Inclusive Education in the Post-COVID-19 World

Covid-19 has engendered and exposed inequality across society, and in few arenas more sharply than the education system (Alasuutari, 2020). This chapter, however, considers the potentiality of Covid-19 to constitute a generative moment in inclusive education. It begins by contextualising inclusive education in its current ‘peri-Covid’ manifestation by examining how the response of the education sector to the pandemic impacted upon disabled children and their access to learning. It outlines the practical, logistical and attitudinal barriers faced by disabled children during the outbreak (e.g. inaccessible lessons, EHCP entitlements ignored, the disabled child positioned as vulnerable). It then asserts that Covid-19 offers us an opportunity to reposition disability “as an affirmative phenomenon: a chance to pause, re-jig and reorient education” (Goodley et al., 2019, p. 988). It then considers what the education system must ‘shed’ in light of the crisis (e.g. normative concepts of productivity and measures of attainment), and what, in turn, it must embed: “crip time” (Kafer, 2013) and accessibility. It finally explains how we might use the lessons taught to us by the crisis to re-imagine inclusive education for post-Covid times, via embracing a post-human orientation within the education system.