Assessing the inclusivity of three mainstream secondary schools in England: challenges and dilemmas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notion of inclusion has gained momentum worldwide, with most countries around the world embracing inclusive policies in their educational systems. However, there is still an ongoing debate as to what is inclusion and hence, the consequent challenge of coming up with an agreed definition, which could then be used to plan for and subsequently, evaluate, inclusion. This study adds to our understanding of inclusion by contrasting objective (i.e. School Census Statistics) and subjective (i.e. self-report questionnaire) measures of inclusivity in three mainstream secondary schools in England and by comparing the perceptions of school inclusivity of different groups of educational practitioners and pupils. The results of this study indicate that inclusion is a ‘slippery’ construct as the perception of inclusion of educational practitioners was found to be affected by their role at school while pupil perception on this matter depended upon their SEND category. However, despite these subjective differences in the way inclusion is perceived, there was also substantial agreement across the different categories of participants with regard to the relative ranking of inclusivity across the three schools suggesting that coming up with overarching themes on what is inclusion is achievable. The article ends with explaining the benefits of reaching an agreed definition at a national level.