Prospects (2008) 38:6576

DOI 10.1007/s11125-008-9052-3

OPEN FILE

Inclusive education and social inequality: an update

of the question and some geographical considerations

Xavier Rambla Ferran Ferrer Aina Tarabini Antoni Verger

Published online: 26 July 2008

UNESCO IBE 2008

Abstract The aim of this article is to review the current state of inclusive education in
the world and to suggest a few relevant considerations. The first section Two parallel
concerns retraces the inescapable connections between the educational aspects of
inclusive education and more general concerns regarding inequality. The second section
Inclusive education in academic publications scrutinizes academic publications and
identifies two major themes among their contents: at first sight the internal transformations
occurring in schools attract attention, but subsequently the territorial environment also
gives rise to some concern. The third section Inclusive education in the publications of
international organizations notes our search criteria for sifting through the documentation
of the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO. The IBE/UNESCO workshops reflect varied,
though converging interpretations of the concept of inclusive education in different parts of
the world. All the official publications, however, tend to concentrate on the internal
dynamics of schools, and there are not many that take a look at relations between inclusive
education and public policy. Our last section The geographical dimension of inclusive
education puts forward a few arguments in favour of paying more attention to inclusive

Original language: Spanish.

This article is one of the outputs of the research projects financed by the Spanish Ministry of Education and
Science under the title Mas alla de la focalizacion: educacion, desarrollo y polticas contra la pobreza
(Beyond focalization: education, development and poverty-reduction policies) SEJ2005-04235/SOCI.

X. Rambla
F. Ferrer (&)
A. Tarabini
A. Verger

Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, Edifici G-6, Campus Bellaterra,
08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: ferran.ferrer@uab.cat

X. Rambla
e-mail: xavier.rambla@uab.cat

A. Tarabini
e-mail: aina.tarabini@uab.es

A. Verger
e-mail: a.verger@uva.nl

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66 X. Rambla et al.

education at the local and national levels. The main reasons for highlighting the local
dimension arise from the combined factors of social deprivation, the need to co-ordinate
measures taken in schools and the possibility of allowing a significant opening for com-
munity participation. The main reasons for paying attention to the national dimension
relate to possible synergies between inclusive education and the expansion of education
(for example, is schooling progressing at the same pace at different educational levels?), as
well as between inclusive education and social protection (for example, do the many
educational conditions applied to cash transfers have consistent pedagogic implications?).

Keywords Inclusive education
Social inequalities
Education policy

Globalisation
Comparative education

Two parallel concerns

Many education systems have given inclusive education greater emphasis in recent years
(Mitchell 2005). The idea arose three decades ago, following criticism that special edu-
cation was classifying students according to their supposed disabilities. It has gained
ground since and gradually merged with the goal of achieving basic education for all.
Alongside a linear aggregation of pedagogic themes and a gradual extension of the groups
concerned, the process has also revealed many other implications. In this article we intend
in particular to analyze the conclusions reached by many authors and official organizations
regarding the connections between inclusive education and social inequalities.
We should briefly recall how the current interest arose concerning these inequalities,
divisions and uneven distributions of resources. While the 1990s were excessively opti-
mistic regarding the possibility of achieving social equality in conditions of material
prosperity and institutional equilibrium, since 2000 it has been admitted that inequalities
have persisted in spite of economic growth. Furthermore, it is suspected that these
inequalities may produce many perverse effects. According to a number of international
reports, they lead to disparities in the allocation of water supplies, education, income,
health and technology, and between social classes, genders, ethnic majorities and minor-
ities, autonomous and disabled persons and even between regional and global territories
(UNDP 19902007; UNSR 2006).
Since the end of the 20th century priority has been increasingly given to building an
educational model without exclusions, rooted in human rights-inspired ethical beliefs
(Parrilla 2002). In order to be consistent, this proposal must consider the school system as a
whole and must aim for a much more complex style of management in education, taking
into consideration both the situation within the classroom or school, and educational
policies which either favour or prevent educational and social exclusion in schools (Echeita
and Sandoval 2002). Potentially it embodies the hope of overcoming educational
inequalities that have so far received only very fragmentary attention.
The educational approaches that share this ideal have been gaining in scope and
intensity. While the initial aim was educating students with disabilities in the best way
possible, that concern encountered the poor performances of the less-advantaged social
classes and weaker ethnic minorities, as well as institutional obstacles to girls schooling
and the opposition between school practice and co-educational policies (Parrilla 2002).
When it was realized that open access to schooling could not in itself achieve equality, the
egalitarian reaction initially consisted of providing additional classes, food and school

