Blog

In Lao People’s Democratic Republic, many children struggle to develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Without a strong foundation, it becomes difficult to progress through the education system, which results in many children dropping out before secondary school. Targeted support is key to ensuring that the most disadvantaged children are not left behind. Efforts to support girls’ transition to, and retention in, lower secondary education are a key part of addressing learning disparities linked to gender, socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

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In this blog, R Chaudhry from Luminos argues that meaningful inclusion of children with learning differences in education systems must begin with effective instruction that benefits all children.

“The global push for inclusive education has rightly expanded who belongs in school, but it has largely avoided a harder question: when the majority of children in school do not achieve basic literacy, can access alone be meaningfully called inclusion?”

In many education systems, large numbers of children—especially those already facing disadvantage—spend years in school without mastering basic literacy or numeracy. In low- and middle-income countries, 70% of 10-year-olds cannot read or understand a simple text. The blog gives Luminos’ experiences with their own programme and toolkits to support teaching. It shows their successes and how to overcome barriers in low-income settings.

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This toolkit was co-developed by the Global Partnership for Education, Education International and UNICEF under Working Group 3 of the Greening Education Partnership (greening teacher training and education system capacities). It supports ministries of education to strengthen the climate resilience of their education systems by placing educators – teachers, school leaders, and education support personnel – at the centre of policy, planning, and implementation.

As part of the Greening Education Partnership, this publication complements existing resources on greening schools, curricula and communities, together offering a comprehensive package to mobilize education systems for a greener, more just and sustainable future.

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UNESCO’s 2026 GEM Report focuses on access and equity in education.

“A set of 35 country case studies drawn from rich data illustrates what happens when an international agenda meets national realities. The stories, supplemented by further research insights, show that change in education takes time; no single reform will address educational exclusion. Following the optimism of the 2000s, after fiscal restrictions had been lifted allowing many countries to invest in public education, the harder work of keeping students in school and dismantling the many constraints facing them has required more sophisticated action, often beyond education.”

Some statistics on inclusive education:

• 24% of countries now have inclusive education laws (up from 1% in 2000).

• As of 2025, 56% of countries have policies for inclusive education.

• 29% of countries explicitly mandate that children with disabilities must be taught in inclusive settings, while the share of countries whose legislation permits segregation has fallen to 9%.

• Fewer than 1 in 10 countries have a strong equity focus in their education financing systems.

Download the 2026 GEM report.

Read more information about the ‘Equitable Funding Index’ a tool presented in the 2026 GEM Report to assess the equity orientation of countries’ education systems.

“Three years ago, in March 2022, UKFIET published a blog I wrote on what I considered the most critical issue for poor children’s learning outcomes: teacher absenteeism… Three years on from the blog’s publication, I still cannot understand the silence surrounding this crisis. In 19 countries across Eastern and Southern Africa, teacher absenteeism rates range from 15% to 45%. In Uganda, recent data reveal a staggering reality: while teachers may be on the payroll, 52.3% were not actually teaching in the classroom when surveyed.”

The author describes the Power Teachers Africa model to address absenteeism through incentives.

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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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