Integrity in education matters. Where it is lacking, vulnerable populations struggle to gain access to high quality learning opportunities, inequity flourishes, the quality of education suffers, and corruption becomes a norm of behaviour, perpetuated through schools and universities to the detriment of countries and their future generations. Despite numerous initiatives and projects that have been implemented to address the corruption challenge, survey respondents in countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region is the most likely to report incidence of corruption in public education (Transparency International 2016), and examples of comprehensive, systematic and most of all, effective reforms to strengthen integrity and fight corruption in the sector are still rare (Milovanovitch, 2014).

Since 2010, several countries conducted in-depth assessments of integrity in their education systems, with the goal   to develop an understanding of how to tackle the corruption challenge by empowering education participants and institutions, and supporting existing efforts to prevent corruption in education (Serbia, OECD, 2013; Ukraine, OECD 2017: Armenia, OSF-Armenia, 2015).  

In the current paper we aim to shed light on integrity of education in the context of special and inclusive education as an especially important and interesting policy area.

 Inclusive education (IE) is a comprehensive, system and school-wide effort that encourages teachers to aim at high outcomes for all students and to ensure flexible groupings in the development of appropriate curricula (Villa & Thousand, 2000). This is a shift away from a medical approach, focusing on the child’s deficiencies to a position where the teacher becomes responsible for planning and teaching in such ways as to overcome barriers that children may be experiencing in access to learning (Ainscow & César, 2006).

 The meaning of inclusion is culturally determined and essentially depends on the political values and processes of the state for its enaction (Ainscow & César, 2006; Engelbrecht, 2006). However, IE must be translated into manageable working practices that enable successful learning outcomes to be achieved (Rose, Shevlin, Winter, O’Raw, & Zhao, 2012). This process can be both disruptive and disrupted: disruptive for general educators and education systems that resist the required changes; and disrupted by them in a multitude of ways that can hindered or even block the transition to inclusiveness. In this context, educational leaders continue to wrestle with concerns regarding institutional norms, resources and the capacity of educators to meet the needs of students who need additional support (Crockett et al., 2012). The development of positive attitudes of educators is central to the accomplishment of inclusive education (Avramidis et al., 2000;  Van Reusen et al., 2001). Yet, negative teacher attitudes towards inclusion, once developed, are extremely difficult to change (Murphy, 1996).

Disruptions are symptomatic of education that is plagued by integrity problems (OECD, 2013). This highlights the importance of turning the spotlight towards integrity of special and inclusive education to identify areas of education policy and practice where malpractice could occur and fuel negative attitudes of teachers and other practitioners towards inclusion which in turn pose barriers to the development of successful inclusive working practices in schools.

The main objective of this study is to explore the connection between integrity of education and inclusive education with the aim of creating a powerful methodological and conceptual tool that can help mutually reinforce both policy processes and help  countries expose the underlying reasons of malpractice in education, understand and target a precise selection of factors that contribute to the problem, and tailor recommendations to specific groups of stakeholders, such as administrators, teachers, principals, parents, inclusive education and anti-corruption professionals.

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