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materials for the less-fortunate groups. When this solution too proved inadequate, it
sparked a more intensive and qualitative psycho-pedagogic response, which attributed
academic failures to distortions in the teaching and learning processes. According to this
analysis, the best ways of combating inequality consisted of adapting curricula and
introducing co-operative learningalthough once again these hopes were disappointed. A
third solution was then sought in compensatory policies, which aimed to improve the
catalyzing factors of the learning environment by feeding more human and material
resources to the worse-affected areas. Obstacles have yet again clouded the prospects of
these compensatory programmes, but it is hoped that inclusive education will relaunch
them through cross-cutting measures encompassing education, social protection, health
care, urban planning and community development (Aguerrondo 2007).

Inclusive education in academic publications

Glancing through the academic publications,1 we may identify two major themes, namely:
organizational change in schools and the interaction between schools and their surround-
ings. Of course, we do not claim to have conducted a thorough review of two such major
educational research themes in such a limited number of pagesthat would be impossi-
blebut we can try to outline their relevance to the educational measures deployed to
combat social inequalities.
In many countries studies have reported the considerable effect of the socio-economic
background of individuals on their academic performance (OECD/UNESCO/UIS 2003)
and the successful completion of their studies (Breen and Jonsson 2005). This is how they
explain the social divisions which normally hamper the access and learning of the lower
classes, ethnic minorities and groups with disabilities in basic schooling, andin several
parts of the worldthe access of girls to compulsory schooling. They also point out that
scholastic performance depends on the institutional characteristics of the schooling system
(Goldstein and Woodhouse 2000), while they do not overlook the possibility that social
origin and school organization may produce combined effects on educational results.
The main teaching method of inclusive education uses these potential organizational
effects to promote more egalitarian school learning. Its best-known reference tool is the
Index for Inclusion (Booth and Ainscow 2002). In essence, this method suggests that the
schools teaching teams, with the support of external advisers, should revise their pro-
fessional terminology and seek to introduce new key concepts, especially inclusion
which entails covering the whole diversity of studentsand barriers to learning and
participation, instead of concentrating on educational shortcomings (Ainscow 2005a, b).
The idea is to convince teachers that, instead of attributing problems to the intrinsic
characteristics of pupils, they should innovate by removing barriers to learning and par-
ticipation. The Index proceeds in five stages: initiation; analysis of the school; preparation
of a plan for improvement; implementation of improvements; and evaluation of the

1
In order to set a limit to our documentary base, we undertook the same cross-reference search of the
descriptors inclusive education and social inequalities in several bibliographical databases. We con-
sulted DIALNET (Gateway to Spanish Scientific Output), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center),
FRANCIS (Bibliographical compilation of INIST (Institut de lInformation Scientifique et Technique) of the
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)), the Institute for Scientific Information Web of
Knowledge, and the online periodicals library REDALYC (Red de Revistas Cientificas de America Latina,
El Caribe, Espana y Portugal). We also scanned several issues of the International journal of inclusive
education.

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68 X. Rambla et al.

