This document summarizes a presentation by Dr. Susan Peters on inclusive education and public policies. The presentation discusses key dimensions of exclusion from education, including poverty, disability status, and structural barriers. It also examines indicators used to inform inclusive education policies, such as demographics and funding formulas. The presentation argues for a human rights approach to reform that promotes social protection, accessibility, participation, capacity building, and accountability. Comprehensive reform is needed across educational, diversity, and social policies to truly achieve inclusive education. The presentation draws on lessons from international best practices and case studies.

1. UNESCO: Inclusive Education
and Public Policies
Susan Peters, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Speters@msu.edu

2. Anything is possible: reaching
for
the
dream

3. Question
#1
• What are the current dimensions of the phenomenon of
exclusion from and within education? What kind of
indicators and data are used to inform inclusive
education policies?

4. Tomasevski’s Exclusion from
Education from A to W
๏ Abandoned children ๏ Illegal working children
๏ ๏ Street children
๏ Abused children Illiterate children
๏ Trafficked children
๏ Arrested children ๏ Imprisoned children ๏ Traveller children
๏ Asylum-seeking children ๏ Indigenous children ๏ War-affected children
๏ Beggars
๏ Institutionalized children ๏ Working children
๏ Married children
๏ Child labourers
๏ Mentally ill children
๏ Child mothers ๏ Migrant children
๏ Child prostitutes ๏ Nomadic children
๏ Children born out of wedlock ๏ Orphans
๏ Conscripted children
๏ Poor children
๏ Pregnant girls
๏ Delinquent children
๏ Refugee children
๏ Detained children ๏ Rural children
๏ Disabled children ๏ Sans-papiers children
๏ Homeless children ๏ Sexually exploited children
๏ HIV-infected children
๏ Sold and purchased children
๏ Stateless children

5. Dimensions of
Exclusion
 Poverty: “If we fail to ask why people are
poor, we cannot tackle poverty when it
results from denials of human rights.”
 Status markers: see Tomasevski’s list
 Structural correlates of poverty:
Resource-poor schools, poor or non-
existent affordable health care & social
services, social structures of educational
settings such as attitudinal barriers to
participation

6. Indicators used to inform
inclusive education policies
‣ demographics such as geographic area, age-
groups, gender, race, economic status
‣ culturally, politically, and socially constructed
categories of disability
‣ funding formulas and policies that may delimit
or proscribe overall numbers such as caps on
overall numbers, and policies related to
revenue and access to services

7. Examples from the United States
40% of revenues allocated to special education
are spent on diagnosis and identification.
50% of 6 million children receive special ed
services under the label of learning disability.
80% of all children attending public schools
could be labeled LD depending on policy
definitions.
Federal funds are capped at 12% of the total
school population, delimiting overall numbers.

8. Key issues: culture, power and
vision
• We need to ask tough questions about the role of
culture and power, and the visions that inform the
policies we create which impact children and youth
who have historically faced great adversity.

9. Question #2
Which inclusive education issues have
been, are, or are going to be relevant for
educational policies in your country?
9

10. Market-based
view of education
• a. Schools exist to prepare productive citizens in the global
market place.
• b. Productive citizens perform well in core subjects of
reading, writing, math and science.
• c. Performance is best measured by standardized tests that
are aligned with grade level expectations set by the nation/state
government in the core subjects.
• d. All students must achieve the same level of proficiency
set by the nation/state government and within a set period of
time (per year by grade level).

11. Consequences of market-based view
of education
✓pressures to exclude low-performing students
✓increased drop-out rates, retentions, reduced graduation rates
✓ability-tracking
✓migration of qualified teachers to higher performing schools,
lack of qualified teachers in low-performing schools, narrowed
curriculum
✓standardization of performance leading to education that fails to
address individual differences and learning styles
✓emphasis on outcomes that fails to address instructional
processes and inputs needed for quality education

12. Examples from the United States
 Michigan reported more than 1500 failing schools in 2003.
Michigan’s response was to redefine AYP by lowering the
percentage of students required to pass state exams from 75% to
42%, reducing overnight the number of failing schools from 1500 to
216.
 Reports from several states indicate that higher numbers of failing
schools are reported every year (most in urban areas). Qualified and
experienced teachers are migrating out of these schools, creating a
fundamental and inequitable lack of opportunity for students to
achieve.
 High drop-out rates of low achievers have been reported. The US
has not improved graduation rates for 25 years, and graduation rates
are now going down as requirements for an educated workforce are
going steeply up.
12

13. Examples: continued
States graduation rate of 71% for African American students in
the class of 2002 dropped to 59.5% in 2003. (Darling-Hammond,
2004: 21)
States showing the steepest increases in tests scores have the
highest retention and dropout rates. (The “Texas Miracle” was
accomplished when a freshman class of 1,000 dwindled to fewer
than 300 students by senior year. The miracle is that not one
dropout was reported. (Darling-Hammond, 2004: 21)
Three times as many 3rd graders and six times as many 6th
graders have been classified as in need of special education since
accountability policies were put in place (White & Rosenbaum,
2008:102).

14. Important dimensions of inclusive
education policy
Schools are not equally resourced
Children come to school with significant
disadvantages of poor health and poverty
School improvement is best achieved
through systems of reward, not sanctions
Tracking and segregation have
devastating consequences for children
Children and youth have individual
differences, talents, and levels of ability

15. Key issue: alternatives to
market-based education
What are the alternatives to market-based
assumptions about education?
This question forces attention on an even
more basic question: What should be the
purposes of education in schools? (Education
for whom? To what ends?)

