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The purpose of this paper is to address the fact that under current Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) funding guidelines, diagnostic assessments for apprentices with additional learner needs are deemed an ineligible cost, which has the potential to reduce access to additional funding and support.

The approach of this paper is to critically evaluate the surrounding literature, government reports and Mencap review produced since the apprenticeship levy and present the implications of these funding guidelines relating to access to apprenticeships and the practical effects of apprentice’s experience and development.

The finding presented by this paper is that the definition of diagnostic assessments as an ineligible cost reduces the quality of training delivered by providers and assurances to apprentices that they will be fully supported from the start of their training.

The limitation of this research was the minimal amount of government/ESFA documentation addressing this subject within apprenticeships.

The practical implications of this paper relate to the on-going delivery of apprenticeship training in the UK, and the detrimental effect of reducing access to diagnostic assessments for apprentices with undiagnosed additional learner needs under the current wording of the Education Skills Agency guidance.

The government policy is currently under review to address this area which is considered an ineligible cost for supporting apprentices with recognised additional learner needs.

The value of this paper is to align with recent Mencap review and collaboratively readdress the ESFA’s current positioning of diagnostic assessments for apprentices with undiagnosed learning difficulties and disabilities as an ineligible cost and non-standardised requirement.

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 purpose of this paper is to address how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can be designed to include the needs of learners with multiple disabilities. Specifically, it employs AI to show how specific learning materials from a huge repository of learning materials can be recommended to learners with various disabilities. This is made possible through employing semantic web technology to model the learner and their needs.

The paper reviews personalised learning for students with disabilities, revealing the shortcomings of existing e-learning environments with respect to students with multiple disabilities. It then proceeds to show how the needs of a student with multiple disabilities can be analysed and then simple logical operators and knowledge-based rules used to personalise learning materials in order to meet the needs of such students.

It has been acknowledged in literature that designing for cases of multiple disabilities is difficult. This paper shows that existing learning environments do not consider the needs of students with multiple disabilities. As they are not flexibly designed and hence not adaptable, they cannot meet the needs of such students. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate that students with multiple disabilities would use learning environments, and then design learning environments to meet their needs.

This paper, by presenting various combination rules to present specific learning materials to students with multiple disabilities, lays the foundation for the design and development of learning environments that are inclusive of all learners, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This could potentially stimulate designers of such systems to produce such inclusive environments. Hopefully, future learning environments will be adaptive enough to meet the needs of learners with multiple disabilities.

This paper, by proposing a solution towards developing inclusive learning environments, is a step towards inclusion of students with multiple disabilities in VLEs. When these students are able to access these environments with little or no barrier, they will be included in the learning community and also make valuable contributions.

So far, no study has proposed a solution to the difficulties faced by students with multiple disabilities in existing learning environments. This study is the first to raise this issue and propose a solution to designing for multiple disabilities. This will hopefully encourage other researchers to delve into researching the educational needs of students with multiple disabilities.

Europe is comprised of geographically and politically diverse countries, with different cultures and languages, at different stages in their progress towards achieving inclusive education for diverse ranges of learners. This chapter discusses cross-country collaborative work conducted within the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education. The work supports countries in meeting commitments to Sustainable Development Goals in Quality Education, by developing and implementing more inclusive education systems. This collaborative approach is based on a shared vision and evidenced-based key principles to guide policy development. It highlights the challenges alongside the progress achieved in European Country contexts towards SDG 4 targets.

There is widespread awareness that evidenced-based policy-making is critical for the long-term development of inclusive education systems. Policy-makers, data collection experts and researchers are aware of the need for data collection at national level that not only meets the requirements of international policy guidelines, but also works within a shared approach so as to promote a synergy of efforts at national and international levels.

Monitoring inclusive education at the system level is increasingly seen as a priority for country and EU level decision-makers. However, what form this monitoring should take and what issues it should focus upon are less clear.

This chapter looks across a number of recent European Agency studies in order to highlight and consider key issues and questions in relation to monitoring the implementation of inclusive education in terms of a system’s efficiency, effectiveness and ability to be equitable for all learners.

By drawing upon the findings of European Agency work considering a range of policy priority areas, it is possible to highlight a number of common factors that apply to monitoring the dimensions of efficiency, effectiveness and equity in different educational contexts or systems.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is crucial for successful learning and lifelong learning in today’s rapidly changing world, yet research has shown that many learners need support for SRL. Recently, learning analytics has offered exciting opportunities for better understanding and supporting SRL. However, substantial endeavors are still needed not only to detect learners’ SRL processes but also to incorporate human values, individual needs and goals into the design and development of self-regulated learning analytics (SRLA). This paper aims to examine the challenges that lifelong learners faced in SRL, their needs and desirable features for SRLA.

This study triangulated data collected from three groups of educational stakeholders: focus group discussions with lifelong learners (n = 27); five teacher interviews and four expert evaluations. The groups of two or three learners discussed perceived challenges, support needs and willing-to-share data contextualized in each phase of SRL.

Lifelong learners in professional development programs face challenges in managing their learning time and motivation, and support for time management and motivation can improve their SRL. This paper proposed and evaluated a set of design principles for SRLA.

This paper presents a novel approach for theory-driven participatory design with multistakeholders that involves integrating learners, teachers and experts’ perspectives for designing SRLA. The results of the study will answer the questions of how learners’ voices can be integrated into the design process of SRLA and offer a set the design principles for the future development of SRLA.

Media considerations are pedagogical rather than technological in nature. In online courses, we use technology to enable learner interaction. In this chapter, we focus on a process through which we identify media that will help bring our course to life. Technology tools come and go, quickly. While some specific tools are suggested, it is the process by which to identify and select media that is enduring. We begin with a discussion of media-enabled course activities that are used to guide the selection process. The 10 activities are organized by type of interaction they represent and the media characteristics they require. Media have affordances or functions that can be matched with identified course activities to meet learner interaction needs. These needs help to narrow the scope of our selection decisions. After exploring a variety of functions and tools, we exemplify the media selection process. We extend the work started in previous chapters by identifying media needs in light of design and interaction decisions under the playground and symphony metaphors. In so doing, we demonstrate how the phases of the redesign process inform our technology choices.

There has been a policy for including pupils with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties in mainstream schools in England since the 1980s. However, effective inclusive education has proved to be very difficult to achieve in practice. Currently, there is a mixed economy of special and mainstream schools offering inclusive education, and we argue that the place of education is less important than the quality of that education. Ideally, pupils with S/PMLD would be educated in their own local communities, alongside their non-disabled peers, but this situation is not yet established in English schools.

The mere provision of resources is rarely sufficient to meet the learning needs of library users. Learners also require assistance from staff, first to identify their needs, and then to ensure these are met successfully. An understanding of the possible barriers that may prevent learning taking place and an appreciation of the factors that motivate people to learn can help library staff to meet the learning needs of their users more effectively. As providing support for learners is assuming increasing importance in libraries, librarians will need a broad understanding of learning methods in order to recognise the many and varied ways in which their users approach learning. An appreciation of some of the concepts and techniques of both formal and informal education should, therefore, be delivered as part of librarians’ initial training, with additional opportunities to develop skills provided through continuing professional development.