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In 2026, what does inclusive education look like? Are we close to being fully inclusive? Where are the gaps and the challenges? Whose voices and experiences are still unheard and unseen? What might we do both locally, in practice, and at policy level to move us closer to genuine inclusion?

In this Â鶹ÒùÔº Bites collection, guest editors Andrea Priestley, Heather Earnshaw and Di Cantali,Ìýbring together Â鶹ÒùÔº Blog posts that, in aggregate, challenge us to be innovative in imagining how schools could be genuinely inclusive and education systems more equitable. Contributions include a provocation around what the purpose of education is, a variety of voices depicting a range of lived experiences and marginalisation in education, and some reflections on the implications and challenges for both practice and policy at local and system level.Ìý

The contributions to this issue explore:Ìý

• whether the current schooling system is educational by looking back to a successful community school in the 1980s, which valued ‘place, time, teams, resources and relationships’
• rethinking what the purpose and focus of language learning might be
• the need to work in partnership with marginalised groups in our communities, for example,ÌýGypsies, Roma and Travellers, as well as childrenÌýwho have been adopted
• the underresearched phenomenon of twice-exceptionality where one label can mask the presence of another
• the influence that medical and social models of inclusion have on perceptions of disability and argues for a more intersectional approach
• hair-based discrimination experienced by Black and mixed-race students and staff
• the benefits of bringing a lens of transgender and trans-feminist studies to support understanding of, and fostering of, inclusivity
• inclusion in the context of physical education, where ableism, normative ideals and a presumption of performance and competition are currently embedded
• the purposes of education through the lens of decolonisation
• the primary religious education curriculum in Northern Ireland examined, through the lens of epistemic injustice, the potential harms done by the existing dominance of Christianity in the curriculum
• how schools (unwittingly) marginalise white working-class families.