Borobudur Law and Society Journal

Indonesia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and adopted a national framework for inclusive education, yet regencies, which run most primary and junior secondary schools, decide whether children with special needs actually learn in regular schools. This article examines Magelang Regency, where about 490 children with special needs are recorded in education data and only a few schools are known to provide inclusive education. It asks whether the regency’s inclusive education policy meets the principles of justice and how it should be reconstructed. The research is normative, using statutory and conceptual approaches to the Constitution, the Convention, the Disability Law, the implementing regulations and Magelang Regency Regulation No 1 of 2021, assessed against the 4-A scheme and Rawls’s difference principle. The regency does have a binding regulation: it commits the regional government to inclusive education, facilitation of reasonable accommodation, annual monitoring and disability service units. But it defers the detail to national law and to regent’s regulations, and no implementing instrument on inclusive education was identified, so teaching assistants, facilities and budget remain unspecified and justice stops at formal access. The article proposes a regent’s regulation with targets, indicators, assigned roles and funding sources, published monitoring data and coordination with the province over special and senior secondary schools.