Childhood is dominated by school, with education widely regarded as a fundamental human right. Despite this, millions of children worldwide remain excluded from education. According to UNESCO, over 250 million children were out of school in 2018, and 20% of children and young people face exclusion from education daily. Zimbabwe is no exception, with significant numbers of children denied access to full and meaningful participation in education. In this presentation, I critically review the educational exclusion literature. Using the Southern African philosophy of hunhu/ubuntu, I explore the different forms, mechanisms, and meanings of educational exclusion to reach a working definition of the concept. I then use the Zimbabwean education system as an illustrative as study to explore the applicability of this definition.

Educational exclusion occurs for myriad reasons and takes multiple forms. Definitions and experiences of educational exclusion vary depending on context and a range of factors including but by no means limited to gender, socio-economic status, and urban/rural settings. While existing research in Zimbabwe and other similar contexts often frames exclusion as a matter of school attendance, I take a broader view of the phenomenon, emphasising in particular the following three features:

1. Exclusion is processual, not static.
2. Exclusion is a spectrum, not a binary categorisation.
3. Exclusion is a feature of the system, not of the child.

There have been increasing calls to develop a systems of mass education which better reflects the philosophies, ideologies and cultures of Zimbabwe as a way of resisting the neoliberal influences of global-capitalism and associated competitive-individualism. Hunhu (ubuntu), is a Southern African philosophy which highlights the importance of the community and emphasises relationships as fundamental to humanity. Hunhu asserts that an individual’s humanity is dependent on other humans – you are a person through your relationship with other people. This illuminates a particular aspect of human nature – the relational, the interconnectedness, the desire to belong. Humans need to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of community. This belonging may come from our families, our friendship groups, or our wider communities. Education can be conceptualised as having individualistic or collective purposes; at one end, it can be conceptualised as the process of becoming yourself, of subjectification, and at the other, the induction into a community or society. As such, in most modern societies, schools are key elements in this sense of belonging - they determine to a significant extent where and with whom we are able to feel like we belong.

I argue that current models of education prioritise individual success, through activities such as grading and competition, and therefore devalue the concept of the group. This approach to education has led to the criticism that education in Africa, and elsewhere, acts to alienate people from their cultural, epistemological, and geographical roots. In contrast, hunhu is intrinsically tied to a sense of belonging – to a family, a community. This necessitates a different framing of the purpose of education, one which prioritises a form of collective success. By emphasising the relationship between individuals and the collective, Hunhuism offers a bridge between individualistic and collective visions of education. From this perspective, failure is not centred on the individual but shared by the collective - “no one can be healthy when the community is sick”.

By applying Hunhu as a theoretical framework, this presentation not only contributes to the ongoing discourse on educational exclusion but also represents an opportunity for southern philosophies to inform global education policies. It challenges policymakers, educators, and researchers to move beyond access-based definitions of exclusion and towards a model that prioritise relational and collective educational outcomes and measures.

The presentation is concerned with the phenomenon of educational exclusion, which I understand as multi-levelled, processual, and multi-faceted. Educational exclusion is a phenomenon which has evolved over time and interacts with a broader, societal, ideological and cultural perspective. While the presentation is more theoretical than empirical, it sits within my PhD research, which explores the phenomenon of educational exclusion in Zimbabwe, both over time and across multiple levels. For the presentation itself I draw on two main sources of evidence to support the discussion: 1) A critical review of the international literature on educational exclusion. This literature review provides the foundations upon which a re-visioned definition of educational exclusion will be constructed, shaped by the philosophy of hunhu/ubuntu. 2) Documentary and policy analysis of both historical and contemporary educational policy in Zimbabwe. This analysis will enable an exploratory tracing of the development of the understanding of educational exclusion over time in Zimbabwe. Analysis will be comparative and iterative with the literature review. Following the trend in medicine, there has been an increasing push towards ‘evidence-based’ practice at all levels of the education sector. However, many authors have cautioned against the enticing aspiration that educational challenges can be ‘solved’ solely through measuring the correct indicators. Much research is necessarily values-driven, not purely evidence-based. It would be naïve to argue against the use of evidence, but this needs to be complemented by careful consideration of the values which underpin both research and practice. This presentation reports on a careful theoretical exploration of the phenomenon of educational exclusion, supported by empirical evidence.

