Abstract:
In 1996 the New Zealand government announced the aim of achieving a "world class inclusive education system" in its new policy Special Education(SE2000). The use of the language of inclusion was a new and significant departure in New Zealand's educational policy lexicon and signalled that the country had joined many others in embracing the concept and principles of inclusion as official education policy. Inclusive education and inclusion have been defined and conceptualised in many ways but one consistent feature has been a concern for the educational rights of disabled children coupled with a belief that all disabled children and young people should receive their education in local regular schools. That the use of the language of inclusion in SE2000 was novel to the policy lexicon might suggest that the ideas and precepts underpinning inclusion were similarly novel in the New Zealand context. However concern for the educational rights of disabled children and a belief that all disabled children and young people should receive their education in local regular schools were not new to the New Zealand educational arena of the 1990s; these were ideas that had been voiced over a number of years in a variety of educational and other contexts and that shaped SE2000 itself. This paper will examine the development and characteristic of these ideas and philosophies in New Zealand and will trace the trajectory of inclusive education policy that culminated in the announcement of Special Education 2000. The paper will argue that although SE2000 certainly marked a significant moment in time with respect to inclusive education in New Zealand, the turn to inclusion had been long in the making and so rather than articulating a new, unequivocal commitment and turn to inclusion, SE2000 simply confirmed what would seem to have been an inevitable policy direction; a direction however which was subject to the competing imperatives and pressures prevailing in the wider policy context.