are no national performance measures of the students’ knowledge. The lack of national tests also means that there are no measures that can support an equivalent assessment of the students’ knowledge. (SOU 2021:11^*194, 580–581)

The right to be assessed is hereby described as a pathway to inclusion, as children’s needs are identified through the process. Here lies an assumption that if needs are identified, they will be met, which in turn will affect the child’s development so that it can resemble, or approach, a normal one. Hence, assessments are described as necessary for early identification and the provision of tailored education for children with ID as something that the children the time does not have access to.

The children as a bearer of rights were a fabrication seen in all the discourses on inclusion, to some extent. In this fabrication, the child was positioned together with their parents, and ascribed attributes, meanings and conditions in line with being or developing as a neoliberal agent active in the marketplace of schooling. Within this fabrication, the right to schooling was expressed in terms of the opportunity to choose and receive an optimal path of learning. These kinds of statements resonate with the right to equal education, which applies to all students, including students with ID. The child is also fabricated as a bearer of rights, but that this right may face threats. In comparison with compulsory school, the CSSID is described as lacking the means to assess and monitor learning and to inform children and parents adequately. The lack of mandatory and regulated support for teachers’ assessment of children’s learning is then framed as something that might hinder inclusion and progress in learning, and from this viewpoint there is an urgency to align with the compulsory school:

In the compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities, the mandatory assessment materials are not yet linked to the same right to early support interventions as in the elementary school, even if regulations in general about management and stimulation, extra adaptations and special support apply in all types of school. (Series 2019^*44, 37)

To teach in a compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities, therefore, special pedagogical competence is required in the form of a special needs teacher’s degree with a specialisation in developmental disabilities, in addition to a teacher’s degree intended for working in certain years and teaching courses and subjects. (SOU 2021:33^*6, 380)

In addition, this inclusion regarding the right to learn must be granted without discrimination (Ministry of Health and Social Affairs 2018), which implies that all schools need to be free of obstacles that could limit or hinder the provision of support for children. This in turn implies a need for teachers with the right competencies (special needs teachers with a focus on ID), alternative communication tools or aids, and specifically designed learning and teaching materials. In this context, the document states that the teachers in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities need support to properly interpret policy documents.

Against this background, the National Audit Office assesses that the Swedish National Agency for Education should more clearly prioritise compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities when developing support for interpreting governing documents. This could be curricula and giving teachers in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities the corresponding support to interpret the curricula that elementary school teachers have. (Series 2019^*44, 57)

The child as a cost was a fabrication that was derived from inscriptions of the child with ID as someone who is more costly and has a greater level of need the more atypical they are. This fabrication was mostly present in the discourse on inclusion as an economic strategy, and the idea that investment needs to be made to ensure teacher competence and comparable assessment in this type of school:

A difficulty with evaluations in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities is that they often require special evaluation questions and questionnaires for the analysis to be fair. It is therefore not possible to simply include the compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities in a study that is mainly aimed at elementary school, according to the government. (Ministry of Education 2019^*51, 11)

The educational policy change for including a child with ID

Identifying the discourses on inclusion in the policy change of the adapted compulsory school and how this fabricates the child with ID, was a challenging and intriguing exercise. The three discourses of inclusion demarcated in this paper have shown the complexity of interpreting inclusion at the policy level and how, even in the same policy document, inclusion is described in contradictory ways. In some ways, this may depend on inclusion seldom being used as a concept, and not being defined.

At the same time, the contradictory statements in the discourses reflect the identity crises of the compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities. This turned the analytical work into tracing the identity crisis of the newly re-organised CSSID. The most interesting thing about this, is that the policy and name of the type of school are brand new although the school form has existed in its current format since the 1990s. It is possible that there is an underlying unwillingness to accept two parallel school forms, given how one of the prevailing discourses makes claims of normality as the path to inclusion for children with ID. Compulsory school is established as the norm, and the political will is that compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities must conform to the practices and standards of the compulsory school in as many ways as possible. This in turn fabricates the child with ID as someone who might do the same.

We have interpreted the striving towards normality as a will to warrant equity and equality, and quality as being increasingly aligned to what quality has been in compulsory schools. We connect this to the governing of schools as embedded in neoliberal values and rationales. This can be seen in the policy as, within this logic there lies an assumption that inclusion, equity, and quality can be promoted by comparison and competition (Blossing and Söderström 2014). However, as shown in the results, this approach to inclusivity holds a political disposition to exclude. When the pathway to inclusion builds on evaluations towards standardised merits, what follows is the labelling of students and schools as regular or special. This can be understood as the political disposition to exclude mentioned by Slee (2008, 2013), and in which the very labelling and understanding of schools as regular or special, excludes certain students and schools (Slee 2008, 2013). In line with this, quality is established through assessments and measurements (Ball 2012), which highlight the contours of a neoliberal human being and also in the fabrication of children with ID.

Combining the forces of the discourse on normality and the discourse on assessment and measurable outcomes pushes the compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities towards the compulsory school’s context, culture, and discourse on education. This has similarities to Högberg and Lindgren’s (2023) study on a policy change following the poor PISA results, the driving force behind the change and the rationale which seems to be quite similar to the policy change of the CSSID. Namely: ‘ … traditional conservative demands for a core curriculum, testing and accountability were combined with calls to increase educational opportunity’ (18). We conclude that this rationale in the current study stems from a prevalent and overarching governing discourse of striving towards normality, where normality is constituted by the educational frames, routes, and the educational culture and paradigm of the compulsory school for children without ID. We can only hope that the policy change at hand does not generate in compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities what Högberg and Lindgren (2023) describe was generated in the compulsory school: ‘ … the Swedish compulsory school went from undergoing a mediatised results crisis to a mental health crisis among students’ (18). The kaleidoscope through which certain images of the learner can be made visible, and others not, remains a puzzle to solve. The issue of what inclusion means and how to organise schooling to promote inclusion for children with ID must still be resolved in policy texts and practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2023.2273642

Notes

1. A database at Örebro University including nearly 500 years of parliamentary affairs in Sweden.