Policy and challenges of building schools as inclusive communities

Abstract

In this paper, we address building inclusive communities by looking at school as a community, as a place where students participate in learning and also learn to participate in the life of a community and life in a broader inclusive society. At the international level, policies increasingly position education as a business organisation, with claims about accountability and managerialism that distract attention from and undermine inclusive community‐building writ large. This results in conversations in education that focus almost exclusively on students' test performance without attention to the moral and civic purposes of education. In this paper, we argue that the international policy attention to test performance in education, with a focus on proficiency over learning, claims educational equity as a purpose but perpetuates social inequality instead.

Keywords:

• inclusive schools
• community
• policy