From integration to inclusion: focusing global trends and changes in the western European societies

The first part of this paper addresses the question whether the new terminology that came into use after the Salamanca Statement meant only a linguistic shift or a new educational policy agenda. The answer given in the paper is that the shift to inclusion served a double purpose: Unesco's actions in the field in the early 1990s implied a policy vision for a global context and needed a new term to avoid giving the wrong signals to significant actors on a wider international arena. In the west, the two notions are frequently mixed, mostly considered as overlapping and without due recognition of the different cores of the two terms after Salamanca, that is a shift of policy focus, from special education to responding to the diversity within a common school for all students. This focused interpretation of inclusion, not to be mixed with integration, it is argued in the paper, is described and illustrated by reference to some recent innovations in the UK. As an instrument for moving practice towards more inclusive schools, the English Index for Inclusion has also obtained a certain international attention. However, tensions concerning reform priorities, that is whether focusing strategies and innovations on special education or on diversity in the common school, continuously seem to exist in the western societies. In the second part of the paper, the question whether inclusion has had any noticeable effect on the school systems in the western societies is therefore raised and examined in relation to two sets of statistical data reported for 14 European countries (obtained about 1990 and 1996). The analyses and discussions of the data have been inspired by the socio-historical perspective and related concepts (inclusiveness, segmentation, vertical vs horizontal divides) used by Fritz Ringer and colleagues in analysing the rise of the modern educational system in Europe.