The Country Policy Development Support (CPDS) activity is central to the Agency’s role as an agent for policy change in inclusive education.
The CPDS work supports reflection on country policy development and implementation issues for inclusive education. CPDS is an individualised activity for all Agency member countries.
Activity framework
The CPDS activity is based on the Country Policy Review and Analysis (CPRA) activities. CPRA was a major development within Agency work with member countries. It centred on a form of highly structured policy review. Future Agency work, including CPDS, will consider implementation issues and how to understand and overcome the policy-practice implementation gap.
In 2023, the Agency outlined a framework for examining and monitoring developments in countries’ education systems. The CPDS framework builds on the main findings and outcomes, processes and methodologies that have proved useful in supporting individual country work in the Agency.
CPDS aims to gather available evidence of country policy and implementation across all the Agency’s Key Principles. It is a tool for stimulating discussion, setting specific goals and priorities and monitoring developments in the country concerned.
Participants and target group
Existing information was used to complete the framework for a small pilot group of countries – Iceland, Lithuania and Malta – in 2023. From 2024 onwards, the work will be expanded to include all Agency member countries.
Aims
The overall goal for CPDS will be to support countries from where they are in their policy development and implementation work. It will provide each country with a record of its recent participation in Agency activities and projects and evidence of policy development and implementation across all the Agency’s Key Principles at a given point in time.
The Agency team will use the information in other Agency activities, and to support individual countries and groups of countries towards their policy implementation goals.
Activities and outputs
- The CPDS Framework is a tool for recording and systematising country information on inclusive education systems. It helps to identify evidence of educational policies in relation to the Agency’s Key Principles and indications of the implementation of these policies in practice.
- The Country Repositories are the completed frameworks for each country. The repositories are intended to enable individual countries and jurisdictions to reflect on their education systems as a whole and on how the different aspects interact to support or constrain on-going development and progress towards the vision of inclusive education.
- Synthesis reports for each country outline the key findings from the country’s repository.
- A methodology report provides details of the CPDS activity processes.