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This blog was written by Chris Elliott, Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning at Inclusive Futures and co-author of a new article in the IDS Bulletin, reflecting on learning on Inclusive Education from the Inclusive Futures programme.

In early 2025, the Inclusive Futures programme published three learning reports drawing on inclusive education projects across Bangladesh, Kenya, Tanzania, Nepal and Nigeria. A new article in the IDS Bulletin synthesises the learning from all three. The article’s central conclusion is that disability-inclusive education cannot be achieved through policy adoption or standalone projects alone. It requires inclusive approaches embedded in national education systems, funding mechanisms and data frameworks, combined with local participation, ownership and leadership.

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The UN will soon launch the 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) and once again there is a glaring omission in its approach to SDG4 – the global education goal.

Despite ‘access and equity’ being named as the core theme for the 2026 GEMR, UNESCO’s recently published concept note  remains silent on the structural conditions of racism, casteism, and religious, ethnic, and linguistic discrimination. While the SDGs offered an integrated framework for understanding development, bringing together the global north and south, it has failed to acknowledge that the varied forms of racial discrimination that occur across the world are also a global problem. Global policy approaches to SDG4, such as the Global Education Monitoring Reports, rarely name systems that sustain educational injustices as systems of oppression.

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is widely recognised as essential for promoting wellbeing, cooperation and young people’s meaningful participation in their communities. SEL frameworks often assume that emotional development unfolds similarly for all learners, regardless of gender, culture or identity. Yet emotional expression and regulation are deeply shaped by social norms that define which feelings are acceptable, which are discouraged, and which must remain hidden.

Gender-transformative SEL asserts that emotional expression is neither neutral nor purely an individual phenomenon. It is socially organised. This requires educators and policy actors to work to expand the emotional repertoire available to every learner. This includes validating assertive and boundary-setting behaviours among girls and affirming vulnerability and care among boys. It also requires ensuring that gender-diverse students experience safety and recognition rather than erasure and harm.

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This blog was written by Sakina Jafri, doctoral student at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. It focuses on the recent UKFIET event held on 4 February 2026: Leaving No Learner Behind: Disability-Inclusive Education and the Post-2030 Agenda.

Jafri argues: “For learners with disabilities, exclusion is rarely accidental. It reflects how power operates through policy design, financing, data systems and school cultures that privilege normative assumptions about ability. Power shapes whose knowledge counts, often elevating technical expertise over lived experience and allowing external actors to drive reform. In this context, global commitments risk remaining rhetorical unless resources, authority and voice are redistributed. The question is no longer whether inclusion matters, but how power can be exercised differently.”

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This blog is grounded in the insights and experiences of teachers at the frontline of climate disruption, drawn from research carried out in schools across Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Kenya, and Rwanda.

With limited textbooks, unreliable internet, or a complete lack of projectors, teachers are relying on what they do have: their voices, imagination, and the resourcefulness of their adolescents and youths. They use drama, songs and storytelling as part of their teaching.

Teachers are using crises as opportunities for delivering climate education content. Drought becomes a case study for water scarcity. A storm becomes an example of extreme weather events.

This study found that teachers are offering rich insights into what truly works to engage young people in climate education.

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Period poverty remains a significant barrier to girls’ education in Zimbabwe. Estimates from Forum for Women Educationalists Zimbabwe Chapter (FAWEZI) and UNICEF suggest that as many as 62% of rural girls miss school during menstruation, losing up to 20% of the academic year.

This blog introduces the reader to Viola Flo-Jo Mutambudzi, a teacher, who started girl’s clubs where girls talk about periods and create reusable menstrual kits. Since the club began, the school has seen a clear drop in absenteeism.

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UNICEF launched the Accessible Digital Textbooks (ADT) initiative in 2014. These curriculum-aligned books are designed using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles: they offer content in multiple formats, such as audio narration or simplified text, and give students flexible ways to learn.

Using AI to create Accessible Digital Textbooks helps to reduce the time it takes to create the ADT. The process is still led by people – but now they can spend less time on initial, repetitive tasks and more time improving the final product.

In Uruguay, a pilot was launched in 2025 to see how schools used these newly created ADT. In the classroom, students and teachers were learning together. Both teachers and students also had ideas for enhancements. Students imagined voice commands, mini-games and emojis in the glossary. Teachers suggested ways to better meet their students’ needs – like font toggles, different types of questions and making sure activities match the level of the simplified content.

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Basic school infrastructure in Sierra Leone remains built for the ‘average’ child, leaving students with dwarfism to work around desks, boards and toilets that rarely meet their physical needs. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, where disability remains heavily stigmatised and resources are scarce, students with dwarfism struggle to survive in systems built for bodies unlike theirs. However, at Go Primary School, a small private school in the east end of Freetown, 12-year-old Abibatu Kamara sits at a customised desk and chair. She attends weekly sessions with a trained inclusion specialist. “When the classroom fits,” her mother says, “so does her confidence.”

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This blog talks about World Bank projects in Rwanda, Burkina Faso and Cambodia.

In Rwanda, a World Bank project promoted inclusive education by integrating disability-sensitive features into school infrastructure, learning materials, and teacher training. The project prioritized accessibility in new school construction, provided gender-segregated latrines with accessibility features, and embedded Rwandan Sign Language in edutainment episodes to foster inclusion for children with disabilities.

In Burkina Faso, the Improving Education of Children with Disabilities project increased access and quality of education for vulnerable children, focusing on children with disabilities, through targeted interventions in the five poorest regions and the capital city of Ouagadougou. The project combined improved access to preschool and primary education, teacher training on inclusive pedagogy, community-driven SIPs, and awareness campaigns related to disability inclusion.

In Cambodia, the World Bank is supporting efforts to make general education more inclusive by integrating disability screening, support, and infrastructure improvements across more than 1,600 preschools, primary, and secondary schools. The project trains teachers on disability screening, ensures SIPs include concrete activities to support students with disabilities, and provides referrals and equipment (e.g., glasses, hearing aids) for identified students.

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