2020 Global Education Monitoring Report*, which looks at social, economic, and cultural mechanisms that discriminate against disadvantaged children, youth, and adults, keeping them out of education or marginalized in it. Countries are expanding their vision of inclusion in education to put diversity at the core of their systems. Released at the start of the Decade of Action to 2030, and during the Covid-19 crisis, which has exacerbated underlying inequalities, the report argues that resistance to addressing every learner’s needs is a real threat to achieving global education targets.

 

The commitment of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education” and promote “lifelong learning for all” is part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledge to leave no one behind. The agenda promises a “just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met” (UN 2015, paragraphs 8 and 9). Social, economic, and cultural factors may complement or run counter to the achievement of equity and inclusion in education. Education offers a key entry point for inclusive societies if policymakers and educators see learner diversity not as a problem but as a challenge.

 

Education systems need to treat every learner with dignity in order to overcome barriers, raise attainment, and improve learning.

 

Inclusive education is commonly associated with the needs of people with disabilities and the relationship between special and mainstream education. Since 1990, the struggle of people with disabilities has shaped the global perspective on inclusion in education, leading to recognition of the right to inclusive education in Article 24 of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD 2016 ).

 

This follows its 2019 edition, which focused on the closely related topic of inclusion of migrant and displaced populations in national education systems.

 

 

Inclusion in education as a process and result

 

Inclusion in education is, first and foremost, a process contributing to the achievement of the goal of social inclusion. Defining equitable education requires a distinction between “equality” and “equity”. Equality is a state of affairs (what): a result that can be observed in inputs, outputs, or outcomes. Equity is a process (how): actions aimed at ensuring equality. Defining inclusive education is more complicated because the concept conflates process and result.

 

This report argues for thinking of inclusion primarily as a process: actions that embrace diversity and build a sense of belonging, rooted in the belief that every person has value and potential and should be respected, regardless of their background, ability, or identity.

Poverty and inequality are major constraints. According to the World Inequality Database, despite progress in reducing extreme poverty, especially in Asia, it affects 2 in 10 children worldwide, 5 in 10, in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Progress in education access is stagnating. Globally, an estimated 258 million children, adolescents and youth, or 17% of the total, are not in school. Poverty affects attendance, completion, and learning opportunities. In all regions except Europe and Northern America, adolescents from the richest 20% of households are three times more likely to complete lower secondary school than their peers from the poorest 20%.

 

Those most likely to be excluded from education are also disadvantaged due to language, location, gender, and ethnicity.In at least 20 countries with data, hardly any poor rural young woman completed upper secondary school.

 

Careful planning and provision of inclusive education can deliver improvement in academic achievement, social and emotional development, self-esteem, and peer acceptance. Including diverse students in mainstream classrooms and schools can prevent stigma, stereotyping, discrimination, and alienation. It is a prerequisite for education in, and for, a democracy based on fairness, justice, and equity. It provides a systematic framework for removing barriers according to the principle “every learner matters and matters equally”.

 

Inclusion improves learning for all students and must be the foundation of approaches to teaching and learning.

The 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report asks questions related to key policy solutions, obstacles to implementation, coordination mechanisms, financing channels, and monitoring of inclusive education.

 

The report collects information on how each country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, addresses the challenge of inclusion in education and recognizes the different contexts and challenges facing countries in providing inclusive education. Its coverage is broad, addressing the albinos in sub-Saharan Africa, the stateless in Arab countries, the displaced Rohingya in Asia, the Roma in Europe, the Afro-descendants in Latin America.

 

It addresses these challenges through seven chapters: laws and policies; data; governance and finance; curriculum, textbooks, and assessments; teachers; schools; and students, parents, and communities.

 

Learner diversity is a strength to celebrate

 

The world has committed to inclusive education, not by chance but because it is the foundation of an education system of good quality that enables every child, youth, and adult to learn and fulfill their potential. Gender, age, location, poverty, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, language, religion, migration or displacement status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, incarceration, beliefs, and attitudes should not be the basis for discrimination against anyone in education.

 

The prerequisite is to see learner diversity not as a problem but as an opportunity. Education systems need to be responsive to all learners’ needs.

 

 

The report makes 10 recommendations to achieve inclusion targets by the 2030 deadline.

 

 

1. Widen the understanding of inclusive education: It should include all learners, regardless of identity, background or ability.

 

2. Target financing to those left behind: There is no inclusion while millions lack access to education.

 

3. Share expertise and resources: This is the only way to sustain a transition to inclusion.

 

4. Governments should open space for communities to voice their preferences as equals in the design of policies on inclusion in education.

 

5. Ensure cooperation across government departments, sectors, and tiers: Inclusion in education is but a subset of social inclusion.

 

6. Make space for non-government actors to challenge and fill gaps: But also make sure they work toward the same inclusion goal.

 

7. Apply universal design: Ensure inclusive systems fulfill every learner’s potential.

 

8. Prepare, empower, and motivate the education workforce: All teachers should be prepared to teach all students .

 

9. Collect data on and for inclusion with attention and respect: Avoid stigmatizing labeling.

 

10. Learn from peers: A shift to inclusion is not easy.

 

 

 

*https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2020/inclusion

Click for the full report

Summarized by Broken Chalk

 

 

Abdullah Bozkurt*, Sweden-based a Turkish journalist living in exile, was attacked yesterday near his home in Stockholm. Bozkurt is an Executive Director of the Nordic Research Monitoring Network**.  Nordic Research Monitoring Network is a non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness of radical and violent extremists.

 

 

“Within minutes of getting out of my home, one of the three men approached me behind and unexpectedly knocked me down. As I fell to the asphalt pavement, they started punching me in the face and on the head” Bozkurt said, adding that the perpetrators then ran away.

