This paper critically examines how international schools in Czechia conceptualise and implement inclusive education, questioning the gap between institutional rhetoric and lived practice. While inclusion is widely promoted as a foundational educational value, its meaning often remains ambiguous and is applied inconsistently. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s concept of authentic dialogue, the study analyses three International Baccalaureate (IB) schools to explore how inclusivity is articulated and operationalised in practice. Findings suggest that, although schools share a broadly similar discourse of inclusion, their approaches reveal significant limitations. Inclusion is largely confined to students with cognitive and learning disabilities, with varying definitions and assessment practices shaping access to support. Tiered intervention systems are commonly employed, yet these depend heavily on diagnostic processes, institutional resources, and parental engagement. Notably, while some schools offer merit-based scholarships, these are typically inaccessible to students with special educational needs, highlighting tensions between inclusivity and selectivity. The paper argues that inclusion within international education remains an evolving and contested process, shaped by structural, financial, and cultural constraints. It raises critical questions about whether frameworks such as the IB and Universal Design for Learning can authentically represent diverse student voices or inadvertently reproduce normative assumptions under the guise of accessibility.

Keywords: International school, critical pedagogy, inclusive education, Universal Design for Learning, International Baccalaureate

References:

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum.

Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (R. R. Barr, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1992)

Derrida, J. (1987). The democracy to come. Diacritics, 17(4), 11–25.
https://doi.org/10.2307/464747

Stahl, G. (2022). Constructing the neoliberal citizen: An ethnographic investigation of corporatized practices in education. In R. Spannring, W. Smidt, & C. Unterrainer (Eds.), Institutions and organizations as learning environments for participation and democracy (pp. 69–85). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17949-5_4

Robertson, S. L. (2010). Neoliberalism and education reform. In A. M. T. Brown & G. Biesta (Eds.), The International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (pp. 1-16). Springer.