Open File on lnclusive Education - Support Materials for Managers and Administrators
This Open File is intended to support all those who are concerned with promoting inclusive education in their countries. In particular, it offers a means whereby administrators and decision-makers in different countries can draw on international experience in guiding their own countries’ systems towards inclusion.The users of the Open File are likely to be staff with leadership responsibilities working in national education ministries, local government, district services and resource centres, voluntary organisations, NGOs and so on.
The Open File is not primarily concerned with national policy-making on the one hand or with classroom practice on the other. Both of these are essential considerations in the development of inclusive education. However, national policy is a matter for national governments, while classroom practice and issues of internal school development
and organisation have been dealt with very effectively in UNESCO’s earlier Teacher Education Resource Pack: Special Needs in the Classroom, which is drawn upon throughout the Open File.
The Open File begins at the point where a policy commitment to the principle of inclusive education has already been made. In some cases, this will be an unequivocal commitment on the part of national government, which may already be embodied in formal policy statements, or even in legislation. In other cases, the commitment will be less formalised, or will exist only at local level in particular communities, or will come in the first instance from NGOs rather than from the state. Whatever the source and strength of that commitment, the Open File asks how it can be nurtured and developed so that, over time, it can lead to a fully-functioning inclusive system.
It begins by setting out briefly, in part 2 of this Introduction, the rationale for inclusive education and indicating some of the milestones in its development. It then addresses the challenges outlined above through a series of nine topics.
They are:
l Managing the transition to inclusive education (Topic 1)
l Professional development for inclusive education (Topic 2)
l Assessment in inclusive systems (Topic 3)
l Organising support in inclusive systems (Topic 4)
l Families and communities in inclusive systems (Topic 5)
l Developing an inclusive curriculum (Topic 6)
l Resourcing and funding inclusive schools (Topic 7)
l Managing transitions in inclusive systems (Topic 8)
l Working with schools (Topic 9)
Finally an appendix sets out references to materials drawn on in producing the Open
File and to other resources which users might find helpful
