Mel Ainscow, Developing Inclusive Schools: Pathways to Success. Routledge, 2024. isbn 9781032571430. 244 p. £29.99.

Abstract

First paragraph: “Every learner matters and matters equally” (unesco, 2017). This oft quoted phrase is inarguable but does not represent the reality in many (or perhaps most) education systems around the world. The challenge of course lies in implementation. What needs to be done to make schools and education systems more equitable? What is the role of each of the agents within an education system, from policy makers to communities to classroom practitioners? These are the questions Mel Ainscow’s new book seeks to address. He charts his efforts to apply and refine the thinking presented in his 1999 book Understanding the Development of Inclusive Schools (Ainscow, 1999). He starts by reiterating his position of inclusive education as needing to move away from an approach concerned primarily with serving disabled children within general education settings to a broader aim of eliminating the social exclusion that arises from attitudes and responses to diversity in race, social class, ethnicity, religion, gender and abilities. Simply, every learner, no matter their characteristics or background, has the right to receive effective educational opportunities. No learner should be excluded either explicitly or implicitly (and looking at where exclusion happens is a good way to identify the barriers to inclusion). He argues that there is still work to be done in many places both at home and internationally to move away from the use of a medical approach that explains educational difficulties in terms of a child’s deficits. This new book, then, is a continuation of his call to reform education systems in a way that is broad in its thinking about inclusion and is not solely focused on mainstreaming a small number of children.