Over the past thirty years, inclusive education has become the dominant discourse in the field of special educational needs across the developed world, reflected in the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Educational Needs, the Dakar Framework for Action: Education for All and the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  The Convention includes a commitment to promote inclusive practices for disabled adults and children across all fields of social policy, including education, training and employment.

The papers in this symposium draw on the work of an international research network funded by the Leverhulme Foundation, which conducted a range of research and knowledge exchange activities from 2012 to 2014. The network consisted of experts from California, England, the Netherlands, New South Wales, Scotland and Sweden.  The network partners were selected to represent different types of welfare regimes in the context of systems of education and lifelong learning (Riddell, Markowitsch and Weedon, 2012). Within this framework, England and Scotland are characterised as examples of anglo-celtic welfare regimes, with strong elements of neo-liberalism overlaying post-war welfare systems, Australia is similar to these two jurisdictions.  Sweden fits within a Nordic model of collective structures, with elements of creeping privatisation and accelerating levels of inequality and the Netherlands is closest to the continental model with a coordinated market economy and a stratified school system.  The USA has strong elements of neo-liberalism alongside state provision deemed necessary to sustain modern capitalist economies. 

Network partners analysed (i) the nature and extent of variation across developed countries in the use of special schools and classes; (ii) the permeability of the boundary between mainstream and special settings and (iii) the discourses underpinning the use of special settings in different contexts. The network developed an analysis and critique of official statistics on the use of mainstream and special settings and their underpinning discourses reflected in policy and legislation. Of particular interest was the discursive use of official statistics within a globalised context. Special educational needs policy, with its emphasis on inclusive education, may be seen as a manifestation of travelling policy, with an overall homogenising tendency. At the same time, SEN policy is embedded within particular national and local contexts, histories and cultures, thus adopting distinctive vernacular forms (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Dale, 2005).

The overarching question addressed by the network was the following:

In six jurisdictions (England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden, New South Wales, California) what is the nature, scope and underpinning discourse of the special sector and what changes are evident in its shape and size?

Sub-questions included the following:

• In the six jurisdictions, what proportion of the population is identified as having SEN and what proportion of these children are in special settings?
• What are the social characteristics and circumstances of children educated in special settings and what disproportionalities are evident?
• What discourses on special provision are reflected in legislation and policy documents?
• What changes are evident in the shape and size of the special sector over a ten year time frame?

In this symposium, each contributor addresses some of these questions in the context of their particular jurisdiction. 

References

Dale, R. (2005) Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education, Comparative education, Vol 41, No 2, pp. 117-49.

Riddell, S., Markowitsch, J. and Weedon, E. (eds.) (2012) Lifelong Learning in Europe: Equity and Efficiency in the Balance Bristol: Policy Press.

Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing Education Policy London: Routledge