Inclusive Education for Persons with Disabilities - Are We Making Progress?

The paper ‘Inclusive education for persons with disabilities – Are we making progress?’ has been developed as a background paper for the UNESCO International Forum on inclusion and equity in education – Every learner matters, being held in Cali, Colombia from 11-13 September 2019. The Forum is being organised in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action. The paper will explore the global progress towards inclusive education, the successes achieved and learnings observed specifically in countries of the global South. In these countries the concerns of universal access to and retention in education is still a concern for many governments, but large-scale exclusion of children with disabilities (an estimated 32 million or 1 out of 3 are out of school) remains the order of the day and is not always high on government agendas.