Research in southern Africa, like many other settings in the global south or ‘developing countries’, has been criticised for focusing on a limited set of questions driven by an agenda set predominantly by institutions and researchers in the global north. Research on exclusion repeatedly addresses the same factors both framing educational exclusion as primarily a matter of school-attendance and individualising the discussion. Additionally, despite a growth in participatory methods and a push for more equitable knowledge production, theory remains heavily dominated by Global North. Hunhu represents a promising opportunity for powerful and impactful theory building driven by a Zimbabwean philosophy. This presentation seeks present an illustrative case study of the state of educational exclusion in Zimbabwe, to explore in broader terms what it means to be excluded from education. This discussion also highlights what the global education community, particularly the inclusive education movement, can learn from a vision of education driven by the relational and communal nature of humanity proposed by hunhu.

Ansell, N. (2002). Secondary Education Reform in Lesotho and Zimbabwe and the Needs of Rural Girls: Pronouncements, policy and practice. Comparative Education, 38(1), 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305006012013874 Atkinson, N. D. (1984). Education in Zimbabwe: The Historical Roots. Paedagogica Historica, 25(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/0030923850250101 Chitiyo, M., & Muwana, F. C. (2018). Positive Developments in Special Education in Zambia and Zimbabwe. International Journal of Whole Schooling, 14(1), 93–115. Daniels, H., Porter, J., & Thompson, I. (2022). What Counts as Evidence in the Understanding of School Exclusion in England? Frontiers in Education, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.929912 Datta, A. (1984). Education and Society: A Sociology of African Education. Macmillan. Dube, T., Ncube, S. B., Mapuvire, C. C., Ndlovu, S., Ncube, C., & Mlotshwa, S. (2021). Interventions to reduce the exclusion of children with disabilities from education: A Zimbabwean perspective from the field. Cogent Social Sciences, 7(1), 1913848. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2021.1913848 Eze, M. O. (2008). What is African Communitarianism? Against Consensus as a regulative ideal. South African Journal of Philosophy, 27(4), 386–399. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v27i4.31526 Hapanyengwi-Chemhuru, O. (2014). Hunhu: In Search of an Indigenous Philosophy for the Zimbabwean Education System. Journal of Indigenous Social Development, 3(1), 15. Kanyongo, G. Y. (2005). Zimbabwe’s public education system reforms: Successes and challenges. International Education Journal, 10. Kearney, A. (2011). What is Exclusion? (Vol. 14, pp. 9–26). Brill. https://brill.com/view/book/9789460914997/BP000003.xml Magumise, J., & Sefotho, M. M. (2020). Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Inclusive Education in Zimbabwe. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 24(5), 544–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2018.1468497 Metz, T. (2015). How the West Was One: The Western as individualist, the African as communitarian. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(11), 1175–1184. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2014.991502 Mukwambo, P. (2019). Human development and perceptions of secondary education in rural Africa: A Zimbabwean case study. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 0(0), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2019.1681936 Ngubane-Mokiwa, S. A. (2018). Ubuntu considered in light of exclusion of people with disabilities. African Journal of Disability, 7, 460–460. PubMed. https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v7i0.460 Slee, R. (2019). Belonging in an age of exclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 23(9), 909–922. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2019.1602366 E. Amoako & N. T. Assié-Lumumba (2018). Re-visioning education in Africa: Ubuntu-inspired education for humanity. Palgrave Macmillan. Wiseman, A. W. (2010). The Uses of Evidence for Educational Policymaking: Global Contexts and International Trends. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X09350472