Appropriate Inclusion: A Novel Framework for the Development of China's Special Education

On December 31, 2021, the General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China formally forwarded the Action Plan for the Development and Improvement of Special Education as part of the 14th Five-Year Plan (hereinafter, the Action Plan), a policy document produced by the joint efforts of seven agencies, namely, the Ministry of Education, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, National Health Commission, and China Disabled Persons’ Federation (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China [MOE], 2021b). The Action Plan presented the general framework of the high-quality development of special education in China over the next 4 years, systematically delineating the general requirements, objectives, implementation strategies, and support measures necessary for this endeavor. This article briefly reviews the background, basic characteristics, distinct advantages, and potential challenges of the Action Plan.

Background

Inclusive education originated with the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s, specifically with the coining of the slogan “separate is unequal” and the demand for the equal and dignified involvement in social life for people with special needs (Haring et al., 1994; Winzer, 1993). Criticizing the dual education system characterized by the segregated and parallel development of special and regular education, Stainback and Stainback (1984) advocated inclusive education, arguing that national education should be reconstructed, structured, and merged into a unified education system to meet the learning needs of all children. With the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child at the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, and promulgation of the Salamanca Statement at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's World Conference on Special Needs Education in 1994, inclusive education became a prominent theme in the transformation and reform of global special education. Amid the development trend of inclusive education, in September 1988, the Chinese government introduced an approach called “learning in regular class” (LRC), which places children and adolescents with disabilities in regular schools, in its Outline of the Five-Year Program on Disability. LRC has become a practical modality for the implementation of inclusive education in China. In response to the development trend of inclusive education at home and abroad, the Action Plan marks a new chapter in the development of special education in China.

Response to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

On December 13, 2006, the UN General Assembly formally passed the first legally binding international treaty dedicated to protecting the rights and interests of individuals with disabilities and promoting the cause of people with disabilities: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Since opening for signature on March 30, 2007—and officially coming into force a year later—the CRPD has been signed by 165 countries. Setting out specific provisions on education, Article 24 of the CRPD stipulates that State Parties are responsible for ensuring the implementation of an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning to guarantee the right of persons with disabilities to education without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity.

As one of the first States Parties to ratify the CRPD, China has since then been dutifully carrying out the responsibilities and obligations of a State Party as prescribed by the convention. It has continually strived to accelerate the advancement of the cause of persons with disabilities, offering effective protection of their rights including the right to education, medical rehabilitation, employment, social security, cultural life, and accessibility.

Response to the Chinese government's call to build a modernized nation

On September 12, 1997, the 15th National People's Congress of the Communist Party of China announced two centenary goals for the realization of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The first goal was to secure a more prosperous national economy and construct a more developed system on all fronts by the centenary of the founding of the Party. Through its endeavors over the next decade, this goal was largely realized by the time that the Party celebrated its centenary in 2021. The second goal was to achieve basic modernization and develop China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, and civilized socialist country by the country's centenary celebration. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the situations at home and abroad as well as China's conditions for development, the Chinese government planned to fulfill the second centenary goal in two stages. “In the first stage from 2020 to 2035,” China will see that “socialist modernization is basically realized.” “In the second stage from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century,” efforts will be made to “develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful” (Xi, 2017).

By 2035, China will have achieved basic socialist modernization. In this respect, the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) frames the first 5 years of China's attempt to build a comprehensively modern socialist country and achieve its second centenary goal. China's overarching goal is new achievements in areas such as national governance, economic development, social civility, and public well-being (The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, 2021). Individuals with disabilities constitute an important force in the advancement of human civilization as well as in upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics. Disabled people are ambitious and fully capable of making greater contributions to humanity (Party Branch of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation of the Communist Party of China, 2017). The Chinese government values people with disabilities’ rights to both survival and development. In the advancement of China's socialist construction, education plays a systemically important role. Therefore, in the quest to achieve socialist modernization, it is imperative that China “prioritize the development of education,” “promote the equalization of basic public education,” and “endeavor to ensure equitable and quality education for every child” (Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, 2017; The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, 2021).

