ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the inclusive education debate as it relates to children with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). It presents a fundamental tension between international policy which promotes inclusive education as a human right, and the challenge of including learners with profound intellectual impairments in the current neoliberal education system. According to international policy, one of the key outcomes of inclusive education is social cohesion in terms of a sense of belonging, shared identity and social cooperation. The chapter describes a research project that examined the social opportunities that children with PMLD can experience across both mainstream schools and special schools, which in turn sheds light on the complexity of social inclusion. This chapter provides the tension between the international vision of inclusive education and the idea of a neoliberal education which creates the conditions for exclusion. It introduces social complexity to debates about whether children with PMLD are ‘includable’.
