ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the consideration of testing and inclusive education playfully, but with serious intent. It shows performance of inclusive education as an education reform movement in and of itself as a prelude to describing the way in which testing programmes, as applied in a hyper-performance culture, have a backwash effect upon schools that promotes exclusion. Observing the metrics, a fashionable preoccupation, might suggest a "go to the top of the class" report card for inclusive education. Factors such as poverty, indigeneity, refugee status, geographic region, gender, language background, and disability are but some of the intersecting features of students' identities that impact upon academic success. National education systems compete with each other for leverage on the highly publicised and scrutinised performance league tables. States, regions, provinces and districts are drawn into this competition. Tests then become crucial in order to determine who has special needs to trigger entitlement for inclusive education.