Response to establishing equitable and quality education

Developing special education is integral to promoting educational equity and modernizing education, upholding people-oriented ideas and propagating the spirit of humanitarianism, securing and improving livelihoods, and constructing a harmonious socialist society (General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2021). In 1874, Scottish missionary William Murray founded the Mission to the Chinese Blind in Beijing, the first special education school in modern China (Zhu, 2013). Until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China was home to just 42 schools for the deaf and blind, with 2,380 enrolled students and 60 teaching staff (Editorial Committee of Education Yearbook of the MOE, 1948; Zhang et al., 2000). In the 65 years since the founding of the country, the Chinese government put tremendous effort into developing special education in areas such as funding, policymaking and legislation, teacher training, and the construction of the education system.

In China, special education has made quantum leaps, expanding from church to social to national education. Such growth has been accompanied by a shift in modality from segregation to inclusion. As of 2020, there were 2,244 special education schools across China, with some 66,200 full-time special education teachers and 880,800 enrolled students nationwide. Meanwhile, 440,000 students have been enrolled in LRC programs and special education classes affiliated with regular elementary and junior high schools, accounting for 49.95% of total enrollments in special education (MOE, 2021a). It is clear that China's special education has significantly improved in terms of coverage, accessibility, and quality.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the number of disabled children and adolescents receiving education has increased substantially. However, the scope of such education is largely limited to compulsory education and its quality remains inadequate. Special education in China is also beset with various problems, including “a relatively weak foundation for universalization, unsatisfactory quality of special education, and relatively weak capabilities to ensure support” (MOE, 2022). Given this status quo of unbalanced and insufficient development, it is vital that the development of special education shifts focus from broadening coverage to comprehensively improving the quality of education. Therefore, it is necessary for the special education system to consistently refine its mechanism for ensuring access in order to effectively protect the rights of disabled children and adolescents to equal education. Special education also needs to recognize the characteristics of the physical and mental development of children with special needs and respect their individual differences in order to ensure appropriate development, while providing an inclusive environment that enables mutual understanding, respect, growth, and betterment between them and their non-disabled peers. Finally, the development of special education also calls for an educational governance system capable of comprehensively developing and implementing targeted measures dedicated to organizing region-specific, reasonably distributed national efforts for coordinating and advancing the development of special education in various areas. It is against this backdrop that the Action Plan was formulated and enacted by the Chinese government.

Basic characteristics of China's current inclusive education

Between the 18th and 20th centuries, special education schools established for children with disabilities gained traction in many countries (Sun, 1999). To overcome the disadvantages of this artificial segregation of children with disabilities, in 1968, Swedish scholar Bengt Nirje set forth the “Principle of Normalization” in order to ensure that disabled children are provided the same way of life as those in mainstream society. Driven by this principle, the Danish Parliament passed the Parliamentary Resolution: Preparation of Integration in 1969, fueling the dissemination and implementation of ideas concerning integrated education in Europe. Influenced by integrated education, the “mainstreaming” movement of special education was sparked in the United States in the 1970s, espousing the acceptance of children with disabilities into the special classes of regular schools. Spurred by the notion of educational equity, there was a call to eliminate all learning barriers and enroll hitherto excluded and marginalized learners in regular classrooms (Booth, 2000). These movements gave rise to inclusive education.

The implementation and transformation of inclusive education in China comprised three stages. Spanning from the 1980s to 2016, the first stage can be referred to as “Chinese Inclusive Education 1.0” and was characterized by the adoption of LRC in designated regular schools. The second stage, “Chinese Inclusive Education 2.0,” which lasted from 2017 to 2021, was characterized by the provision of LRC in nearby regular schools. Finally, covering 2022 to 2025, the third stage—“Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0”—is premised on “appropriate inclusion.” Across all three stages, the adoption of inclusive education in China has exhibited specific characteristics.

Chinese characteristics of special education development

For more than 2,000 years, China's education has been rooted in notions of “education for all without discrimination” and “teaching in accordance with aptitude.” Based on the overall requirements of the Action Plan, the development of special education is informed by the following two guiding ideologies:

“[Fulfill] the fundamental task of cultivating morality and fostering people, conform to the patterns of special education, and uphold appropriate inclusion as the goal.”

