“When teachers are faced with a lot of different needs in their classroom, it can be overwhelming to try and work out what that means for your practice,” says Hilary Spencer, CEO of the training and CPD provider Ambition Institute.

Of course, some teachers “are really confident about what they need to do - really good scaffolding, explicit instruction”, she adds. But as the level and complexity of need increases - today almost one-fifth of the school population has special educational needs or disabilities - this is becoming more and more challenging.

Unsurprisingly, Spencer says, “We’ve had a lot of teachers asking for more support.”

That’s why Ambition Institute has this week published an Inclusive Teaching Framework, developed in close partnership with specialists including the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists (NAPEP), Speech and Language UK, The Difference and the Royal College of Occupational Therapists.

Spencer hopes the framework will be “a helpful contribution to the obvious direction of travel” - of mainstream schools meeting the needs of more children with SEND, rather than these pupils requiring specialist provision. “We think that this framework will give teachers more confidence and more expertise,” she says.

The framework, which is available to download for free, is grounded in academic evidence.

Inclusive Teaching Framework

Neil Gilbride, associate dean at Ambition Institute and the lead author of the framework, says teachers are “suffering from too much information that isn’t necessarily good”.

Faced with the question of how best to support their students, teachers can “Google, they can [use] AI, they can come up with all kinds of interesting stuff that, on face value, sounds logical. They can be seduced into thinking that’s the thing they need to do. But they try it and it’s not working”.

Instead, the new framework condenses the most trusted research into one single resource.

“We’ve gone through the evidence base,” says Sue Franklin, chair of the NAPEP and a contributor to the framework, explaining how the team together read “around 500 papers” and ended up referencing 30 to 40 for each of the framework’s sections. This provides fidelity, she say.

Most importantly, adds Franklin, the framework is “digestible”, meaning “it will make sense to teachers when they read it”. “We didn’t want this to be something that would go up on the shelf and you’d never use it. This is something we want people to keep coming back to.”

A needs-based approach

The framework takes a needs-based approach. It is structured around five key areas of student need: speech and language, sensory, motor, executive function, and social and emotional development. For each of these areas, the framework shares underpinning ideas and insights, supported by accessible scientific explanations.

For example, under social and emotional development, the framework explains how this need continues into adulthood - hence why some children may be earlier in the development of self-regulation - and that learning is a social and emotional process: it involves taking risks, which can trigger emotions, leading children to require extra support. The insights include that maintaining curiosity about behaviours helps in understanding needs, and that co-regulation precedes self-regulation.

Rather than leading with specific diagnoses - such as autism, ADHD or social, emotional and mental health needs - Gilbride says this approach is “the most flexible way of building up teacher understanding, a model that enables them to understand what’s in front of them”.

Spencer concurs, adding that teachers can use the framework according to what they observe in their classrooms, not only once a student receives a formal diagnosis. “Focusing on core skills, which will work across a range of different expressions of additional learning needs, is going to help teachers meet a wider range of needs at once, meaning they can deploy that strategy with more confidence.” This aids inclusion.

School- and trust-wide CPD

While the framework is designed to be accessible to all, “our primary audience for this is the people who are supporting professional development in schools”, Spencer says.

It is intended to be used for school- and trust-wide CPD, rather than something for individuals to absorb on top of their ever-growing workload, adds Gilbride. “I hope this isn’t a document which is printed out and that teachers feel an expectation to self-study on their own.”

But is this resource - while free and publicly available - enough to truly make a difference on its own?

“The government has invested £200 million in CPD [on SEND and inclusion],” Franklin points out, showing that there is a national commitment to this work.

What’s more, while development of the framework started several years ago, it aligns well with several aspects of the new government SEND strategy, including the “experts at hand” service, which will bring a bank of specialists - including educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and specialist SEND teachers - to every local area.

Cross-discipline work

The framework already integrates these experts’ knowledge - showing that a cross-discipline approach is key to supporting student need.

In addition, it sets teachers up well to work with those experts, says Gilbride, because “to ask them questions, you need knowledge. You need the language”.

For example, when a teacher is talking with a speech and language therapist about how best to support a child, if they have been trained in the framework, they will know to say, “‘Tommy has some challenges with expressive language,’ because they will know that’s different to receptive language,” Gilbert explains. “That level of precision means you can have that mutual dialogue, two professionals working together with a shared language. It’s inherently powerful.”

All in all, says Spencer, this isn’t intended to be a whole new burden on teachers, but a follow-on from what they already gain through initial teacher training, early career induction and national professional qualifications.

“What we’re trying to say is, ‘These are things you already know. If you build on those and apply them more consistently, you will be able to meet needs better.’”