The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of
inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also
individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted
enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased
standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education
management, reduced teacher autonomy and marketisation of school
systems. This paper draws from a research project that explores
inclusion as part of the education transformations in England and
Sweden. These two countries have been very different in their state
governance and welfare regimes, but have been following similar
directions of reform in their education systems. The paper evaluates the
changing policy assumptions and values in relation to inclusion in the
schooling changes of the last few decades, through an analysis of policy
contexts and processes, and a presentation of selected empirical
material from research in the two countries. We argue that, despite the
similar dominant discourses of competition and marketisation, the two
education systems draw on significantly different paradigms of
operationalising inclusion, with distinct outcomes regarding equality.