A/HRC/25/29 mainstream school,3 so long as he or she can adjust to fit the standardized requirements of the school. The integration approach focuses solely on enhancing the ability of the student to comply with the established standards.4 5. Approaches that exclude, segregate and integrate on the basis of the existence of an impairment may be taken at the same time in the same country, and may affect others in addition to persons with disabilities. The inclusive education approach has emerged as a response to these discriminatory approaches. According to its preface, the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (“Salamanca Statement”) is informed by the “recognition of the need to work towards ‘schools for all’ — institutions which include everybody, celebrate differences, support learning, and respond to individual needs”. On the basis of the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education5 systems are those with schools using “a child-centred pedagogy capable of successfully educating all children, including those who have serious disadvantages and disabilities” (Framework for Action, para. 3). The Statement also calls for a change in social perspective. As stated by the former Special Rapporteur of the Commission for Social Development for monitoring the implementation of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, “all children and young people of the world, with their individual strengths and weaknesses, with their hopes and expectations, have the right to education. It is not our education systems that have a right to certain types of children. Therefore, it is the school system of a country that must be adjusted to meet the needs of all children.”6 6. The shift towards an inclusive approach to education was reflected at the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, with which the problem of the exclusion of students with disabilities from school systems was acknowledged. The need for integration in mainstream schools was recognized in the Warnock Report as early as 1978.7 The adoption in 1993 of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities provided for integration, but it was not until 1994 that the Salamanca Statement, signed by 92 Governments, called for inclusive education. The Statement required mainstream schools to provide quality education to all students, including students with disabilities, without discriminating on the basis of the higher requirements of support that they may need (p. viii). The Dakar Framework for Action on Education for All of 2000 stressed that education systems must be inclusive and respond flexibly to the circumstances and needs of all learners.8 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Guidelines for Inclusion of 2005 emphasize that at the core of inclusive education is the human right to education.9 In 2006, building on these precedents, in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities legally binding status was given to the concept of “inclusive education systems”, which were recognized as the only 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 4 The terms “mainstream schools”, “general education”, “regular schools” and “ordinary schools” are commonly used to refer to schools systems that receive students with or without impairments as opposed to “special schools” that only receive students with impairments. In the present report, the first terms will be used interchangeably to refer to “general education”, as these schools are referred to in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. See UNICEF, The Right of Children with Disabilities to Education: A Right-Based Approach to Inclusive Education (Geneva, 2012). Inclusive education is not defined in human rights law. Notwithstanding, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has adopted a definition thereof (see paragraph 17 below). Bengt Lindqvist, 1994. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, “Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People” (London, The Stationary Office, 1978). Available from www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-internationalagenda/education-for-all/ (see paragraph 33). UNESCO, Guidelines for Inclusion: Ensuring access to Education for All, 2005 (Paris, 2005), p. 12.