A conference entitled ‘A School Accessible to All Students: Preparing Staff for Inclusive Education’ took place online on 10 and 11 December 2020.
Organised by the Ministry of National Education (MEN) and the Educational Research Institute (IBE) in Poland, the conference was a knowledge exchange for stakeholders working to prepare schools for inclusive education. It was particularly aimed at universities, teacher education centres and school leaders.
Agency representatives Annet De Vroey and Simoni Symeonidou took part in the first day of the conference, presenting the Teacher Professional Learning for Inclusion (TPL4I) project. They outlined the findings of Phase 1 of the project and described the analysis of the TPL4I policy mapping grids, which present countries’ policies for teacher professional learning for inclusive education. This analysis is described in the TPL4I project synthesis report, which will be available on the Agency website in January.
Representatives from the MEN, universities and schools across Poland presented local perspectives. Representatives from Germany and Norway described their policies for preparing teachers for inclusive education. Other speakers included representatives from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG Reform). DG Reform is currently working with the Agency and the MEN to improve the quality of inclusive education in Poland, within the European Union’s Structural Reform Support Programme. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report presented the 2020 GEM Report findings and explored the international importance of inclusive education.
The second day of the conference involved a series of workshops and discussions around good practice in inclusive education for teachers, specialists and schools. Participants from across Poland took part in the workshops, which included a discussion of how schools can use the Agency’s Raising the Achievement of all Learners self-review resources to develop inclusive practice.
For more information on the conference, visit the IBE website.