Education policy exists as text but also as local discourse in how it is perceived, understood, communicated and enacted by practitioners (Ball 2015). Attention to the re-contextualisation of policy highlights the ways in which policy as text is open to interpretation and mediated by local conditions, including cultural values and systemic priorities and commitments (Ball et al. 2012). This is the case for inclusive education, where local conditions significantly influence interpretations and enactments of policy agenda, either supporting or hindering progress and contributing to variability in practice (Artiles and Kozleski, 2016). Though inclusion is an international movement, it is one with a ‘strongly local flavour’ (Artiles and Dyson, 2005) and attention to local discourses and the way in which policies and practices reflect particular political and sociocultural structures contributes to an understanding of how specific meanings are shaped. The ‘slipperiness’ of the concept itself contributes to lack of a shared understanding of important practices and pedagogies (Armstrong, 2017), with different appropriations of inclusive education arising from tensions between a rights agenda focused on individual learners, and a justice agenda that explicitly addresses systems and structures (Hernández-Saca et al., 2023). Striking a balance between these perspectives is critical to achieving genuinely inclusive practices.

A way forward is suggested in careful examination of how inclusive education exists in specific contexts (Honkasilta and Koutsoklenis, 2024). This research was part of a larger ESRC-funded impact project involving partnership working between researchers and policymakers to understand and advance inclusive education in Wales. Wales, which is one of the four nations of the UK, has recently transitioned to a new, more narrowly defined ‘additional learning needs’ (ALN) system, replacing the former ‘special educational needs’ (SEN) system (Welsh Government, 2021). Recent reviews on the implementation of the new system have highlighted issues around the clarity of terminology (Estyn, 2023; Senedd Cymru, 2024), specifically, the need for a clearer understanding of ‘generally available provision’ and ‘additional learning provision’. Under the new system, learners who do not meet the criteria for ALN are expected to have their needs addressed through ‘generally available’ resources and accommodations within mainstream settings, so emphasising inclusive education as an agenda for Wales.

The aim of the project, which is on-going, is to support the development of a shared understanding of what an inclusive education system should look like in Wales. To this end, researchers have had initial meetings with Welsh Government policy leads for the purpose of analysing ideas, concepts and discourses in key policy guidance documents. This proposal concerns the second phase of the project, which involved the gathering of stakeholder views of ‘generally available provision’ to provide insight into local discourses and support the identification of important next steps for policymakers. Research questions in relation to understandings about practice were developed, specifically:

-        What do education stakeholders believe is ‘generally available’ to all learners in Wales?

-        What do education stakeholders believe distinguishes practice as ‘additional learning provision?

-        What do education stakeholders understand by the term ‘inclusive education’?

In order to address research questions, focus group discussions were conducted with a range of education stakeholders. Stakeholders were asked to register their interest in response to a recruitment email from the Welsh Government ALN mailing list, and focus groups took place both online and in person. Interested participants were placed in groups based on their role and 10 groups were conducted altogether. Focus groups included ALN Coordinators (ALNCos) in primary and secondary schools, class teachers, further education lecturers and ALNCos, senior leaders, learning support assistants, local authority officers and Year 11 students. Wales has a bilingual system of education and focus groups included practitioners from both Welsh-medium and English-medium schools. The focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed. Analysis of transcripts involved content analysis combined with discourse analysis to allow exploration of how inclusive education is conceptualised by education stakeholders in Wales, but also how this relates to underlying ideologies. Content analysis was used to identify patterns, themes, and frequencies in descriptions of educational practice to provide a structured overview of how inclusion is viewed and enacted (Krippendorff, 2018). Discourse analysis was then applied to critically examine the meanings, ideologies and power relations embedded in stakeholders’ language and whether these challenged or reinforced existing hierarchies (Fairclough, 2013). Discourse strands centering on a common topic were identified and discussed within the research team. Given the slipperiness of the concept of inclusive education, of particular note were ‘discursive knots’ where several discourses were entangled within focus group discussions, discursive limits around what was sayable, and discursive events identified by participants as significant (Jäger and Maier, 2009).

Content analysis reveals that education stakeholders in Wales use a graduated approach to providing learning support. ‘Generally available’ support is made up of quality teaching practices available to all learners, but also more targeted provision for some learners, most notably, catch-up sessions for literacy, numeracy and emotional support. Additional learning provision was characterised by support described in terms of its intensity, ie. its duration, frequency or staffing commitment. Initial discourse analysis indicates two important discourse strands. The first of these concerns who or what is perceived as the focus of support, with some stakeholders viewing this as the learner and others as school structures and teachers’ professional development, something we have found previously in research (Conn and Hutt, 2020; Knight et al., 2022). A second discourse strand concerns beliefs about learning support and whether this can be standardised across schools and easily measured. This discourse encompassed both the belief that this is possible, but also the belief that education is too complex and dynamic for this to be the case. These findings are being used to develop a model of inclusive education in Wales to inform policymaking going forward. This along with opportunities and challenges of academic-policymaker partnership working will be presented with reference to the need for certainty and immediate, tangible outcomes within politics, and a contrasting requirement for measurable impact and income generation within the academy.

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