Experiences drawn from the two improvement plans

In China, special education continues to face a variety of issues, including a general lack of quality, unbalanced development, poor coverage of compulsory education among rural children and adolescents with disabilities, relatively underdeveloped non-compulsory special education, unsatisfactory conditions for the operating of special education schools, a shortage of special education teachers and rehabilitation professionals, and an insufficient level of professionalism. In an effort to expand the coverage of inclusive education, the Chinese government developed and implemented the Phase I Improvement Plan for Special Education (2014–2016) and Phase II Improvement Plan for Special Education (2017–2020) in January 2014 and July 2017, respectively. Implemented over the course of 7 years, the two Improvement Plans made a substantial contribution to the development of China's special education in the following three ways. First, a paradigm of special education endeavors led by the government, coordinated by various departments, and engaging all parties were developed. To ensure the efficacy of their operations, the capabilities of special education schools, LRC programs in regular schools, and door-to-door teaching to ensure effective implementation of their operations were comprehensively increased. Second, the plans led to the creation of a sufficiently large and reasonably structured pool of high-quality and compassionate special education teachers. Third, the plans led to the establishment of a reasonably distributed system of special education involving the bridging of educational stages and integration of general and vocational education. Consequently, the coverage of special education at all levels and of all types increased, with the enrollment rate of disabled children and adolescents in compulsory education exceeding 95%.

Appropriate inclusion as a fundamental goal

In the Phase I Improvement Plan for Special Education (2014–2016), the Chinese government introduced initiatives intended to “comprehensively promote inclusive education (Chinese Inclusive Education 1.0) and enable every disabled child to receive suitable education,” “expand the scope of LRC in regular schools,” and “arrange for disabled students to learn in regular classes at regular schools wherever possible” (MOE, 2014). Nevertheless, access to inclusive education still needed institutional, legislative, and financial safeguarding, including relevant support of the teaching faculty, curricula, and environment, among other resources. Consequently, the government made rational adjustments based on the national conditions at the time. Accordingly, in order to facilitate the gradual transition to inclusive education, the Phase II Improvement Plan for Special Education (2017–2020) noted the need to “comprehensively promote inclusive education (Chinese Inclusive Education 2.0)” and “prioritize arrangements for school-age disabled children and adolescents to receive compulsory education by means of LRC in nearby regular schools.” Three years later, the government made another adjustment and further defined the development of special education as the promotion of inclusive education (Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0). As a result, with “appropriate inclusion as the goal,” disabled children deemed able to integrate into the current environment of regular education are placed into regular schools to “ensure that priority is given to admitting school-age disabled children to regular classes at nearby and accessible schools wherever possible” and to “place every disabled child appropriately.”

The distinct advantages of China's inclusive education

For the Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0 stage, the Action Plan has advanced the promotion of inclusive education and comprehensive improvement of the quality of special education as key objectives, while emphasizing efforts to explore models of inclusive education adapted to the shared growth between disabled and regular children and advance the former's integration (General Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2021). The plans of the previous two phases highlight the following three advantages: establishing a government-led approach to educational governance, developing a localized response to education planning, and instituting multipronged integration as an approach to educational placement.

Government-led approach to educational governance

The Action Plan explicitly calls for adhering to government-led educational governance, enhancing provincial and municipal coordination, fulfilling the primary responsibilities of government agencies at the county level, and strengthening support for underdeveloped areas and regions with inadequate special education (MOE, 2021b). The education strategy of adhering to government-led educational governance has three main advantages.

First, it is conducive to improving the conditions for operating special education schools. The Action Plan places significant emphasis on advancing the construction of resource centers for special education at the national, provincial, municipal, county, and school levels. It also highlights the need to support regular schools to equip their resource classrooms with the equipment, instruments, and books necessary to meet the needs of disabled students in terms of their education, teaching, and rehabilitation training needs, among other aspects. The Action Plan also underscores the importance of enhancing the construction and installation of accessible facilities and equipment at schools to aid the on-campus learning of disabled students with accessible support services.

Second, the strategy helps refine the mechanism for funding special education. The Action Plan stipulates the implementation and increase of a standard public subsidy per disabled student enrolled in compulsory education at special education schools and through LRC. By 2025, the standard public subsidy per special education student enrolled in compulsory education will be increased from RMB 6,000 to over RMB 7,000 per student per year. Additionally, depending on conditions, regions are permitted to increase their subsidies by an appropriate amount. The policy document also states that the Central Government's subsidy for special education will prioritize the provision of door-to-door services so that severely disabled children can receive compulsory education. Additionally, local treasuries can set up special subsidies for special education and enhance the development of basic capabilities for special education.

