The aim of this article is to review the current state of inclusive education in the world and to suggest a few relevant considerations. The first section "Two parallel concerns" retraces the inescapable connections between the educational aspects of inclusive education and more general concerns regarding inequality. The second section "Inclusive education in academic publications" scrutinizes academic publications and identifies two major themes among their contents: at first sight the internal transformations occurring in schools attract attention, but subsequently the territorial environment also gives rise to some concern. The third section "Inclusive education in the publications of international organizations" notes our search criteria for sifting through the documentation of the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO. The IBE/UNESCO workshops reflect varied, though converging interpretations of the concept of inclusive education in different parts of the world. All the official publications, however, tend to concentrate on the internal dynamics of schools, and there are not many that take a look at relations between inclusive education and public policy. Our last section "The geographical dimension of inclusive education" puts forward a few arguments in favour of paying more attention to inclusive education at the local and national levels. The main reasons for highlighting the local dimension arise from the combined factors of social deprivation, the need to co-ordinate measures taken in schools and the possibility of allowing a significant opening for community participation. The main reasons for paying attention to the national dimension relate to possible synergies between inclusive education and the expansion of education (for example, is schooling progressing at the same pace at different educational levels?), as well as between inclusive education and social protection (for example, do the many educational conditions applied to cash transfers have consistent pedagogic implications?).