Articles

FROM EDUCATIONAL EQUITY TO SMART GOVERNANCE: COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE MECHANISMS IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

Limin Wei1, Aisulu Bayalieva, Ruyang Li, Zhiyi Zhang
  1. 1 Kyrgyz State University named after I. Arabaev

Abstract

Educational equity and inclusion are now recognised not only as moral commitments but also as strategic governance challenges that call for systematic, evidence-based decision-making. This study reframes inclusive education as a domain of competitive intelligence and proposes a smart governance framework that turns large-scale international assessment indicators into actionable decision intelligence. Drawing on the publicly available Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 database, we construct an analysis-ready dataset for the China-related education systems, namely Hong Kong (China), Macao (China) and Chinese Taipei, comprising 15,600 student records linked to 395 schools. Following the four-phase intelligence cycle of collection, analysis, dissemination and strategic use, we operationalise five governance constructs, namely educational equity risk, inclusion climate risk, learning performance risk, school resource constraint risk and strategic governance capacity, and we integrate them into a weighted Smart Governance Priority Index together with a complementary Competitive Intelligence Capability Index. A complete pre-processing pipeline, an exploratory data analysis, and an analytical modelling layer that combines ordinary least squares and random forest regression, a gradient boosting priority classifier, and K-means archetype clustering are implemented in a reproducible, GPU-enabled Python environment. The gradient boosting classifier identifies high-priority schools with an area under the ROC curve of 0.95 and a fivefold cross-validated AUC of 0.952 with a standard deviation of 0.002, while clustering reveals four interpretable governance archetypes that map directly to differentiated strategic actions. The socioeconomic gradient of achievement, with a correlation of 0.40, confirms that equity risk remains a dominant signal even within high-performing systems. The framework shows how competitive intelligence mechanisms can transform inclusive education data into a sustainable governance capability, and it contributes a transferable, systemic and cybernetic model for data-informed educational policy.

How to Cite

Wei, L., Bayalieva, A., Li, R., & Zhang, Z. (2026). FROM EDUCATIONAL EQUITY TO SMART GOVERNANCE: COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE MECHANISMS IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION. ACTA INNOVATIONS, 61, 758–779. Retrieved from https://actainnovations.com/index.php/pub/article/view/777
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