Another Inclusion Strategy? What Schools Really Need Before the 31st December Deadline + Free Template To Download!

Just when schools thought they couldn’t possibly have another document to produce, another strategy to publish or another accountability requirement to meet, along comes the new Inclusion Strategy Statement. With a deadline of 31st December 2026, this is another task landing on the desks of already overstretched school leaders and SENCOs, just as schools are approaching one of the busiest periods of the academic year. I’m viewing it as several hours of my life I won’t get back. I already have an action plan and school development plan after all. I know where we are going and what we need as do my leadership teams.

Now, before anyone misunderstands my frustration, I am absolutely in favour of improving inclusion in mainstream schools. I’ve spent much of my career supporting schools to develop more inclusive practice, and I firmly believe that inclusion should be at the heart of everything we do. However, I do question whether producing another strategy is really what schools need right now.

The challenges facing schools are not generally caused by a lack of policies or strategic intentions. They are caused by insufficient staffing, stretched budgets, increasing complexity of need, difficulties accessing specialist services and the growing gap between what schools are expected to provide and what they realistically have the capacity to deliver.

So, while the intention behind the new Inclusion Strategy is positive, I can’t help wondering whether we are once again adding another layer of paperwork to a system that is already struggling to cope.

What is the new Inclusion Strategy requirement?

The Department for Education has introduced the Inclusion Strategy Statement as part of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, which is intended to support mainstream schools in developing more inclusive provision.

Schools receiving the funding are required to publish an Inclusion Strategy Statement on their websites by 31st December 2026. The strategy should explain the barriers to learning and participation that pupils experience, how the school intends to address these barriers, how funding will be used and what outcomes the school hopes to achieve.

Although the guidance itself is non-statutory, publishing the statement is a condition attached to the funding. The government has also indicated that inclusion strategies may become a statutory requirement through its wider SEND reforms.

The strategy should reflect the government’s seven principles of inclusion, which include leadership and governance, inclusive cultures, high-quality teaching, early identification, targeted support, accessibility and partnerships with families.

On the surface, there is very little to disagree with. These are all important aspects of effective inclusive practice, and many schools will already have significant work underway in these areas.

However, schools already have SEND information reports, accessibility plans, school improvement plans, pupil premium strategies, provision maps and numerous other documents outlining how they support pupils with additional needs. It is therefore reasonable to question why another standalone document is necessary, rather than strengthening and making better use of the systems already in place.

Whose responsibility is the Inclusion Strategy?

One of my biggest concerns is who will actually be expected to write, implement and oversee this strategy.

The DfE guidance makes it clear that developing the Inclusion Strategy should be a shared responsibility across the school leadership team. This includes headteachers, deputy and assistant headteachers, SENCOs, school business managers and governors or trustees, alongside other relevant members of staff.

This is encouraging because inclusion should never sit solely with the SENCO. However, I suspect that in some schools the responsibility for producing the document will inevitably be passed straight to them.

SENCOs are already managing an extensive range of responsibilities, including coordinating provision, overseeing interventions, supporting staff, liaising with families and external professionals, completing statutory paperwork and monitoring the progress of pupils with SEND. In many schools, particularly smaller settings, they are doing this alongside substantial teaching or leadership commitments.

Adding responsibility for a whole-school Inclusion Strategy risks reinforcing the misconception that inclusion is primarily the SENCO’s responsibility, rather than a fundamental aspect of school leadership.

There is also an important distinction between contributing specialist knowledge to a strategy and being accountable for delivering it. A SENCO may identify that pupils require additional intervention, staff training or specialist support, but they are not necessarily the person making decisions about staffing structures, budgets or wider school priorities.

If a strategy identifies that additional resources are required, senior leaders and governors must take responsibility for determining how those resources will be provided.

The headteacher and governing body should therefore retain strategic oversight, with the SENCO contributing their expertise alongside other members of the leadership team. Teachers, teaching assistants, pupils and families should also have opportunities to contribute, particularly when identifying the barriers that affect everyday experiences of inclusion.

If the strategy is genuinely intended to improve whole-school practice, its development and implementation must reflect that shared responsibility.

Another strategy without the resources to deliver it?