process. It also suggests ways of enhancing programme evaluation by taking account of the
objective record of performances and the general goals of creating new organizational
cultures, devising policies internally and facilitating the introduction of inclusive teaching
practices.
Put in these terms, organizational change in schools may affect inequalities. In the first
place, if these methods are adopted, the school system must take account of the material
and social factors that generate academic failure in all countries of the world. This point
raises the issue of the admission of students with disabilities to ordinary classes, as well as
the role played by schools in the development of the American inner cities and the
French banlieues, in the urbanization of self-built working-class neighbourhoods in the
urban conglomerations of southern Europe, in policies in favour of the educational inte-
gration of immigrant groups, in reducing the economic divide in Latin American countries,
or in offering opportunities to rural populations in Latin America and in Sub-Saharan
Africa and southern Asia. It then becomes clear, subject to inevitable variations in different
parts of the world, that inclusive education will have a transforming effect on urban
ghettos, on low-income poverty, on the lack of health care, on overcrowded housing, the
shortage of drinking water and on distances and transport for schoolchildren. In the second
place, according to this same approach, schools must invent their own pedagogic tools to
make sure that everyone is included, by overturning barriers arising from entrenched
professional attitudes, class, sexist or racist prejudice, or from cultural misunderstandings.
This may be achieved if the teachers adopt a collective approach, with significant student
and family participation in the daily routine, the projects for new curricula and in medium-
term institutional planning.
There is one undeniable conclusion that emerges from our review of the question,
namely the striking predominance of this approach in most academic texts according to the
descriptors inclusive education and inclusive schools (Nicolaidou and Ainscow 2004;
Ainscow 2007; Ainscow et al. 2006; Carrington and Robinson 2006; Heung 2006;
Remedios and Allan 2006). Slightly different connotations appear from one country to
another. For example, a number of investigations have been carried out in Australia into
productive pedagogies as a means of achieving fair ways of organizing curriculum
content and orienting relations between teachers and students, with a view to neutralizing
inequality factors in school learning, as observed by Basil Bernstein (Johnston and Hayes
2007; Lingard and Mills 2007; Lingard 2007; Marsh 2007; Mills and Keddie 2007; Munns
2007). Starting from the same assumptions, but following different approaches, other
English-speaking authors use narrative methods and analysis to identify pedagogic
obstacles to learning (Allan 2006; Goodley 2007; Goodley and Clough 2004; Lavia 2007;
Mueller 2006; Sikes et al. 2007).
It is easy to spot variations in other parts of the world. For example, in Chile similar
principles have served as markers for the 900 Escuelas (900 Schools) and Liceo Para
Todos (High School for All) programmes, intended for underprivileged primary and sec-
ondary schools (Raczynski 2006). In Spain there are many academic references to Ainscow
(Arnaiz 2002; Morina and Parrilla 2006), while the PROA (Plan for Strengthening,
Guidance and Support) has pursued inclusive policies since 2004 (Manzanares 2007), and
learning communities have applied this school model for the last decade (Puigvert and
Santacruz 2006). In the United States the accelerated schools philosophy was already
very similar in the 1980s (Accelerated Schools Project 2007); and in France the 1997
reform of the Priority Education Zones (ZEPs) was based on a strategic plan of commit-
ment to success, which also required a substantial preference for inclusion (Chauveau and
Rogovas-Chauveau 1999).

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As far as the worldwide academic panorama is concerned, we noted an association

between inclusive education and a concept of social equity that looked beyond groups with
disabilities (Artiles et al. 2006; Blanco 2006; Taylor and Henry 2003). It has been argued
that inclusive education has helped to consolidate the transition to democracy in South
Africa (Naicker 2006). Nevertheless, many of the contributions on inclusive education in
the global literature, rather than proposing to implement the policy according to a par-
ticular method, express regret at its absence in the less-developed countries. One important
issue mentioned is the devastating impact of human poverty on the living conditions of
persons with disabilities, while academics also express concern at the distorted interpre-
tations of the institutional conditions and obstacles that prevent the introduction of
inclusive education (Martin and Solorzano 2003; Mittler 2004; Eleweke and Rodda 2002;
Singal 2005, 2006; Kuyini and Desai 2007). One very significant aspect is the case of the
segregation of Roma children in special schools in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and
Slovakia (ERRC 2007).
The second major theme of academic literature on inclusive education is the observation
of interactions between schools and their local surroundings. This is one of the new aspects
of the concept and recommendations on how to configure inclusive environments appear
somewhere between compensatory priorities and the cross-cutting aims of programmes
intended to promote equality (Aguerrondo 2007). It is reasonable to believe that, if the
scope of initiatives is restricted to the school environment, there is a considerable risk that
the benefits will be limited to enumerating discrepancies between events inside and outside
the school system.
This second academic issue is not raised as frequently as that of organizational change
in schools. Generally speaking, comments come under the descriptor urban education.
This concept is well established in the United States and takes on specific connotations in
France. These situations are familiar to specialists. In other contexts, the same concern
raises questions of co-ordination between official agencies working alongside each other
within the same urban areas (Milbourne 2005), where such policies may serve to launch
processes of community development backed by the broad participation of a number of
institutions (Dyson and Raffo 2007; Nevarez and Wood 2007). The same considerations
apply to the socio-educational concern for the prevention of violence (Buenda et al. 2004;
Franchi 2004) and to institutional decisions with respect to education that are likely to
perpetuate and sometimes aggravate the disadvantages experience by young people in
some neighbourhoods (Le Fur 2005; Barr et al. 2006).

