The 2025 Spring Biannual meeting of the European Agency took place in the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, and marked the first conference under the leadership of Joao Costa. Joao has been busy since taking on the Director role in January, deepening relationships and seeking new opportunities to drive the message of inclusive practice home, across the continent, for example in the Let’s Make Inclusion Happen conference in Warsaw.
The opening session always involves key updates, which this time included aspects of the Agency’s outward-facing visibility: a dynamically changing news feature, an upgraded translation and accessibility tool on the website (accessibility on the top righthand corner) and a formal change of name. In the interest of consistency, the Agency is now referred to by its acronym, EASNIE – and I will do my best to practice this as well.
As to the conference itself, before much was said, there was music: a solo performance by a 14-year-old recorder player. It was a polished performance, and a lovely opener to the conference, but it also carried a serious message: the importance of arts education. The musician in question, Mila Vucko, is blind. Many of us will have anecdotes of the arts allowing disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs (SEN) to participate and sometimes excel when they might struggle with other, traditionally ‘academic’ subjects. Music and arts offer the possibility to focus on participation, enjoyment and engagement rather than the restrictive attainment lens often used in our school system, but of course as is with any other learning activity, thought needs to be given to affording equal access. Looking at Mila whilst she played and after, it was clear ‘that culture and the arts are integral to the holistic and inclusive development, resilience, and overall well-being of individuals and societies’ as the UNESCO Arts Education Framework states.
The recent Curriculum and Assessment Review Interim Report shows a decline in take-up of music and the arts generally at GCSE level; it will be important to consider how to reverse this trend, as well as look at opportunities to extend access to the arts in earlier years and in particular for disabled children and young people and those with SEN. DfE Guidance from 2023 recognises the benefits of music education for all and sets out clearly schools’ duty to ‘consider whether they could helpfully cover greater inclusion of pupils with SEND in the school’s musical life’.
Many member states are engaged in the Thematic Country Cluster Activities (TCCA). These activities allow in-depth exploration of thematic issues and peer-learning from other countries’ experience. England are grouped with Malta, Croatia and the Republic of Ireland in the Monitoring and Evaluation Systems in Inclusive Education Policy (MESIEP) cluster. Participants shared some of the learning to date, including the observation that when it comes to schools’ self-evaluation, there is a lack of collaboration between schools, which might chime with professionals in England. How might we set up an architecture for a system which supports such cross-school collaboration in the interest of inclusive practice? Over the coming months the groups will publish outputs which I will share; meanwhile, this is a timely reminder that EASNIE has a YouTube channel and on it you can find, for example, a webinar on monitoring and evaluation of inclusion at school level.
On Day 2, I attended a discussion on the Organisation of Special Provision. The aim of this session was to pull together examples of practice in relation to multi-disciplinary teams, and relations between mainstream and special schools.
The key take-away from this session was that in most countries, some form of school clustering is taking place, often with special schools functioning as a centre of support. In Catalonia (Spain being a decentralised state), over the past five years the regional Department of Education has ‘redefined the current model of special education centre (CEE) towards a model of special education centre provider of services and resources (CEEPSIR) for ordinary education.’ The support provided by these centres takes two forms: input into direct support for pupils (with an emphasis on collaboration with school staff); and the introduction of whole-school interventions such as support for emotional self-regulation, motor and mobility support programmes and adaptation of the physical environment. The articulation of the aims of these interventions is important, and speaks to a strong inclusive ethos: ‘The aim is to promote learner autonomy and self-determination, and the involvement and learning of teaching teams in order to improve the quality of the educational response for all learners.’ This project is undergoing an evaluation supported by a local university, and I hope to be able to report back on its results. EASNIE’s Changing the Role of Specialist Provision in Support of Inclusive Education (CROSP) sets out an excellent policy framework for pivoting the resources of specialist resources towards supporting the wider education ecosystem.
In Lithuania, nine Regional Centres have been set up, where a special school operated and has been repurposed. The aims of these centres are to provide schools with the expertise and capacity to implement the appropriate inclusive practice ‘when the recommendations provided by the Pedagogical psychological service cannot be implemented’ – which I take to mean, school staff feel unable to do so due to a lack of expertise and resources.
The Regional Centre teams offer outreach consultations as well as short and medium-term intervention in schools. The offer includes both person-centered pedagogical approaches and system-focused advice on creating an inclusive culture and environment, for example by promoting the Universal Design for Learning.
Accessing the Regional Centers follows initial input from Lithuania’s Pedagogical Psychological Service and is instigated by a school’s Head Teacher. These Regional Centers are run and overseen by their respective local areas and are supported by National Government. The team in each Regional Center might vary slightly but includes speech and language therapists; social pedagogues; specialist teachers; occupational therapists; psychologists; psychiatrists; physiotherapists.
As is the case in any cross-border application, it is not straightforward to consider how such a setup might look in the English context. This will require mapping over the Lithuanian model, the specific (and entrenched) issues we face here. How could such centers, if they were set up here, be funded and what kind of oversight and accountability infrastructure would they require? How would the interventions offered by these specialists interplay with our current system of individual support tied to the EHCP system? How would the relationship between such centers and our academies look?
The system is not, of course, perfect: all members who spoke about their countries’ experiences reported these local and regional services being overstretched. Another note of caution is that EPs, SLTs etc will need to keep in contact with their own professional peers and not work in isolation to maintain an effective community of practice.
However, the appeal of such an approach is clear: it offers school clusters a quality-assured and expert resource for improving practice. It focuses on system-level improvements and can potentially offer a constructive route to move away from the within-child model of pedagogy which is, to my mind, a by-product of our current system. And, crucially, it can support and foster communities of practice where there is the required bandwidth to consider those elements of inclusion which we are now coming round to see as crucial: fostering a sense of belonging in the school community, leadership for inclusion and collaboration across disciplines. I have attached a PowerPoint on Regional Education Centres here for more information.
I’ll end this time with a quote from the Slovenian State Secretary, who spoke at the opening session:
“Inclusion is not a right for some; it is a benefit for all.”