16. INCLUSION OF BLIND CHILDREN IN
A REGULAR CLASS
CARTAGENA
SPECIAL CLASSROOM FOR
BLINDED CHILDREN IN A
REGULAR SCHOOL

17. Question
#3
• What groups are considered to be most vulnerable
to various forms of exclusion from and within
education? Who are the excluded groups that
current policies have yet to take into account?

18. The most vulnerable
It is predicted that by the year 2025, the number of people with
disabilities will have risen from the current 600 million to 900 million
worldwide, of which 650 million will be in developing countries.
Only 1-2 percent of disabled people in countries of the South
experience equity in terms of basic access to education.
The Dakar Framework for Action places a special emphasis on these
children as among the most vulnerable, and clearly sets inclusive
education as a key strategy to address them. Current policies do not
take these children into account.
J. D. Wolfensohn, recent past president of the World Bank, observed
that “addressing disability is a significant part of reducing poverty.”

19. Key issue: turning
problems into
resources
 Consider this: If marginalized children are
denied educational opportunities, then it is the
lack of education, and not their differences that
limit their opportunities. This consideration
begs the question: What would happen if
policy-makers considered these children as
resources instead of sources of problems? As
investments instead of expenses?

20. Questio
n #4
• In what ways should current educational
reforms address inclusive education?

21. Human Rights Paradigm
A rights-based approach within a broadened
human-rights paradigm of inclusive
education must be adopted that includes 6
principles:
social protection, accessibility, participatory
decision-making, control/capacity building,
consciousness raising, two-way
accountability.
21

22. Principle #1: Social Protection
✓emphasizes not only education rights, but the pre-requisites needed to
exercise these rights—adequate health care, family welfare, and basic
needs of food and shelter.

23. Principle #2: Accessibility
✓concerned with identification and removal of barriers, not
only physical, but attitudinal, organizational, and
distributive.

24. Inclusive Education Schools have:
ACCESSIBLE RAMPS ACCESSIBLE FURNITURE
ACCESSIBLE
ACCESSIBLE RESOURCES
PLAYGROUNDS

25. Principle #3: Participatory
Decision-making
✓Inclusive education is a process that recognizes the
value and dignity of marginalized children/youth
and their inalienable right to self-determination.
Decision-making and capacity-building both
require the meaningful and active participation of
these individuals to effect this principle.

26. Principle #4: Control/Capacity
Building
✓Under conditions of scarce resources, priorities and
values influence capacity. The cost of providing
education for people with disabilities is not as costly as
the costs to society for failing to provide education.
Natural resources and community involvement through
coordination and collaboration are sources of support that
are largely underutilized and would greatly enhance
capacity to provide education for all.

27. Principle #5: Consciousness
Raising
✓It is at the point of
discrimination that the cycle of
poverty and disability can be
broken. Negative attitudes
inherent in a charity/deficit
approach to disability constitute
arguably the most significant
barriers to equity.

28. Principle #6: Two-way accountability
✓Accountability for outcomes rests not only with
students, but with schools. Opportunity to Learn
Standards such as measures of teacher quality,
access to a relevant and appropriate curriculum,
materials and resources should be incorporated in
accountability standards.

29. Three types of reform
Interface of three types of reform for a
comprehensive agenda on social inclusion, social
protection and inclusive education:
Educational Reform, Diversity Reform, and Social
Reform

30. COLOMBIA
FEDAR
EDUCATION BASED ON ARTS
“Inclusion at the Inverse”

31. Key issue: comprehensive
reform
 Consider this: Do our fiscal/policy priorities
say more about our values and our
philosophical commitment to education for
marginalized and excluded children than they
do about our capacities to provide education?
Do conditions of marginalized children at the
edge of a society reveal more about the state
and progress of a society than conditions at the
middle?

32. Voices of Children!
“We are not the sources of problems. We are the
resources that are needed to solve them. We are not
expenses, we are investments. We are the children
of the world and despite our different backgrounds
we share a common reality. We are united in our
struggle to make the world a better place for all.”
– Opening address at the UN Special Session on Children, May 2002. Ms. Gabriela
Arrieta (Bolivia) and Ms. Audrey Cheynut (Monaco)

33. Conclusion
The ways in which we allocate
resources reflect our beliefs about the
value of education of all children, and
particularly for marginalized children.
Our values and priorities say more
about our commitment to education
than they do about our capacities to
provide education.

34. Inclusive
Education: The
Way Forward
 rights-based approach within a broadened human-
A
rights paradigm of inclusive education must be adopted
that includes 6 principles:
social protection, accessibility, participatory decision-
making, control/capacity building, consciousness raising,
two-way accountability.
Interface of three types of reform for a comprehensive
agenda on social inclusion, social protection and
inclusive education:
Educational Reform, Diversity Reform, and Social
Reform

35. Study Grounded in Lessons from
International Best Practices
- Dr. Susan Peters, World Bank Study

36. Book recommended

37. Acknowledgments
 Thanks to Richard Pavlak for creating the
format for this presentation
 Thanks to Laura Oliver for her assistance
in collecting data for this report
 Thanks to Marisol Moreno for her
contributions from Colombia
 Thanks to all the children and students
who inform and motivate my work
37