Inclusive Education in Developing Countries.

Inclusive education (IE), also known as mainstreaming, means putting special education students into regular classrooms instead of separating them through placement in special education classes. This practice has been gaining popularity in many developed countries, partially because most of the world's disabled people live in developing countries. IE offers many benefits to special needs and mainstream students; it allows special needs students to more fully assimilate into culture and promotes tolerance and acceptance among mainstream students. However, IE is a process that requires careful teacher training, monitoring, and education support. The great difficulty is that many school systems in developing countries do not have enough financial capita, resources, or teachers trained in special education to properly assimilate special needs students into mainstream classrooms. Many developing countries' school budgets cannot cover all the mainstream students that need to be taught, and therefore the education of special needs students is often seen as an unaffordable luxury. While IE offers many benefits and is likely to be the best or the only way special needs students in developing countries can be educated, it also has many significant barriers that prevent it from being implemented or used to its fullest extent.