Book review: Inclusion: developing an effective whole school approach – by Alison Ekins and Peter Grimes

Graham Hallett, Senior Lecturer, University of Cumbria, reviews the book 'Inclusion: Developing an Effective Whole School Approach' by Alison Ekins and Peter Grimes (2009, Maidenhead: Open University Press, ISBN 9780335236046). The book proposes a key model in developing a whole-school approach to inclusive practice, that of Inclusion in Action. The model proposed is a ‘series of interlocking processes’ designed to bring data, interventions and provision, and target setting together, to promote self-evaluation; in this way, it is suggested, school development and inclusion will follow. The book suggests that the development of Inclusion in Action is a three-stage process, moving the school from a structure that embodies discrete systems with only tentative connections between those systems, through a process based on a school improvement cycle, to what is described as a dynamic model of whole-school development. This sees continuous self-evaluation, based on principles of distributed leadership, as the mechanism that enables the interlocking processes described above to become embedded within the school.