This Self-Reflection Tool was developed as part of the Agency's Inclusive Early Childhood Education (IECE) project, which ran from 2015 to 2017. The project aimed to identify, analyse and subsequently promote the main characteristics of quality IECE for all children. To that end, a need was detected for a tool that all professionals and staff could use to reflect on their setting’s inclusiveness, focusing on the social, learning and physical environment. This tool is intended to help improve settings’ inclusiveness.

The extent to which national education systems are decentralised clearly affects policy and practice for inclusive education. Decentralisation is a key variable in context analysis and change management at all levels of the education system.

The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (the Agency) is an independent organisation. It acts as a platform for collaboration for the ministries of education in our 31 member countries.

Our work focuses on improving all learners’ achievement at all levels of inclusive lifelong learning. This enhances learners’ life chances and opportunities for actively participating in society.

This report summarises the key research literature on learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities with regard to the phenomenon of early school leaving (ESL). It compares its findings and implications to the positions adopted by EU policy documents. It makes recommendations on how policy-makers might tackle the issue of ESL more effectively, particularly as it impacts on learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Countries have grown increasingly committed to the aim of inclusive education in recent decades and have developed financial, technical and methodological incentives. As a result, financing of inclusive education has become a crucial topic for evaluating the extent to which existing inclusive education policies effectively meet learners’ rights, improve schools’ capacity to be equitable, effective and efficient, and avoid the short- and long-term costs of exclusion related to lost productivity, human potential, health and poor well-being.

This report is part of the three-year Inclusive Early Childhood Education (IECE) project, which ran from 2015 to 2017. The project aimed to identify, analyse and subsequently promote the main characteristics of quality inclusive pre-primary education for all children from three years of age to the start of primary education.

The Raising the Achievement of All Learners in Inclusive Education (RA) project (2014–2017) aimed to provide evidence of effective practice in raising achievement by building the capacity of schools and communities to include and support all learners.

Countries’ systems of funding for education play a critical role in implementing the right to education and in developing inclusive education systems that promote participation and achievement for all learners.