This article describes the evolution of inclusive education in Hong Kong, moving from segregation via integration to inclusion. The outside influence of education policies and trends from Britain, Australia, and the United States are identified, and the current situation is described. In particular, obstacles that are encountered on the route to inclusion are compared with those found in other countries. These obstacles include large class size, teachers’ often negative attitudes, parents’ expectations, teachers’ lack of expertise for adapting the curriculum and for providing differentiated teaching, and ongoing conflicts between the notion of ‘inclusive schooling for all’ and the ‘academic standards agenda’. Copyright © 2021 Cambridge University Press.

The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) is a teacher responsible for the implementation of policies relating to the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN) at various levels of schooling in the mainstream setting. The UK has taken the leading role in SEN coordination since the early 1990s (DFE, 1994). Before 1994, there was no formal requirement for schools to appoint such a teacher. However, the 1994 Code (DFE, 1994) placed a statutory obligation on all schools to identify a specialist teacher to coordinate provision for pupils with SEN, and it described the roles and responsibilities of the SENCO. In the UK, a dominant theme in SENCO research in the past decade has been the extent to which the role is concerned with aspects of leadership and management (e.g., Cole, 2005; Layton, 2005; Rosen-Webb, 2011; Tissot, 2013). The role of SENCOs have been debated in the literature (Norwich, 2010; Oldham & Radford, 2011), specifically concerning whether it should be a specialist role or a more generic management role. An individual's interpretation and enactment of the role of SENCO – as specialist or management, or somewhere in between – depends on the individual (Kearns, 2005) and school-level factors (Blandford, 2013). While the UK schools are exploring effective ways for assuring the effective functioning of SENCOs, Hong Kong followed the footstep of the UK by introducing a similar position in 2015. Through a pilot scheme in 2015, a total of 124 schools, including 65 secondary schools and 59 primary schools, were included. The final evaluation report of the pilot scheme concluded that although there was variation in the roles of SENCOs in different schools, it was clear that they were engaging in more strategic activity as the new role develops (Education Bureau, 2018). In addition, two studies (Poon-McBrayer & Wong, 2013; Poon-McBrayer, 2017) investigating the roles of principal leadership on HK schools' inclusive education reforms found that

Integrated education is linked to a process of placing students with special education needs in ordinary schools. The aim of inclusive education is to provide high quality learning opportunities for students with different educational needs. Development in every region has experienced different stages and areas of concerns, and covered service targets with different types of specific needs. In the development process, the government will base on the current needs and formulate relevant regulations and ordinances to steer the implementation. Inclusion education is one of the essential tasks in school reform as observed in overseas countries. The government is expected to advocate inclusion proactively, deploy the necessary resource and encourage collaboration. Copyright © 2015 Asian Journal Center, Asian Federation on Intellectual Disabilities.

Little research has been conducted to gain deeper understandings of policy change of piloting special educational need coordinators (SENCO) in a Chinese education community. In response to the change in policy towards regularisation of the SENCO, we examined a trajectory of policymaking for SEN support in Hong Kong's integrated education. Critical discourse analysis as a discursive method of analysing the local SEN practices in relation to the international policy development was adopted. The key questions are: What is the difference between this Chinese integrated education and international policy development for inclusion? What effects of the pilot SENCO have emerged in the policy and media texts in the Chinese integrated education? What recommendations can be derived to inform the regularisation of SENCOs in ordinary public schools? The findings shed light on the conceptual discrepancy between integrated and inclusive education in the policymaking. The economic considerations and administration accountability of the pilot SENCO affected the regularisation. As reflected in this Chinese integrated education, we also discuss the implications of changing the SENCO policy for quality SEN support in schools. Copyright ©Routledge.