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Ideas and practices associated with inclusive education have featured prominently in the policies and reforms of successive Australian federal governments since the 1990s, yet there are limited historical analyses of these developments. This paper analyses federal and national inclusive education policies in Australia spanning from 1992 to the present. Drawing upon the concept of ‘political rationality’, the paper examines how the modes of reason underpinning inclusive education policies have evolved over time. Three distinct phases of policy development are identified, which we suggest are characterised by three dominant rationalities: (1) standardisation, (2) the neo-social and (3) personalisation. We argue that examining these rationalities reveals fundamental shifts in ways of thinking about and reasoning inclusive education in policy. We conclude by considering the implications of the different rationalities and single out the potential tensions emerging between rationalities of standardisation and personalisation as an area for future investigation.

Since the mid-1990s it has been illegal for Australian education providers to deny students with disabilities the right to access and participate in education. Conjointly, policies and standards have been introduced that devolve the responsibility of ensuring disabled students are able to fully engage in their education to schools. Despite recent studies suggesting dyslexic student needs are rarely met in the Australian school system, to date, little research has examined how developments in anti-discriminatory and inclusive policy affect the provision of support to these students. This paper examines how devolved approaches to inclusive education policy practice affect the lived experiences of dyslexic students in Western Australian schools. Focusing on two young people's stories about their time in school, it is argued that the adoption of devolved approaches to policy has been instrumental in shifting responsibility for the delivery of equitable education for students with learning disabilities to families, and especially mothers. Drawing on a social-relational model of disability and Bourdieusien theories of capital, this paper illustrates how shifting responsibility for inclusion to parents results in inequity. The findings illuminate a need to think more critically about exactly who should be responsible for inclusion.