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This chapter highlights aspects that are high on the agenda of the financing inclusive education debate: the need to re-think resource allocation mechanisms, the issue of empowerment, the way funding mechanisms support inclusive education, and the importance of appropriate governance and accountability mechanisms. It focuses on critical factors of financing that support the right to education, as outlined in Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) (United Nations, 2006), in a context of financial constraints and explores issues in the policy-practice gap in relation to both national- and European-level policy priorities and objectives. It draws on existing literature on modes of funding, on past research conducted by the European Agency and on the conceptual framework developed within a new European Agency study on current policy and practice in this field.

The international literature on the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs has been wide‐ranging, focusing mainly on curriculum and assessment, and social inclusion. The issue of funding has been mainly confined to discussions about the size of budget needed to support the resource needs of inclusion (e.g. the costs of additional teachers, support assistants or transport). Less attention has been given to the actual structure of the budget for special education. There has been greater interest in the strategic management of budgets and in the interaction of funding mechanisms at the national, local and institutional levels. This article discusses the effect of resourcing mechanisms for special education and draws on a study across Europe, and other studies based in The Netherlands, the USA and the UK. The strategic behaviours generated by different approaches are considered and the degree to which any particular strategy can influence the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs is assessed.

European-level debates regarding inclusion have most often focussed upon meeting the needs of learners with special educational needs (SEN) which occur as a result of learning difficulty or disability. In most European countries, the conceptualisation of educational inclusion has grown out of discussions surrounding specialist segregated provision, integration and mainstreaming (Donnelly, V. J. (Ed.) (2010). Inclusive education in action: Project framework and rationale. Odense, Denmark: European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education). Inclusive education has – until relatively recently – been most often interpreted and understood as primarily concerned with efforts to meet the needs of this group of learners within mainstream and not separate educational contexts.

This chapter considers the differing and constantly changing conceptions of inclusion in countries. It draws on recent European Agency work with member countries that identifies policy and practice developments around inclusion indicating a move in thinking from SEN to special needs education (SNE), then inclusive education towards inclusive education systems.