Based on an international collaborative research project entitled ‘Education Access under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion’ and a background paper for the UNESCO Futures of Education Initiative (Ydesen, et al., 2020), this paper addresses the paradoxes inherent to the implementation of assessment and inclusion agendas and their implications for student participation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hereby aim to: i) map and analyse the paradoxes of assessment and inclusion, as it is in evidence in the selected national contexts (Argentina, China, Denmark, England (UK) and Israel); ii) explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affects student participation in light of the two agendas, and iii) draw conclusions about the implications for student participation with acknowledgement of the uncertainties, complexity and unpredictability of the world in which we live, and of the new technologies and multi-level governance structures intrinsic to current educational reform.
The paper makes a starting point from the observation that education today takes place between two competing agendas: an assessment agenda and an inclusion agenda. The global inclusion agenda gained prominence in 1994 when many countries ratified the Salamanca Statement on social and educational inclusion. Since then, efforts have been made to include all children, regardless of their backgrounds, in mainstream school systems and thus reduce the mechanisms of exclusion. The Salamanca Statement promotes universalism and international standards of social justice and equity for all individuals. However, despite the great value often attributed to inclusion in education policies, it remains an extremely complex goal to achieve and is often side-lined in favour of other policy priorities (Ainscow et al., 2006; Morton et al., 2013; Slee, 2018). For instance, the global assessment agenda has led to the widespread implementation and development of large-scale standardised tests in national education systems.
The paradoxes of assessment and inclusion arise through their seemingly divergent educational aims (Hamre et al., 2018). In general, inclusion supports diversity and possibilities of participation and learning for all students, and suggests that everybody can make a valuable contribution to their learning environment (Best et al., 2018). Whereas, assessment and testing, with their capacity to differentiate, demarcate and deselect, implies that education is principally for those who can contribute the ‘right’ knowledge in the ‘right’ way (Stobart, 2008). Consequently, standardised tests are often promoted as a tool to objectively secure meritocracy, that is, to identify the appropriate educational trajectory for every individual (Ydesen, 2011). Despite efforts of reconciling the schism between inclusion and assessment in both policy and practice (Hegarty, 2020), the ambiguities remain. At stake is not an assessment mechanism or an inclusion policy; rather, it is a conception of society, the definition of the other and the space we give to accept otherness, and thereby recognise, understand, and welcome differences.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the paradoxes between the assessment and inclusion agendas. Worldwide school closures and the shift to remote learning through digital tools have highlighted significant educational inequities in society and, with the widespread cancellation of standardised assessments, highlighted further the weaknesses in current models of student evaluation. But with an increased appreciation of the role of key workers in tackling this crisis, policymakers, practitioners and the general public have been forced to re-engage with questions on the purpose of public education.
