Paper short abstract:

While global educational policies have addressed inclusive education for the past decades, most countries in the South Asia region, until today, face severe difficulties in implementation. It is our core hypothesis that these shortcomings are strongly linked to severe shortcomings in governance.

Paper long abstract:

The past decades have witnessed a series of global educational policies, that address inclusive education. While the Education for All (EFA) initiative in 1990 had set important goals, most of these could not be reached within the stipulated timeframe of 10 years. In 2000, the consorted effort of the UN and several development partners in form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) again addressed the need for universal primary education, by 2015. Yet, again most countries in the South Asian region, other than Sri Lanka, have more or less severely failed this target.

When trying to understand why this basic goal is so difficult to be achieved, (mal-)governance needs to be attributed a major role. Following Bevir's ideas of governance, we would thus argue that it not only refers to the government, but also includes many other policy makers and service providers, such as international development partners, NGOs, as well as many local-level agents. Assessing short comings in governance also (re-)assesses several of the legal and institutional reform processes in the region, including the Right to Education Act in India and Sri Lanka.