Aspire to Include: Celebrating Global Inclusion Week at Kivukoni International School
During Global Inclusion Week, Kivukoni International School explored what it means to help every child belong and take part. Head of Inclusion David Mungoma shares how the school supports different learning needs, encourages students to include one another, and works to remove barriers across its community.
At Kivukoni International School, inclusion is more than a word in our school values. It is an everyday commitment to ensuring that every child is known, valued, supported and given meaningful opportunities to participate, learn and succeed. It is central to our vision of being a school “Where Children Love to Learn.”
This year, as we celebrated Global Inclusion Week, our theme was “Aspire to Include.” The theme challenged us to look beyond simply having students together in the same classroom and to consider what genuine participation looks like. Who gets heard? Who gets involved? Who might need a different pathway into learning? And what can each of us do to make sure that everyone belongs?
Kivukoni is a diverse community that celebrates difference in culture, language, ability, background and experience. Our approach to inclusion recognises that children do not all learn in the same way or at the same pace. We respond to individual strengths and needs through differentiated teaching, appropriate adjustments, targeted support and opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know in different ways.
A central part of our Learning Support approach is the belief that support should be driven by need rather than by a label. Through a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), we seek to identify barriers to learning early and respond at the appropriate level. This begins with strong, inclusive classroom teaching and reasonable adjustments available to all students. Where a student requires additional support, targeted interventions can be introduced, followed by more individualised provision where evidence indicates that it is needed.
This approach allows us to ask an important question: “What does this learner need in order to access and participate in learning?” rather than simply asking, “What label does this learner have?” Students may need support with literacy, numeracy, communication, attention, organisation, emotional regulation, sensory processing or behaviour. These needs can occur with or without a formal diagnosis. Our responsibility is to understand the barrier and provide an appropriate response.
Inclusion also means recognising that successful learning involves much more than academic knowledge. At Kivukoni, we increasingly focus on the executive function skills that help students manage themselves as learners. These include transitioning between activities, task initiation, planning, organisation, working memory, self-monitoring and inhibition.
For some students, beginning a task independently may be the greatest challenge. For another, moving from one lesson or activity to another may require additional preparation and structure. Others may need support to pause, regulate their response and consider what to do next. Rather than interpreting these difficulties simply as unwillingness or poor behaviour, we aim to understand the underlying skill that needs to be developed. Visual cues, predictable routines, advance warning of transitions, clear and manageable instructions, chunking of tasks, modelling, check-ins and explicit teaching of routines can all help students develop greater independence. Inclusion therefore becomes about building capacity, rather than creating dependency.
Our commitment to inclusion also means investing in our teachers. On Monday 21 September, Kivukoni staff took part in whole-school Learning Support training led by Head of Inclusion, Mr David Mungoma. The session focused on understanding and responding to sensory needs and behaviour, helping staff consider how sensory experiences, the classroom environment and individual regulation needs can influence a student's ability to engage and learn. The training also encouraged staff to look beyond behaviour itself and consider what it may be communicating. Understanding possible triggers, unmet needs and environmental factors enables teachers to respond more thoughtfully and proactively. The aim was not simply to provide teachers with a collection of strategies, but to strengthen our collective ability to create classrooms where more students can regulate, participate and learn successfully.
Our Inclusion Assembly brought the theme “Aspire to Include” to life for our students. The message was simple but powerful: everyone belongs, everyone has something to contribute, and inclusion is something we all have a responsibility to create.
Students were encouraged to think about the everyday opportunities they have to include others — in lessons, on the playground, at lunchtime, during activities, on the bus and within friendship groups. Inclusion does not always require a major intervention. Sometimes it means inviting someone into a game, giving someone time to respond, adapting the way we communicate, noticing when someone is finding an activity difficult, or making sure that a quieter person has an opportunity to contribute. Our challenge to students was therefore not simply to “be inclusive”, but to aspire to include — to actively notice opportunities where they can help create a community in which people feel that they belong.
Kivukoni's commitment to inclusion extends beyond the classroom. Our community reflects diversity in many forms, including culture, nationality, language, ability and socio-economic background. We believe that diversity enriches the experience of everyone within our school and creates opportunities for children to learn from people whose experiences may be different from their own.
This commitment is also reflected in our staff community. We recognise the contribution of employees with disabilities, including colleagues who use wheelchairs and colleagues with hearing impairment. Their presence is an important reminder that inclusion is not only about preparing students for a diverse world — it is about creating that diverse world within our own community.
Employment opportunities and participation should not be limited by assumptions about disability. When barriers are removed and people are given meaningful opportunities, individuals can contribute their skills, experience and perspectives in powerful ways. For our students, this also provides an authentic opportunity to see diversity, ability and contribution represented within the adults who form their school community. Inclusion also has a socio-economic dimension. A genuinely inclusive school must consider not only whether a child can access learning once they are here, but also whether circumstances might prevent them from accessing the school in the first place.
Through our bursary and scholarship opportunities, Kivukoni seeks to widen access to quality education and strengthen the diversity of our school community. Creating opportunities for children from different socio-economic backgrounds reflects our belief that educational opportunity should not be determined solely by a family's financial circumstances. This is what it means to Aspire to Include. It means looking at the whole child, recognising individual strengths and needs, removing barriers and creating genuine opportunities to participate. It means recognising that inclusion is not the responsibility of one department or one member of staff. It belongs to all of us.
Global Inclusion Week has given us an opportunity to celebrate what Kivukoni is already doing while also recognising that inclusion is an ongoing journey. For our teachers, it means continuing to develop inclusive classroom practice. For our students, it means noticing and including others. For our Learning Support team, it means responding to need without defining children by labels. For our leadership, it means creating structures and opportunities that make inclusion sustainable. And for our whole community, it means recognising that difference is not a problem to be fixed — it is part of what makes our community stronger. At Kivukoni, we aspire to create a school where everyone belongs, everyone participates and everyone has the opportunity to learn, contribute and thrive.
And, ultimately, that is what it means to be a school Where Children Love to Learn.
Aspire to Include.
By David Mungoma Head of Inclusion and Learning Support, Kivukoni International School