Inclusion and education

THE RECORD ON ADOPTING 
INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS IN 
NATIONAL LEGISLATION IS MIXED
In line with their evolving definitions, countries in the 
region have been attempting to translate international 
commitments to rights and freedoms for all into 
national legislation. The rights-based approach, which 
focuses on children’s best interests, helps avoid the 
fragmentation that can occur when separate laws 
attempt to address different groups’ rights, especially 
since the characteristics that expose children to the risk of 
exclusion intersect.
In Bulgaria, the 2016 Preschool and School Education Act 
includes the following principle: ‘equal access to high-
quality education and inclusion of every child and every 
pupil; and equal treatment and non-discrimination in 
preschool and school education’. In North Macedonia, 
the 2019 Law on Primary Education notes that inclusive 
education entails ‘a common vision and conviction that 
the state is under the obligation to provide education to 
all children’. The Republic of Moldova has established a 
framework for inclusive education with a clear funding 
structure, coordination, and accountability between 
central and local levels of administration.
While there is a trend towards referring to inclusive 
education in education laws or developing specific laws 
for this area, all countries in the region retain separate 
schools for certain groups. All countries have special 
schools (including boarding schools/institutions, hospital 
schools and rehabilitation centres) for learners with 
disabilities or special education needs.
Other separate schools are based on language and 
ethnicity. Twenty-two education systems have separate 
schools for linguistic minorities. North Macedonia’s 
curriculum is taught in separate primary schools for 
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GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 2021

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learners from the Albanian, Bosniak, Serbian and Turkish 
communities. Kazakhstan has schools for Russian, Tajik, 
Uighur and Uzbek ethnic and linguistic minorities. In 
Slovakia, learners from the Hungarian and Ukrainian 
minorities may attend schools and classes providing 
education in their language.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, displacement during and after 
the 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia homogenized 
several areas of the country by ethnicity. As part of 
efforts to encourage the return of refugees and internally 
displaced people in a fraught post-war environment, the 
Two Schools under One Roof policy was established to 
gather in a single building children of different ethnicities 
who had previously studied separately. This temporary 
solution was considered a first step towards full 
integration, but 56 schools still segregate children on the 
basis of ethnicity, offering distinct curricula on the same 
school premises (OSCE, 2018; Surk, 2018).
Although mother tongue schooling supports the 
rights-based approach, it can lead to segregation or 
self-segregation (Golubeva et al., 2009; Golubeva and 
Korbar, 2013), which can be exacerbated when the 
majority is not taught about the minority to enhance 
intercultural learning.
Other examples of separate schooling include schools 
for Roma (
Box 2.4
) and other ethnic minorities in the 
Czech Republic, Mongolia, Montenegro and Slovakia, and 
schools in prisons and ‘colonies’ for youth in Georgia, 
Hungary and the Russian Federation. Other countries 
with specialized schools for arts, sports, mathematics and 
foreign languages or separate facilities with specialized 
curricula for gifted and talented learners are Armenia, 
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, 
Georgia, Mongolia, the Republic of Moldova and Romania.
Inconsistencies, noted earlier with regard to definitions, 
also occur in the development of laws. In Azerbaijan, the 
State Program on Inclusive Education has recommended 
that the education law be amended to ensure that 
people with disabilities are not excluded from the general 
education system. However, a separate law on special 
education and eligibility for it involves a psychological-
medical-pedagogical commission.
In Serbia, the Law on the Foundation of the Education 
System stipulates that ‘education must be provided for 
all children, students and adults equally, based on social 
justice and the principle of equal opportunity without 
discrimination. The education system must provide equal 
rights and access to education to all children, students 
and adults, without discrimination and separation of any 
kind’. Yet learners with special education needs can be 
enrolled in special schools upon the parents’ request with 
a recommendation from an inter-sectoral commission 
involving medical as well as education personnel.