The Inclusive Mainstream Fund represents a welcome recognition that schools need additional support to strengthen inclusion. However, there is a significant difference between providing some additional funding and ensuring that schools have sufficient resources to meet the needs of their pupils.

Across the country, schools are dealing with increasingly complex SEND profiles, shortages of experienced support staff, lengthy waits for specialist assessments and services, and financial pressures that limit their ability to provide additional interventions.

At the same time, there is a growing emphasis on strengthening universal provision and ensuring that reasonable adjustments are embedded in everyday classroom practice.

This is important, but we need to acknowledge the limitations of this approach.

I have previously written about the issue of reasonable adjustment stacking, where teachers are continually expected to introduce additional adaptations for individual pupils without sufficient consideration of the cumulative workload.

One pupil may require five adjustments, another may need six different strategies, while a third requires significant support with communication, emotional regulation or access to learning. Some of these adjustments will overlap, but many will not.

Eventually, there comes a point where the expectation that everything can be managed through high-quality teaching and reasonable adjustments becomes unrealistic.

Some pupils require targeted interventions, specialist provision or highly personalised approaches that cannot simply be absorbed into everyday classroom teaching.

A new Inclusion Strategy does not change this reality. Unless schools have the staffing, training, time and resources to implement the actions they identify, there is a risk that the strategy becomes another document outlining aspirations that are difficult to achieve in practice.

We must also be careful that an increased focus on universal provision does not inadvertently become a justification for delaying access to more targeted or specialist support.

Effective inclusion requires a graduated approach, with appropriate provision at universal, targeted and specialist levels. Strengthening one level should not come at the expense of another.

What about accountability and Ofsted?

Another consideration is how the Inclusion Strategy will fit into existing accountability arrangements.

The DfE expects schools to make their strategies publicly available, and the statements may provide useful evidence for Ofsted inspectors when evaluating inclusion.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with expecting schools to demonstrate how they are improving provision. The difficulty comes when accountability requirements begin to focus more heavily on documentation than on the practical experiences of pupils and staff.

Schools are already required to evidence an enormous amount of their work. Introducing another strategy creates additional demands for planning, consultation, monitoring, evaluation and review.

There is also the question of how schools will be judged when they have correctly identified barriers but lack the resources to address them fully.

For example, a school may recognise that pupils would benefit from increased access to speech and language therapy, additional teaching assistant support or more specialist interventions. However, identifying these priorities does not automatically make the necessary provision available.

It is important that accountability systems recognise the difference between a school failing to prioritise inclusion and a school working hard to deliver inclusive practice within significant financial and systemic constraints.

Otherwise, we risk holding individual schools responsible for difficulties that require wider solutions.

Will public accountability discourage schools from being honest?

There is another aspect of this requirement that concerns me, and that is the expectation that schools publish their Inclusion Strategy on their website for parents, inspectors and the wider community to see.

The DfE requires schools to identify the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation within their pupil population, alongside the actions and funding intended to address them. While this is not quite the same as asking schools to publicly identify their own weaknesses, the two are not always easy to separate.

For example, a school might identify speech, language and communication needs as a significant barrier to learning. However, an honest evaluation might also reveal that staff require additional training, specialist support is difficult to access or there is insufficient capacity to deliver the interventions pupils need.

Will schools feel comfortable publishing that information for prospective parents, governors, inspectors and the wider community to read?

There is a real danger that the requirement for public transparency will influence what schools are prepared to include. Rather than openly acknowledging the challenges they face, schools may be tempted to produce carefully worded statements that highlight their existing strengths and describe barriers in relatively general terms.

This is understandable, particularly in a climate where schools are already subject to significant scrutiny and accountability. However, it also raises an important question about the purpose of the strategy. Are we genuinely trying to encourage schools to reflect honestly on the barriers preventing effective inclusion, or are we creating another public-facing document that schools will feel pressured to make as positive as possible?

Meaningful school improvement requires honest self-evaluation. Schools need to be able to acknowledge that some approaches are not working, that staff need additional support or that current resources are insufficient. These are not necessarily indicators of poor leadership. In many cases, they demonstrate an accurate understanding of the challenges facing the school.

If we want Inclusion Strategies to drive meaningful improvements, there needs to be space for schools to acknowledge these difficulties without feeling that doing so will damage their reputation.