Third, the strategy contributes to improving the supervision and evaluation mechanisms in place. The Action Plan recognizes the reform and development of special education as key themes of the supervision and evaluation of education at the provincial level and as integral to the provincial government's commitment to the high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education. Therefore, educational supervisory bodies and inspectors across the country are expected to incorporate inclusive education into the scope of supervision. Meanwhile, the provincial people's governments have been directed to scale up their guidance and inspection efforts with respect to the implementation of the plan for the development and improvement of special education. To ensure the effective implementation of the Action Plan, the government intends to put incentive and accountability mechanisms in place, and include the conditions of implementation in the performance appraisals of municipal- and county-level governments.

Localized strategy for educational planning

To ensure the high-quality development of special education, the Chinese government has localized educational planning in various dimensions, from policymaking to school operations to teaching. First, in terms of policymaking, educational policies are jointly formulated by multiple departments. The Action Plan, for instance, was drawn up through the joint cooperation of the MOE, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, National Health Commission, and China Disabled Persons’ Federation to ensure the high-quality development of special education in terms of human, financial, and physical resources.

Second, the government has adopted a demonstration effect that ripples through the entire system. By focusing on the construction of demonstration zones and schools of special education, selecting cases of outstanding education and teaching, and showcasing and facilitating exchanges to enhance the basic skills of special education teachers, the Chinese government has fostered the high-quality development of inclusive education using the demonstration effect of school operations and teaching.

Third, an environment favorable to inclusive education has been created by adopting the model of group-run schools. By drawing on the experiences of regular schools with the group-run model, the government has promoted inclusive education across special education groups. In this regard, the principal of a prestigious school serves as the leading principal and a decision-making body comprising expert consultants and the principals of various campuses is responsible for the overall planning of the school community. A responsive execution system and a supervisory feedback system have also been formed to create a favorable environment for inclusive education across a wider region and facilitate the sharing of quality educational resources in various areas, including management, teaching faculty, and equipment.

Multipronged integration as an approach to educational placement

In the Action Plan, the model of “integration between regular and special education” proposed in the Phase II Improvement Plan for Special Education (2017–2020), in which “regular and special education schools share their responsibilities and resources and support one another,” is refined into the model of “multipronged integration.” The Action Plan seeks to “provide an inclusive environment that enables mutual understanding, respect, growth, and betterment between disabled children and adolescents and their non-disabled peers.” More specifically, in order to create an environment for integration, the first prong involves reinforcing the integration of regular and special education and encouraging the formation of paired assistance and merging of operations between special education and regular schools into school groups. The second prong seeks to promote the integration of vocational and special education as well as support the departments and classes of vocational education at special education schools and vice versa in terms of offering subjects adapted to the learning characteristics of disabled students and market needs. In doing so, the government intends to equip vocational and special education schools with marketable skills and lay the foundation for the future employment or entrepreneurship of disabled people. The third prong focuses on facilitating the integration of medical rehabilitation, information technology, and special education, as well as enabling more targeted and effective evaluation and appraisal, admissions and placements, education and teaching, and rehabilitation training for disabled students.

Challenges faced by China's inclusive education

Inclusive education is a growing trend of reform and practice in the international development of special education. Despite its positive role in advancing the cause of human rights, it remains fraught with challenges, including legislation, the development of academic disciplines, teachers’ professional development, and support systems. In respect to the development of inclusive education, China should view these developments as precedents and take preemptive measures to prepare for similar challenges.

Urgent need for effective legislation to ensure access to inclusive education

Issued by the MOE in 2003, the Minutes of National Experience Sharing Meeting on Learning in Regular Classes (hereinafter, Minutes) became the first document to explicitly describe LRC as the primary form of inclusive education. Since the promulgation of the Minutes, China's laws and regulations have only touched the surface of adopting LRC in regular schools as the primary means of promoting inclusive education in the Phase II Improvement Plan for Special Education (2017–2020). In contrast, the 2017 revision of Regulations on the Education of Persons With Disabilities stressed the active promotion of inclusive education (The State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2017). Simply put, at present, special education faces an array of problems, including poorly conceived legislation, marked lack of rigidity, and a relative lack of legal responsibilities (Fu, 2013). There is a particular scarcity of dedicated laws on inclusive education. Current policies and regulations are too broad and primarily comprise advocacy provisions, exhibiting a lack of operable clauses prescribing how they should be implemented by governments and related departments at various levels. Therefore, China's inclusive education desperately needs to be elevated to a higher level of the legislative hierarchy. It also requires dedicated laws and regulations with provisions specifying the targets of inclusive education, methods of educational placement, curriculum design, educational approaches, and supporting measures.

