Inclusion and education

BOX 1.1: 
The evolving interpretation of disability has shaped education provision
Evolving perceptions of people with disabilities shaped three approaches 
to their education (Al Ju’beh, 2015). The charity model viewed people 
with disabilities as victims or objects of pity. They were considered 
uneducable and excluded from education, although some religious 
institutions provided education alongside care.
The medical model saw disability as a problem stemming from 
impairment that made some people differ from what society widely 
considered normal and need treatment to meet societal expectations. 
The perceived challenges of learners with disabilities arose from their 
deficits rather than school and classroom organization, curriculum and 
teaching approaches that might be inadequate and lack the flexibility 
to offer needed opportunities and support. Consequently, such learners 
are often categorized and labelled by type and severity of disability 
and placed in separate provision, where they are educated through 
specialized approaches. The medical model can give rise to the idea that 
medical personnel should lead assessment of such learners and that 
only teachers with training in special education can provide for them. 
This reinforces the perceived need for separate provision and individual 
approaches that often carry lower expectations throughout learners’ 
school career. The language associated with the medical model includes 
terms such as special needs, therapy, rehabilitation, handicap, defect, 
disorder and diagnosis.
Starting in the 1970s, the social model contrasted the biological 
condition (impairment) with the social condition (disability).
In this approach, disability is not an individual attribute. It emerges 
because individuals face barriers they cannot overcome in certain 
environments. It is the system and context that do not take the 
diversity and multiplicity of needs into account (Norwich, 2014).
The social model is linked to the rights-based approach to inclusion 
and the idea that education needs to be available, accessible, 
acceptable and adaptable (Tomaševski, 2001). Functioning and 
capability approaches are central to its focus on what a person has 
difficulty doing. Society and culture determine rules, define normality 
and treat difference as deviance.
In 2001, the World Health Organization issued the International 
Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, which synthesized 
the medical and social models of disability. Although it listed 
1,500 disability codes, it stated that disability resulted not only from 
physical conditions and biological endowment but also from personal 
or environmental contexts (WHO, 2001). A shift towards the social 
model must be accompanied by a change in language, which moves 
from medical and needs-based terms towards language placing 
learners’ rights at the centre of planning and decision making in a 
model that prioritizes identification and removal of attitudinal, physical 
and organizational barriers. 
All stakeholders need to understand the underlying thinking related to 
inclusion. The concept of barriers suggests many people are at risk of 
education exclusion, not just people with disabilities. Social and cultural 
mechanisms drive exclusion on the basis of ethnicity or poverty, for 
instance. In education, the concept of barriers to participation and 
learning is replacing that of special needs and difficulties.
Yet awareness raising remains a challenge in many countries.
An ‘inclusive and equitable’ education is at 
the core of the SDG 4 ambition
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GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 2021