Otherwise, we risk creating another exercise in presenting inclusion rather than improving it.

How can schools make the strategy genuinely useful?

Despite my reservations, there is an opportunity for schools to use this requirement constructively, provided it is approached as a practical exercise rather than simply another compliance task.

The starting point should be to review what is already happening within the school. Most settings will already have considerable evidence of inclusive practice through their SEND provision, school development priorities, pupil progress information, staff training records and existing policies.

There is no need to create an entirely new approach to inclusion simply because a new document has been introduced.

Instead, schools should consider the barriers that are having the greatest impact on pupils and identify a small number of realistic priorities.

For example, this might involve improving early identification of speech, language and communication needs, strengthening staff confidence in supporting emotional regulation, reviewing the effectiveness of targeted interventions or improving the consistency of reasonable adjustments across classrooms.

The most valuable part of this process is likely to be the conversations that take place when developing the strategy.

School leaders need to listen to teachers and teaching assistants about the practical challenges they encounter. Families and pupils should have opportunities to share their experiences, and SENCOs should be supported to identify where existing provision is effective and where additional support is required.

It is equally important that any planned actions are achievable within the school’s available resources.

There is little value in promising extensive additional provision if the staffing, funding or specialist expertise needed to deliver it is not available.

An honest strategy identifying three manageable priorities, with clear responsibilities and realistic measures of success, is likely to be far more effective than a lengthy document containing numerous ambitions that cannot be implemented.

Schools should also consider how the strategy connects to their existing improvement planning. Inclusion should not become a separate initiative operating alongside the rest of school development. It should be embedded within decisions about curriculum, teaching, staffing, professional development, behaviour, attendance and school culture.

Is this another annual requirement?

The current expectation is that schools will continue to review and publish their Inclusion Strategies annually, although a multi-year approach can be adopted where appropriate.

This means schools need to consider not only how they will produce the initial statement, but also how they will monitor progress and review its effectiveness without creating unnecessary additional workload.

Where possible, this should be incorporated into existing monitoring and evaluation processes rather than generating entirely new systems.

It is also essential that responsibility for reviewing the strategy remains with the wider leadership team and governing body, rather than becoming another recurring administrative task for the SENCO.

If inclusion is genuinely a whole-school priority, it needs to be reflected in whole-school leadership and accountability.

Inclusion requires more than another document

Ultimately, my concern is not with the principles behind the Inclusion Strategy. It is with the continued expectation that schools can improve inclusion through additional planning and accountability requirements without sufficient consideration of the resources needed to make those improvements possible.

Schools do not necessarily need more documents telling them that inclusion is important. They need practical support to deliver it.

Furthermore, they need adequate staffing, accessible specialist services, meaningful professional development, manageable workloads and funding that reflects the complexity of pupils’ needs.

They also need school leaders who recognise that inclusive practice is a shared responsibility and who understand the realities of delivering increasingly personalised provision within busy classrooms.

The new Inclusion Strategy may help schools reflect on their priorities and identify opportunities for improvement. However, its success should ultimately be measured by the difference it makes to pupils’ experiences, rather than the quality of the document published on the school website.

If it becomes another administrative exercise, we will have missed an opportunity to make meaningful progress.

A free Inclusion Strategy template to save you some time

I had originally planned to make my Inclusion Strategy template available exclusively to subscribers of my newsletter (as there are lots of freebies – sign up here!). However, given the additional workload schools are facing and the timing of the December deadline, I’ve decided to make it available as a free download for everyone.

The template is designed to provide a straightforward starting point, helping schools organise their existing information, identify priorities and produce a strategy that reflects their individual context.

It won’t remove the need for discussion, planning or evaluation, but hopefully it will save some valuable time and make the process a little more manageable.

Download your free School Inclusion Strategy Template here:

One final request to school leaders: please don’t simply forward the template to your SENCO and ask them to complete it.

Use it as an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about inclusion across your school, consider what your staff and pupils genuinely need, and make sure that responsibility for delivering the strategy is shared.

You may also find my 3 hours of free webinars on, ‘The Inclusive School and Classroom’ helpful for the discussion.

Because inclusion has always been about much more than SEND paperwork. And another strategy will only be worthwhile when it helps schools turn good intentions into meaningful action.

Thanks for reading,

Lynn

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