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Education for All (EFA) has been placed on the international policy agenda, but what is meant by "all"? This historical analysis focuses on 12 major international policy documents pertaining to education of disabled children and youth, over a period of approximately 40 years. Using Foucault's effective history and a conceptual framework of policy-as-discourse, this analysis reveals conflicted discourses and fragmented, reinterpreted, and reworked policies towards rights of individuals with disabilities in relation to EFA. These findings provide a lens for increased understanding of current educational inequalities and the lack of progress toward EFA for people with disabilities.
We are not the sources of problems. We are the resources that are needed to solve them. We are not expenses, we are investments.
- Gabriela Arrieta of Bolivia and Audrey Cheynut of Monaco: Opening address at the United Nations Special Session on Children, May 2002.
In March 1990, participants from 155 countries and representatives of 160 governmental and nongovernmental agencies met in Jomtein, Thailand, for a world conference on Education for All (EFA). The delegates to this conference adopted a World Declaration on Education for All that reaffirmed the notion of education as a fundamental human right. Furthermore, the delegates approved a Framework for Action that provided targets and strategies for addressing the basic learning needs of all as an investment in the future. In April 2000, delegates to the World Education Forum convened in Dakar, Senegal, establishing the new millennium development goal of providing every girl and boy with primary school education by 2015 and assessing progress toward EFA since Jomtein (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2000a). This time, more than 1,100 participants from 164 countries were in attendance. Policy documents emanating from the United Nations (UN) subsequent to Dakar also clearly identified inclusive education as a key strategy to address marginalization and exclusion in relation to the millennium development goal: "Inclusion was seen as the fundamental philosophy throughout UNESCO's programs and the guiding principle for the development of EFA" (UNESCO, 2002a, p. 17).
EFA has been placed on the international policy agenda, but what is meant by alP. The EFA global monitoring report for 2005 is virtually silent on disability issues beyond a brief mention of overall numbers (UNESCO, 2004, p....