Inclusive education in the publications of international organizations

In recent months, UNESCOs International Bureau of Education (UNESCO/IBE) has

organized several workshops on inclusive education in different parts of the world. Though
incomplete, these discussions have succeeded in outlining a map of its implementation
reflecting a positive reaction subject to some opposition in the Nordic countries and Latin
America, a growing debate on the subject in Asia, a different interpretation in Sub-Saharan
Africa, and considerable reluctance on the part of countries in Eastern Europe, the Com-
munity of Independent States and the Arab States (UNESCO/IBE 2007a, b, c, d).
The specialists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden expressed a
commitment to inclusive education covering all the dimensions of the education system,
including strategy and guidelines, curricula, management and leadership, structures, tea-
cher training, working methods and school culture, general and specialized support,

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teaching materials, learning environment and evaluation (Halinen 2007). In Latin America,
discussions also covered a similar broad spectrum, though with different implications. The
key theme there was the connection between social inclusion and inclusive education,
which reflects the unease felt about the negative effects of neo-liberal policies on exclusion
and inequality due to the fact that school education is unsuited to the needs of modern
societies (Opertti 2007).
In Asia the concept has been fairly well received, although substantial obstacles remain.
Participants in the workshop suggested a distinction between old and new inclusive
education, the first being restricted to the special treatment of disadvantaged groups, while
the second remains open to new socio-educational ideas. One very significant case is that
of Sub-Saharan Africa, since the participants at that workshop placed greater emphasis on
the close complementarity between inclusive education and Education for All. The dra-
matic circumstances of those countries impose certain priorities on any inclusive education
policy. They have to aim not only to include groups with special needs that are excluded,
but even more to take up such challenges such as the marginalization of girls, the HIV/
AIDS epidemic, the needs of nomadic populations, the vast numbers of orphans left behind
by endless warfare and, of course, the large numbers of street children and those who
simply have no access to schooling.
In contrast to these more widely ranging discussions, as we said earlier, current attitudes
in the Community of Independent States, Eastern Europe and the Arab States are much
more reluctant. In these countries, inclusive education is understood as referring to the
education of groups with disabilities and refugee children. Occasionally account is taken of
the problems of integrating the former in ordinary schools, but little attention is paid to the
debates about social inclusion that are taking place in the rest of the world (Bubshait 2007;
Opertti 2007).
Other types of international organizations, in addition to joining in discussions with
governments at these workshops, have also put forward their own definitions of education
and inclusion. Essentially, UNESCO and the United Nations system subscribed to and
promoted the notions of inclusive education, while the World Bank and OECD adopted a
much more hesitant approach.
For UNESCO (2005a, b), inclusive education provides a way of dealing with diversity
among schoolchildren that is dynamic, comprehensive and rooted in common sense. It
requires a change of attitude insofar as technical and organizational inertias create many
barriers to learning. The aim should be to put into practice the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which at the same time gives full meaning to the broader notion of basic
Education for All. There is therefore a need to design more flexible and accessible cur-
ricula, which are gender sensitive and take account of cultural diversity. Changes must be
introduced in all education systems and in daily practices in classrooms, in line with
recommendations aimed at allowing greater independence to educational establishments,
giving better support to teaching staff, improving teacher training and making school
timetables more flexible. In consultation with Mel Ainscow, UNESCO (2004, booklet 5)
has adopted a set of tools for managing inclusive classes that are adapted to learning, with a
view to changing schools through an approach that adopts co-operative teaching and
collective learning.
The World Bank attaches strategic importance to education as a means of generating the
human capital needed by knowledge economies. Despite the fact that the concept of
inclusive education appears in some of its publications (Peters 2003, 2004), rarely is any
official definition given. Any direct references basically refer to the need for educational
and organizational reforms of schools where students have special educational needs, or

