ABSTRACT
Education is both a right and a means to the realisation of other rights. The United Nations therefore requires that education be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable, with the ‘best interests of the child a primary consideration’. It is generative in that education enables the development of the capabilities necessary for full and meaningful participation in modern society. The historical background is understood by academics within inclusive education but not by many other stakeholders, which has made it easy for special education to appropriate the language of inclusion to claim that the segregation of students with disability into special schools and classes is, in fact, ‘inclusive’. The fact remains that the entire movement began with the desegregation of students with disability and has evolved due to the need to reconceptualise schooling so that it is accessible to all, beginning with those who experience the greatest barriers to equality of access: students with disability.
