Moving towards inclusive education: Policy evolution in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In recent decades, inclusive education has gained international attention and governments around the world have aspired to embrace it in their policies and reform agendas. In 2016 the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education launched an inclusive education initiative that aimed to shift the education system away from special education and segregation towards inclusion. This initiative has been implemented in a number of schools across the country. The study presented in this paper focused on education policy evolution in Saudi Arabia and examined whether, and how, educational discourse has moved from exclusion towards inclusion, particularly in relation to students with disability. Critical policy analysis was employed to scrutinise government education policy documents and to critically examine the ways in which policy discourse perpetuates and reproduces exclusion and unequal power relations within the education system. The findings suggest that, despite some changes in policy language driven by the global push for inclusive education, special education in Saudi Arabia remains dominant and the education system exclusionary. Education policy also privileges charitable discourse over the politics of inclusiveness. A more profound transformation of education policy is required before the nation can claim to have enacted inclusive education. It is hoped that the findings of this study will contribute to a better understanding of how to implement inclusive education policy, particularly for students with disability, in Saudi Arabia.