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whose family income is below the poverty threshold. They also recommend greater par-
ticipation by the private sector in the education offered to these groups (World Bank 2005,
2006).
OECD, in turn, hopes that education will be a very beneficial resource for the less-
advanced economies in regard to the use of knowledge. In concrete terms, it advocates the
generation of comprehensive national systems of training and lifelong learning. It hardly
departs, however, from the more restricted version of inclusive education (OECD 1997,
1999). Apart from applying the label to special education, it is only in a compilation of
case studies that it is taken to cover students with disabilities and learning difficulties
(OECD 2006). It is not surprising, therefore, that only vague recommendations are issued
on the subject, restricted to a few educational aspects.

The geographical dimension of inclusive education

Thus far, we may extract three general impressions. The first of these, logically, refers to
the global scope of this educational approach. It originated in British academic circles, with
a few individual Australian contributions, but its influence has spread to the whole of the
Western world, and it has been well received by UNESCO. The specialists are starting to
write about the conditions of poverty that affect groups with disabilities in countries that
have achieved less human development, and they have called attention to the possibility
that some interpretations of the principle of inclusion may be distorted. The UNESCO/IBE
workshops have provided a world map of inclusive education: according to this it is well
known in Western countries, practised in the Scandinavian countries, discussed positively
in Latin America and in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is making a tentative appearance in Asia.
The Community of Independent States, the Arab States and Eastern Europe, on the other
hand, often confuse inclusive education with special education.
Most of the published articles and books emanating from academic circles and inter-
national organizations focus their inclusive approach on the educational activities of the
school system. As we commented earlier, this is the keynote of the book by Booth and
Ainscow (2002) and Embracing Diversity: Toolkit for creating inclusive, learning-friendly
environments (UNESCO 2004).
Lastly, all sources relate inclusive school education to other spheres of political action
and social intervention. In this respect they highlight a definition of inclusive policy that
could overcome the problems of earlier compensatory policies (Aguerrondo 2007),
urban educational themes and the hesitant but reiterated connections with development
expressed by the World Bank and OECD. This point takes us to a second geographical
consideration, added to our survey of regional reactions. In our opinion, the geographical
dimension of inclusive education should be broadened beyond the inner confines of schools
to the level of local policy and national policy. A geographical dimension expresses how
close or distant a phenomenon is with respect to immediate, daily and adjacent reality, and
passing from one dimension to another will affect the phenomenon significantly (Santos
1996).
Generally speaking, although the Index for Inclusion (Booth and Ainscow 2002)
changes the pedagogic practices and organization of many schools, educational change
does not contribute much to the educational potential on the local (or urban) scale
referred to by many education and development specialists, academics and technicians
(Tonucci 2000; Fung and Wright 2003). In this respect there are two local implications of
inclusive education that need to be mentioned.

