By Farhan Ur Rehman Khan
What happens when a well-supported lesson ends and a pupil steps into a crowded corridor? Does the support agreed in the classroom follow them to the next room? Who notices when it does not?
These questions matter now. Under the 2026–27 Inclusive Mainstream Fund conditions of grant, mainstream schools receiving the funding in England must publish an inclusion strategy by 31 December 2026. The Department for Education’s guidance includes accessible environments and participation beyond classrooms among its seven principles. This is a funding condition, not a new statutory inclusion-strategy duty for every school.
The question for school leaders is whether these strategies will cover in-school transitions: movement between lessons, shared spaces and activities, rather than transitions between schools or educational phases. An adjustment written into a plan is useful only if school routines allow it to work.
A pupil can participate confidently in a lesson yet find the journey to the next one overwhelming or inaccessible. Crowding, unexpected room changes, long routes, noise and unclear instructions place different demands on pupils. A disabled pupil’s access needs and a pupil’s special educational needs may overlap, but the groups are not identical.
In a 2025 peer-reviewed qualitative study, Jennifer Price and Anna Mel Romualdez explored the sensory experiences of six autistic pupils at one UK mainstream secondary school. Pupils described environmental barriers, the importance of quiet spaces and inconsistent support. These firsthand accounts do not establish the effectiveness of a particular corridor intervention.
A National Autistic Society professional practice article identifies busy corridors as a potential sensory barrier and discusses leaving a secondary-school classroom early as one possible adjustment. That option may help one pupil but cost another learning time or make them feel singled out. Pupil preferences and the surrounding timetable matter.
The legal framework already points beyond individual lessons. The Equality Act 2010 applies in Great Britain. Its school reasonable-adjustments duty addresses practices and auxiliary aids where disabled pupils would otherwise face a substantial disadvantage; it is anticipatory, rather than simply a response after exclusion occurs. Unlike some other settings, the school’s reasonable-adjustments duty does not require alterations to physical features.
Changes to the physical environment are addressed through accessibility planning. Under Schedule 10 of the Equality Act, schools in England and Wales must prepare and review accessibility plans that include improvements to their physical environment. These duties should not be collapsed into one generic promise to make corridors accessible.
This article focuses on England’s inclusion-strategy arrangements. The Department for Education asks funded schools to identify barriers, explain activities and budgeted costs, and evaluate their impact. An inclusion strategy that considers teaching adaptations but ignores travel between classrooms risks overlooking an important part of participation.
One teacher may warn a pupil about a timetable change; another may not. A teaching assistant may know an agreed communication approach while the adult supervising the corridor does not. The gap often lies in coordination, especially when staff change or a lesson overruns.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s 2026 Guide to Inclusive Teaching advises integrating classroom adaptations and additional support with universal provision, then checking whether they help. It also acknowledges significant evidence gaps for some additional needs. Its evidence concerns teaching, not a tested solution for corridors; applying its review principle to daily transitions is a policy recommendation, not a proven outcome.
Whole-school changes, such as reviewing a congested route or the timing of movement, might reduce the need for repeated individual exceptions. Equally, some pupils will still need tailored support. Schools need to examine both possibilities rather than assuming that one solution fits everyone.
A special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) cannot resolve timetable, site and supervision issues alone. Senior leaders, timetable managers, premises staff and adults on duty also influence what happens between lessons. Governors or trustees can ask how the inclusion strategy accounts for these shared responsibilities.
A focused review could begin with four questions:
Split sites, bell schedules, limited supervision and building costs make some changes difficult. Recording these constraints allows schools to decide what can change immediately, what needs resources and what requires longer-term accessibility planning.
Patterns in missed learning, incidents or movement delays may help, but staff observations alone can miss distress that pupils do not show outwardly. Direct pupil accounts and family input should inform evaluation. Measures should reflect participation and wellbeing, not punctuality alone.
The small study cited here documents sensory barriers in one school. It does not establish which in-school transition strategies work best across settings or pupil groups. That is a worthwhile question for research and school evaluation.
With inclusion strategies being written this year, school leaders have a timely opportunity to make the spaces between lessons visible in their planning. The starting point could be a small number of barriers identified by pupils, followed by changes that are properly owned, monitored and reviewed.
Should inclusion strategies explicitly cover movement and unstructured time, and how can they avoid becoming another checklist?
Who should take responsibility when support breaks down between lessons: the SENCO, the timetable lead, or every adult involved?
What evidence would show that inclusion works throughout the school day, not only inside classrooms?
Farhan Ur Rehman Khan is the founder and author of Health Info Guides, an independent educational website covering health, autism, wellbeing and accessibility. His writing has appeared in Autism Digest, Different Brains, Autism Spectrum News and SENDsational Futures. His interests include accessible information and the everyday experience of inclusion in schools.
