Internationally inclusive education has been variously articulated and interpreted for practice emphasising both equity and quality in schooling (OECD, 2012). Australia’s declared focus in education is consistent with these elements. This paper is based on data arising from research commissioned by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) for the Australian Government Department of Education that reviewed education policies and practices for students with disabilities in Australia (Forlin et al, 2013). Inclusive education in the Australian government school sector was the identified focus area, and the key research questions for investigation were: How is Australia sitting internationally in relation to the extent students with disability can access and participate in education on the same basis as students without disability? What are the Australian and international policies (that is the possibilities) for improving learning outcomes for students with disability or additional learning needs? To answer these questions, a review of more than 150 individual data sources including: key published papers in peer reviewed journals, publicly available government reports, commentary from internationally accepted authorities and information retrieved from Australian education system websites. The findings of the review are critically discussed and in particular with reference to equity and quality of policies and practices in education. Australia faces a number of challenges if it is to successfully enact all of its stated goals for equity and quality in education. Meanings and practices in Australian education have increasingly conceptualised equity in market terms (Lingard, Sellar & Savage, 2014; Rizvi, 2013). Further, research will need to examine the impact of current neoliberal reform agendas on students with disabilities and investigate professional collaboration and partnership initiatives with those in urban and rural contexts to understand how the goals of fairness and inclusion might be achieved.

Deppeler, J. M. & Ainscow, M. (In Press). Using inquiry-based approaches for equitable school improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2012). The inclusive education in action project. Forlin, C., Chambers, D., Loreman, T., Deppeler, J. M. and Sharma, U. (2013). Inclusive Education for Students with Disability: A review of the best evidence in relation to theory and practice, prepared for the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Canberra, ACT: Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth (ARACY). Lingard, B., Sellar, S. & G. I. Savage, G.C. (2014) Re-articulating social justice as equity in schooling policy: the effects of testing and data infrastructures, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35:5, 710-730, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2014.919846 OECD (2012), Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, OECD Publishing. Rizvi, F. (2013) Equity and marketisation: a brief commentary, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34:2, 274-278.