The Salamanca Statement is a primary point of departure in research and policy on inclusive education. However, several problems have surfaced in the 25 years since its publication. In particular, several different interpretations of the concept of inclusive education and its enactment in practice have arisen. For instance, the definition of the pupil groups in focus varies greatly. There are also varying definitions of the importance of pupil-placement, when it comes to organisation of inclusive education. Using a theoretical framework combining Bacchi's [1999. Women, Policy and Politics.

In this article, we regard inclusive education as a policy phenomenon that contains a range of ideas about the purpose of education, the content of education and the organization of education. As a political ideal expressed in policy, inclusive education competes with other political ideals regarding education, for instance economic discourses that prioritize effectivity and attainment as educational goals. Thus, inclusive education has to be realized in contexts where available options for action are restricted by several and often contradictory educational policies on different levels of the education system. We argue that while research and debate about inclusive education are important, both are insufficient without analyses of the context of national educational policy. Any interpretation of inclusive education is necessarily situated in a general education policy, and measures of what ‘inclusive schools’ are dependent upon for instance, political interpretation(s) of inclusive education, resource allocation and political discourse on both local and national educational level. Here, we will provide support for this argument through presentation of both research on inclusive education, an alignment of prior analyses of Swedish national education policies and our own analyses of government statements.

While school choice and marketisation have been studied extensively, some areas remain under-researched, for instance, the consequences of choice for the development of inclusive education. The aim of this article is to illustrate the consequences of school choice for inclusive education, as it relates to special education, using Sweden as a case study. The Swedish education system is often raised as inclusive in an international perspective. However, school segregation has been increasing in terms of attainment and pupils´socio-economic-, and immigration backgrounds, groups that are over-represented among SEN-pupils and under-represented among pupils that exercise school choice. This summary of research indicates that the increased segregation in the education system also regards special education. There is a clustering of SEN-pupils at schools with particular profiles and a lower proportion at other types of schools, resources for special educational support are less accessible at independent schools, and school choice is not as open to SEN-pupils as other pupils. These are disconcerting results for an education system renowned for being inclusive. ARTICLE HISTORY

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