After the attack Bozkurt said; “I know this attack was meant to send me a message due to my journalistic work revealing the injustices and wrongdoings committed in Turkey … I reject this message.”

 

 

*Bozkurt is a journalist and author with over 20 years of experience in journalism. He has served in various capacities in the Turkish media as bureau chief in New York, Washington, D.C., and Ankara. His specialty is covering radical jihadist groups operating in Turkey and its neighborhood.

 

**Nordic Research Monitoring Network is a non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness on radical and violent extremist trends in Europe and beyond, with a specific focus on patterns that may very well disturb and disrupt social peace, harmony, and community integration. It hopes to contribute to the debate on how nations should prevent and combat radicalization with close cooperation and collaboration between all relevant stakeholders at all levels of governance including the NGO community and civil society.

 

 

Mehmet Altan is the son of Cetin Altan* and brother to Ahmet Altan**. All three suffer from undemocratic acts of leaders of their time. His brother Ahmet Altan is still in prison. He worked as an academician at Istanbul University and was dismissed with an emergency decree law from the university; and spent nearly two years behind bars. He wrote an open letter to Robert Spano to the president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Spano prepares to arrive in Turkey for a visit this week and receive an honorary doctor degree from the university, which Altan was dismissed.

 

Here is his letter to Spano:

My open letter to Robert Spano, the president of the European Court of Human Rights*** 

Dear President,

There are more than sixty thousand individual applications that have been lodged from Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey ranks second after Russia when it comes to violations of rights.

As you know, I am one of the citizens of the Republic of Turkey whose constitutional rights were disregarded. I said as you know because my application was reviewed by the 2nd Section, which at the time was under your presidency.

On 20 March 2018, the 2nd Section of the ECtHR, presided over by you, set a precedent in universal law and ruled that my right to personal liberty and security and my freedom of expression had been violated. Turkey was convicted.

I thank you and the Court you now preside over for this judgment. Law prevailed.

Dear president,

Your judgment concerning me has a place in ECtHR’s history:

Ergin Ergül, who was appointed on behalf of Turkey to that case and was the only judge dissenting, put forward such arguments that you wrote “a dissenting vote” against a dissenting vote, for the first time in the history of ECtHR, if I am not mistaken. And the other members followed you.

It was announced that on September 3 2020 you will be visiting Turkey as the Minister of Justice’s guest.

But what took me aback was to find out that you will be receiving an honorary doctorate from Istanbul University.

I am reminding of the detail above exactly for this reason, to give information on the state of “the judiciary” and “law education.”

I wonder if you keep in mind that Ergin Ergül, against whom, in the name of universal law you found yourself having to cast a dissenting opinion, is a graduate of Istanbul University which will be awarding you an honorary doctorate?

Your secretariat certainly must have informed you that Istanbul University had given an honorary doctorate of law to Kenan Evren too.

Dear President,

I taught for 30 years at Istanbul University, where you will be receiving a “honorary law doctorate.” And I became a professor there 27 years ago.

I heard on television that I had been dismissed from the university through a statutory decree on 29 October 2016, while I was in my cell in prison, a month after I was detained as a result of the violation of three articles of the constitution. The people who will be giving you an honorary doctorate are the very people who dismissed me and many other academics.

I was not released despite the Constitutional Court’s judgment finding violations of three separate constitutional rights and ordering my release. To top it off, right afterwards I was sentenced to aggravated life in prison. Even after the judgment by the ECtHR, presided over by you, held that there had been a violation of my rights, the 2nd Criminal Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Court of Justice upheld my conviction. I mean to say that the event of such judicial scandals is not unusual.

Ultimately however, on 4 November 2019, I was acquitted and my acquittal became final after the Court of Cassation ruled for my acquittal.

But my ongoing case concerning my dismissal from the university is still waiting to be taken up by the Ankara 21st Administrative Court. In that case, the accused is Istanbul University, where you will be receiving your honorary doctorate.

Despite being acquitted, despite the judgments by the Constitutional Court and the ECtHR, I have not been able to return to my university where you will be receiving an honorary doctorate.

The university from which you will be receiving your doctorate, is “the accused institution” in the trials brought by many academics who were dismissed through a statutory decree as I was.

These proceedings are ongoing and it is likely that they will also be brought before the ECHR that you preside over. But in the meantime you will have become a Judge who has received an honorary doctorate from Istanbul University. I’m not sure how gratifying it would be to become a honorary member of a university, which has unjustly kicked out and forced into unemployment and poverty hundreds of academics.

Under normal circumstances, of course it would be pleasing to hear that you will be visiting Turkey. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Dear President,

The ECtHR, under your presidency, guarantees protection of the freedoms and rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

We want to believe that ECtHR of which you are the president secures the rights of everyone under its jurisdiction.

It is hard to say that our faith always remains intact.

The very section of the Court that you presided had given priority status to the application of Ahmet Altan, whose novels have been published in 23 countries, and who, even despite the Covid-19 pandemic has remained behind bars in Silivri Prison for the past four years. Even though the court is very much familiar with the file’s content, unfortunately we have been waiting for that priority to come into effect for the past four years.

And of course we are very much aware of the efforts being made to prevent the review of Ahmet Altan’s application and to ensure that no definitive judgment finding rights violations is made when it is taken up. But just as this is not the appropriate place to discuss this, I rather not comment on this further.

Indisputably, you are free to make your own choices. And it is clear that every one of your choices will reflect onto future decisions and bring forth new consequences.

I would like to extend an early welcome to Turkey, where you will be visiting as the President of an international high court, built upon a convention, to which victims of the judiciary have high hopes attached.

Sincerely.

31.08.2020

MEHMET ALTAN

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87etin_Altan

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Altan

*** https://www.expressioninterrupted.com/open-letter-to-president-of-the-european-court-of-human-rights/