By Dr Peter Gray
The Education White Paper is imminent and the word ‘inclusion’ is back on the table, having been removed from DFE discourse by David Cameron at the beginning of the Coalition Government. The implication is that more children with SEND will be educated in mainstream schools and settings, reversing the trend of recent years where there has been a substantial increase in special school admissions.
Since the advent of the Labour Government, there has been an increasing call to define what ‘inclusion’ means in terms of policy and practice. Previous debates and discussions during the first decade of the millennium were characterised by an increasing consensus that it amounts to more than mainstream placement. Inclusion was seen as progressive (‘a process not a state’) with the need to remove access barriers, not just physical but also those associated with curriculum and school ethos issues. An increasing emphasis was placed on pupil experience and the need for a greater sense of ‘belonging’. Some commentators (eg Brahm Norwich 2003) argued that inclusion was best seen as multi-dimensional with a need for practice to resolve a number of dilemmas arising from tensions between different aspects.
In contrast, the Government’s presentation has been relatively simplistic, with the announcement last year that £740 million would be invested to create 10,000 new school ‘places’ for pupils with SEND in both mainstream and special schools. The implication has been that this money should be invested in special units and resource bases in mainstream schools, with no real clarity about the degree of expected access to ordinary classrooms.
Tom Rees, the Chair of the Expert Advisory Group set up by the Government to look at inclusion, has endeavoured to characterise it as being a core feature of school quality. In a paper published by the Ambition Institute and the Confederation of School Trusts in July 2025, he sets out five key principles that should underlie inclusive practice in schools:
In earlier work with Ben Newmark, he emphasised a number of other factors, rejecting deficit models, valuing individual pupil difference and a broader range of achievements, emphasising the rights of all pupils to a high-quality education and collective responsibility to secure positive change. However, while examples of inclusive practice are provided, there is no clear attempt to resolve some of the tensions in the current education system between inclusion and the dominant models of mainstream school effectiveness and improvement (which are based on narrower expectations of attainment and progress).
In an earlier paper published by the Ormiston Academy Trust (2023), Tom called for ‘a bold vision of inclusion which normalises children’s learning needs rather than seeing them as special’. ‘By 2034, it should become normal for the vast majority of learning needs to be more precisely understood and catered for in mainstream schools through ordinarily available provision’.
One might assume that, if this vision is successful, the number of pupils requiring specialist placement will reduce, with an increasing emphasis on provision for those with the most significant and complex needs and a more explicit role in supporting high quality mainstream inclusion. However, the relationship between mainstream inclusion and special school numbers is less clear. In his 2023 paper, Tom calls for a ‘national commission on specialist placements’ which will ensure a greater number of ‘high quality and affordable’ specialist school places (which he believes to be lacking). ‘Special school admissions should be de-coupled from inclusion and the SEND label retired from use’.
The latter assertion implies a view of a fixed population of pupils with learning needs who will not be suitable for mainstream, with this group being identified and defined by ‘expert professionals’. They are out of scope for inclusion, although positive practice may encourage some links between the two sectors. This flies in the face of disability legislation in this country and elsewhere which expects the progressive removal of barriers to access to mainstream school education for all children and young people.
There is a tension here between a purist assertion of ‘education for all’ for most pupils, with ‘quality teaching and learning in ordinary classrooms’ replacing terms like ‘inclusion’ and SEND’ which imply practice that is additional or separate, and a different system for others, with loose and undefined connections between the two.
Tom Rees’s principles and values are very relevant in helping to shape inclusive practice. However, mainstream schools will need further conceptual support and design discussions to help them adopt a more progressive and less exclusive approach. There is a particular need to consider the secondary mainstream school context as there is evidence over recent years of increasing pupil displacement from that sector through exclusion, non-attendance, admission issues and placement in different forms of specialist and alternative provision (including elective home education). These trends have been partly influenced by Covid/lockdown but were already moving in this direction beforehand. Secondary school priorities have also been particularly affected over the last two decades by Government attainment demands.
In my experience, many secondary teachers and school leaders remain loyal to the comprehensive ideal, recognising that they have a responsibility to a range of learners, not just those that perform well against national requirements. They are sensitive to the risks of devaluing and demotivating those pupils that experience barriers to learning in conventional terms. While setting for some subjects (eg Maths) has become more common, there remains a commitment in many schools to mixed ability teaching, with teachers being expected to be able to address a range of learning levels. However, to be inclusive, schools need to adapt their offer to a broader range of learners while continuing to be judged on a narrow set of outcomes. How can they best do this?
Looking from the school end of the telescope, inclusion may best be seen as involving different levels of personalisation. As Tom Rees suggests, quality teaching should mean that subject staff are able to provide some of this, through differentiation or adaptive teaching approaches. Secondary schools can also be organised to provide a more nurturing approach to transition, through allocation of a smaller dedicated team of teachers working within a defined area.
There is also scope to create curriculum pathways for different types of learners, for example, those whose attainment gap is likely to widen over the period of their secondary education. This may involve an adapted curriculum, including a reduced range of subject options and/or use of different forms of accreditation. As needs become more significant, it is likely that teaching and learning becomes even more personalised, building on individual strengths and interests and making more use of community resources.
I recently visited a number of secondary schools which had designated resource base provision. Changes in admission trends were meaning that the needs of resource base pupils were becoming increasingly complex, with lower levels of literacy and language skills and a greater level of emotional dysregulation. These changes were happening on an ad hoc basis with limited opportunity for proactive planning. One school had had high expectations of pupil access to mainstream lessons with limited withdrawal for specific functions and was finding it difficult to adjust. In practice, this was leading to a more exclusive approach to admissions in order to hang on to a narrower inclusive model. Another had accepted the inevitability of these changes, along with the rise in numbers of pupils with more significant needs transferring from the primary sector and was revising its offer to a more ‘base-out’ approach.
This example demonstrates some of the practical issues that Brahm Norwich has described that result from tensions between different dimensions of inclusion. In the latter case, the Head Teacher was seeking to incorporate new resource base developments into broader provision design within the school, so that it fitted into a more inclusive approach to ‘progressive personalisation’.
What struck me was the importance in any of these arrangements of ensuring quality of pupil experience and a commitment to achieving positive outcomes (recognising that some of these will be relative and more individualised). Design and evaluation also need to draw heavily on pupil and parental voice. A key dimension of inclusion is mainstream ownership, which implies so much more than just presence of pupils with SEND in mainstream schools and settings. Ownership is associated with the need to plan strategically for meeting changing pupil profiles and regular evaluation of quality and progress.
For me, this contrasts significantly with terms such as ‘ordinarily available provision’ and ‘graduated approach’ which come from the SEND rather than mainstream lexicon. To move more substantially towards greater inclusion in mainstream schools, there needs to be a much more collaborative and reflective approach to school development and design which takes account of the learning needs of all our children. This is so much more than funding a specific increase in the number of mainstream ‘places’.
Great blog Peter. I find it so depressing that children who were taught and thrived in mainstream schools during the period(late 1980s – early 2000s) are now seen as too “complex” for mainstream schools to include. Interestingly, this was a period a rapid rise in academic attainment. My experience as a teacher and a mother is that with an inclusive pedagogy and a belief that all children belong, schools can become creative, nurturing, exciting places where friendships and relationships flourish, enabling high quality learning and community participation for all children. The experience of children and young people themselves does not seem to have had an impact on the proposals coming from Government. It would have been so lovely if building relationships with children and enabling social relationships between children to flourish had been a principle. Without this, we will continue to see young people without friends, lonely, socially isolated and unhappy. Our goal should be for all children and young people, including those with differences to be happy.