CHILDREN'S VIEWS ON INCLUSION: Inclusive education at a BRAC school – perspectives from the children

Tahiya Mahbub is a lecturer in English studies at North South University located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In this article, she presents some of the data on which her MPhil thesis, completed at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, was based. This research was carried out in Bangladesh, focusing on a primary school run by the non‐governmental organisation (NGO) BRAC. Tahiya Mahbub adopted a case study approach in order to investigate this single‐teacher, single‐room school in Tongi, a suburb of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The work she reports here explores children's understandings about the culture, policy and practice at their school. Tahiya Mahbub argues that this sort of inquiry is necessary to the development of inclusion. She advocates equality and togetherness not only for children in school, but also between children and adults in educational research and eventually in the bigger picture of society itself. Finally, she proposes, it is essential to listen to children's experiences of school, their suggestions for change and their ideas in order to lift children's low social status in Bangladesh.