Including Inclusion: Exploring inclusive education for school leadership

The author argues that the current approach to inclusive education, especially within the context of Special Educational Needs (SEN), has failed to deliver its promise of equity. Instead, it has often devolved into a mechanism of integration—merely placing students with diverse needs into mainstream systems while using "deficit-based" diagnostics to justify their existence. This approach reinforces a "normal" centre, where students are assessed, labelled, and categorized based on their distance from an ideal, standardized student. Consequently, instead of creating an inclusive environment, schools continue to reproduce existing social and cultural hierarchies, effectively protecting the status quo.

For school leaders, the author highlights the inadequacy of instrumentalist 'what works' approaches to professional development. These methods often encourage leaders to apply standardized fixes that fail to address the root causes of educational exclusion. The paper advocates for the development of 'inclusion leaders' who move beyond managerialism. Such leaders must adopt a critical, reflective mindset that questions the exclusionary assumptions embedded in school culture. This involves recognizing that schools are part of a broader social apparatus that often reproduces privilege, and that systemic change requires the active deconstruction of the norms that define who belongs and who is 'othered.'

To move toward genuine inclusion, the author suggests moving away from the focus on the 'exceptional' and instead embracing the politics of difference. By applying a Derridian approach to deconstruction, school leaders can avoid the search for totalizing definitions or 'perfect' methods. Instead, they should cultivate a tolerance for ambiguity and a willingness to challenge the 'ghostly centre' that privileges dominant social norms. This implies that education is not just about adapting curriculum or resources, but about fundamentally re-evaluating the power structures that dictate what counts as knowledge and who is considered a valid member of the school community.