Under-development of special education as an academic discipline

Special needs pedagogy is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary field of study. Underpinned by theories in pedagogy, psychology, medicine, and sociology, special needs education constantly draws theoretical insights from a wide array of academic disciplines, including philosophy, economics, management science, anthropology, neuroscience, and computer science (Deng & Lu, 2012). However, these disciplines tend to interpret problems related to special education and disabled children from their own perspective. This is especially true for inclusive education, which has developed on the basis of special needs pedagogy. Regarding China's inclusive education, a new set of disciplinary, theoretical, research, and practical paradigms catering to the needs of inclusive education should be advanced based on the interplay and co-development of academic disciplines. Doing so will facilitate the transformation from “multidisciplinary” to “cross-disciplinary” education and help refine the development of special needs pedagogy as an academic discipline through cross-disciplinary integration.

Inadequate quality of inclusive teacher education

Despite the strategies outlined in the Action Plan to enhance the professional development of special education teachers—such as increasing the number of pre-service special education teachers, raising the educational attainment of special education teachers, and providing regular training to in-service teachers—the inclusive education of disabled children in China is predominantly undertaken by subject teachers at regular schools. The majority of such teachers graduate from regular schools and have never studied the patterns of disabled children's physical and mental development or the pedagogical principles of special education in a systematic way. Moreover, as the theories and practices surrounding China's inclusive education are still in an exploratory stage, a comprehensive and well-developed knowledge system has yet to be established. Therefore, China should strengthen its research on the theories and methodologies of inclusive education and popularize the basic theories and techniques of special education among teachers at regular schools.

The urgent need to establish a support system for inclusive education

Whether disabled children can be admitted to regular schools should not be determined through simple educational evaluation, and the education they receive at regular schools should not oppose or compete with that of regular students. Rather, the integration of disabled children into regular schools requires effective educational support, and the education they receive at regular schools requires them to collaborate and co-develop with their peers. At the macro level, the future construction of a support system for China's inclusive education should retain the development patterns of appropriate inclusion, facilitating coordination and synergy among departments related to education, social development, civil affairs, finance, human resources and social security, national health, and the China Disabled Persons’ Federation. At the meso level, the mechanism for promoting Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0 should entail the optimization of inclusive education in terms of its systems, organizations, academic disciplines, professional pool, and monitoring systems. Finally, at the micro level, the implementation of Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0 should involve the development of a curriculum system, teaching methods, resources, equipment, and tools catering to the needs of inclusive education.

Prevention of resource surplus at special education schools

To foster educational equity, the Phase II Improvement Plan for Special Education (2017–2020) stipulated that a special education school would be established in every municipality (prefecture) and county (city) with a population of more than 300,000 people and a significant proportion of disabled children and adolescents. Drawing on this, the Action Plan encourages every county (city, district, and banner) with a population of more than 200,000 to operate a special education school that is up to standard. It also calls for the “reasonable distribution of special education schools for children with autism.” Looking ahead, with inclusive education progressing toward “zero rejects,” the number of disabled children attending special education schools will gradually decline, resulting in a surplus of special schools. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a sound overall plan regarding the future functions of special education schools in order to prevent the waste of educational resources.

Inclusive education is a beacon in the development of special education in China, presenting a promising—although not the only—approach to ensuring that every disabled child and adolescent can develop into a member of society. As the promotion of inclusive education requires support and safeguards in various aspects, including education, economy, the rule of law, culture, and technology, Chinese Inclusive Education 3.0 should proceed and transform in an orderly manner aligned with China's national conditions. According to Zhang and Deng (2022), special education is a historical process involving the transformation from segregation to integration. No country can escape the historical logic of “progressive inclusion,” nor can it provide a standard blueprint or exemplar. In sum, throughout the gradual and adaptive development of special education in China, the Chinese government has drawn on international experiences in inclusive education and, in line with the development patterns of disabled children and the country's national conditions, introduced “appropriate inclusion” as a solution and path to the localized development of special education.