The Index for Inclusion – a guide to school improvement

The Index is guided by a number of ideas about inclusion in education. They are:

• Putting inclusive values into action.
• Viewing every life and every death as of equal worth.
• Supporting everyone to feel that they belong.
• Increasing participation for children and adults in learning and teaching activities, relationships and communities of local schools.
• Reducing exclusion, discrimination, barriers to learning and participation.
• Restructuring cultures, policies and practices to respond to diversity in ways that value everyone equally.
• Linking education to local and global realities.
• Learning from the reduction of barriers for some children to benefit children more widely.
• Viewing differences between children and between adults as resources for learning.
• Acknowledging the right of children to an education of high quality in their locality.
•  Improving schools for staff and parents/carers as well as children.
• Emphasising the development of school communities and values, as well as achievements.
• Fostering mutually sustaining relationships between schools and surrounding communities.
• Recognising that inclusion in education is one aspect of inclusion in society.

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The Index is based on a social model [1] of disability. It rejects the term ‘special educational needs’ and instead focuses on the ‘barriers to learning and participation’ within a school community. Booth and Ainscow believe these barriers can be significantly reduced by drawing on existing resources in the school and community.

The Index aims to increase participation for everyone in a school community, not just students with disabilities. It supports schools to become 'more responsive to the diversity of children’s backgrounds, interests, experience, knowledge and skills' (page 9).

[1] The social model frames disability in terms of barriers, attitudes, and exclusion, all ways in which society contributes to a person’s disability. It makes a distinction between impairments, which are functional, and disability, which is largely created by society. The social model was developed in the 1980s as a reaction to the medical model, which defines disability in terms of physical function. It is closely aligned with the ecological model. 

Inclusion is about committing to key values: 

Inclusion is most importantly seen as putting inclusive values into action. It is a commitment to particular values which accounts for a wish to overcome exclusion and promote participation.

Index for Inclusion, page 21

A school community will define a set of inclusive values that is unique to them. The New Zealand Curriculum is based on a set of values that provide a helpful starting point.

To support schools in their journey to inclusion, the Index describes three interconnected dimensions of schooling improvement:

• creating inclusive cultures
• producing inclusive policies
• evolving inclusive practices.

Policies are concerned with how the school is run and plans to change it; practices are about what is learnt and taught and how it is learnt and taught. Cultures reflect relationships and deeply held values and beliefs. Changing cultures is essential in order to sustain development.

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Booth and Ainscow highlight the importance of the 'creating inclusive cultures' dimension. A focus on building community and establishing inclusive values can lead to changes in policies and practices that can be sustained by new staff and students.