Includ-ed, red europea de educación inclusiva

These years’ annual EASPD conference will be held in Salzburg on 22-23 October 2015 under the theme "Inclusive teaching programmes: Let's develop it together!" Carla Bonino, Transnational Cooperation Coordinator in the European Affairs Unit at Fundación ONCE as well as Annett Räbel from the incluD-ed Network Secretariat will represent the incluD-ed Network at the conference.

Conference objective in a nutshell

Inclusive education is the cornerstone to develop a more inclusive society. EASPD, in cooperation with the projects EQF meets ECVET, INVESTT and TIDE, will showcase a selection of best practices in developing inclusive teaching programmes for persons with disabilities, and will strive to develop recommendations for policy makers, school administrations and teachers to improve inclusion in education.

Thanks to the different perspectives of these projects, the event is expected to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss these best practices. This conference will be a great opportunity to assess where inclusive education stands in Europe, and for everyone to select the elements that would fit best and enrich to their own learning environment.

The conference programme wishes to be developed with a universal design, and participants can build their own schedule based on their preferences and needs. Twelve interactive workshops where concrete best practices are presented and discussed will be held in parallel.

How to move forward on inclusive education in Europe?

Carla Bonino from the incluD-ed network will participate in the policy panel “How to move forward on inclusive education in Europe?” together with Luk Zelderloo (Secretary General of EASPD), Donata Vivanti (Vice-president of the European Disability Forum) and Dimitrios Nikolsky (Chair of the Committee of Experts on the rights of People with Disabilities of the Council of Europe).

At the EASPD conference, incluD-ed will present the results of its pilot-study “Quality factors of inclusive education in Europe: an exploration” in which over 60 schools from Spain, France, Finland, Czech Republic, UK, Ireland, Austria and Iceland participated. Furthermore, incluD-ed will underline its contribution to advance and influence EU policies and initiatives through its diverse position papers on EU policies related to education and disability, its 2014 conference “A Dialogue on Inclusive Education and Disability in Europe” celebrated at the European Parliament in Brussels as well as its Statement on promoting the development of inclusive education systems within the EU that has been transformed into a Written Declaration at the European Parliament.