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First, the problem of overcoming many learning obstacles that arise from social divi-
sions in the local public space can and must be addressed in the local political debate.
Thus, many schools that have adopted inclusive education in order to speed up the learning
of disadvantaged groups recognize the need to co-ordinate their efforts in order to achieve
their objectives, since any benefits that they achieve will be very limited if they are
restricted to isolated initiatives (Warren 2005). Local policy is also the most appropriate
level for identifying new strategies for combating urban and school segregation. For
example, in France school zones no longer reflect local diversity (or mixite) as was the
case 50 years ago, since urban changes have altered the picture to such an extent that the
effects of the policy are even perverse in some cases. In this respect, new political attitudes
are emerging with implications for inclusive education: one of these has taken the form of
local alliances between middle-class families and teaching teams in order to maintain
social diversity in some State schools, while new efforts at inclusion are being undertaken
to improve educational performance (Zanten 2002). Another is the pursuit of agreements
between the central government, provincial departments and municipalities to draw up new
school maps that take account of present day urban realities (Felouzis et al. 2005).
Secondly, local policy tends to favour citizen participation, which is beneficial to the
less-advantaged groups. Because it encourages participation, therefore, inclusive education
has been combined with educational planning through the use of participative budgets in
Brazil and in India, and through co-ordination schemes among public agencies that
encourage broad participation in several North American cities (Fishman and McLaren
2000; Fung and Wright 2003).
Democratic policy should also approach inclusive education at the national level. The
gist of the recommendations concerning inclusive education addressed to governments was
reflected in the UNESCO symposia and documents (2004, 2005a, b). If the aim of the
policy is to establish Education for All and the consolidation of human rights, then it must
obviously be taken into account by all democratic States. Besides this general consider-
ation, inclusive education can also take advantage of synergies with other spheres of public
policies. Thus, in the last decade several cash transfer programmes have been introduced
which are conditional on the schooling and vaccination of the children of poor families,
examples being Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Malawi,
Mexico and Nicaragua, although there is still a lack of orientation that might add at least
some pedagogic substance to the supposedly educational aims of those programmes
(Reimers et al. 2006). Moreover, while a statistical indicator has already been worked out
for basic education in primary schooling, the statistical reports available reflect substantial
discrepancies between the expansion of primary education, the delays affecting pre-school
education and, frequently, the bottlenecks due to the lack of places in secondary education
(UNESCO 2006).

Conclusions

To sum up, we have surveyed a large sample of academic reviews, books and international
official publications in order to map out the spread of inclusive education in different parts
of the world. We have observed that the way these ideas are received differs from one
region to another, since while it stimulates debate in many, it encounters reluctance in
others. Moreover, we have noted that most inclusive education proposals are restricted to
action within the schools themselves.

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We then arrived at the conclusion that, as a result of the combined factors of social
deprivation and citizen participation, inclusive education policies need to be designed and
implemented at a local scale, while national governments should pay due attention to
potential synergies with educational expansion and social protection policies. This
observation is relevant both to the methodology of research into inclusive education and
the public policies that are intended to put it into practice. On the first of these aspects, it is
clear that the field of research is usually restricted to education systems within individual
States (Dale and Robertson 2007). The effect of this is to exclude the international cir-
culation of political and educational ideas and to ignore the surrounding social
environment. Nevertheless, according to our review of the question, this external influence
could be one of the main incentives for adopting inclusive education programmes in many
countries, where the diversity of social circumstances lends them specific connotations.
With regard to the second aspect, it might be worth recommending that consideration also
be given in educational discussions to the inclusive angle of progressive taxation, decent
employment, the urbanization of shanty towns, the universality of social security and the
elimination of child labour.

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Author Biographies

Xavier Rambla (Spain) is Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Rambla is Coordinator of the Seminari dAna`lisi de les Poltiques Socials [Social Policy Analysis Work-
shop] and researcher for the Interdisciplinary Group on Educational Policy (UAB-UB: www.ub.edu/gipe).

Ferran Ferrer (Spain) is Professor of Comparative Education at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
(UAB). He acts as Coordinator of the Educational Policies and Training Analysis Group and Member of the
Interdisciplinary Group on Educational Policy and of the European Group for Research on Equity in
Education Systems. He (Author and co-author) has published more than 20 books and 80 articles for
specialized reviews. He has collaborated with various international organizations: UNESCO, IBE, OEI,
CEDEFOP, CESCR and the Council of Europe. He has also taught in several European universities. Former
President of the Spanish Comparative Education Society (20022006).

Aina Tarabini (Spain) is LUC Assistant Professor of sociology at the UAB and researcher for the Seminari
dAna`lisi de les Poltiques Socials and the Interdisciplinary Group on Educational Policy.

Antoni Verger (Spain) is Post-doctorate researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and
International Development Studies of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and researcher for the Seminari
dAna`lisi de les Poltiques Socials and the Interdisciplinary Group on Educational Policy.

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