How to write your inclusion strategy statement

Every school in England should have published a strategy for inclusion before 31 December 2026.

This requirement is a key part of the government’s special educational needs and disabilities reforms that aim to deliver more inclusion in mainstream schools. But what should be in your school’s strategy?

What should your inclusion strategy look like?

The strategy should set out the approaches a school uses “to identify and meet commonly occurring and predictable needs” within their cohort and how inclusive practice is embedded.

The strategy should also include details about how schools are investing to “alleviate barriers to learning and participation”, and provide descriptions of activities that help towards this, complete with the budgeted cost for each of these activities.

That budgeted cost is expected to include details about how schools will use the money provided as part of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, alongside other core funding.

Most schools will already have strategies in place to address their pupils’ needs, but they may not be formally written down.

How long should the inclusion strategy document be?

The Department for Education has set out some guidance here and provided a template to help leaders put their strategy together.

This advises that the statement should be 500 words or fewer, and be written in clear language so children and parents can understand it.

Schools can decide whether their strategy is multi-year or not, but it must be reviewed annually.

What materials should it reference?

The entire strategy and any activities schools fund using the Inclusive Mainstream Fund are expected to be in line with the seven principles of inclusion that the DfE has set out.

What are the key things your school should consider when drawing up your inclusion strategy document?

To help schools create their inclusion strategy documents, we asked experts for their advice. They recommended the following seven steps.

1. Get started early

The first part of the process is identifying additional needs and any barriers to learning that are commonly occurring among your pupils, the DfE has said.

Heads can start out by thinking about the range of needs across their pupil population, says Ellie Harris, principal research fellow and head of children and young people’s policy at IPPR.

“How many kids do you have with dyslexia, with education, health and care plans [EHCPs], but also, what do you know about your kids who have difficult home lives or anxiety? Headteachers know their cohorts really well already - for primaries it will be about looking at new Reception cohorts, too, and thinking whether these new kids starting are different to ones they have had previously. Secondaries should also look at transition year groups.”

Crucially, it’s about understanding the needs of your pupils at the collective level, Harris says, rather than focusing on specific diagnoses or only children with EHCPs.

There’s no exact science to when heads should be starting work on this, she adds, but Harris recommends that the part of the strategy where you cover the needs of your pupils should be drawn up early on in the academic year.

2. Evaluate your needs and provision

The DfE’s template recommends that, after you identify barriers, you detail the activities (and their budget cost) that you will prioritise this academic year to alleviate those barriers, and then list outcomes you want to achieve by the end of the strategy.

Many schools will already have set a trajectory for improvement on inclusion as part of their school improvement planning, says Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), and this exercise will be capturing that in many cases.

Schools should think about doing a self-evaluation of the needs within their cohort, how they’re currently meeting them, and what they can improve, advises Mulholland, so they have up-to-date data to inform the strategy.

This self evaluation must be evidence-informed by use of robust and triangulated data.

“Sometimes schools will buy someone in to produce a report and to provide stretch and challenge ,” she adds. “But that’s expensive and doesn’t always leave the school owning the outcomes.

“Our members tell us that working with other schools in their region or trust can be helpful to provide that challenge - set up reciprocal visits and make use of a critical friend to scrutinise your data, your systems and processes; to have a look at what your parents and children are saying, and what middle leaders are feeding back about inclusive practice and distributed leadership.

“The return visit can foster new ideas, confidence and collective endeavour.”

A rigorous self-evaluation or review process of this kind will enable schools to reference fresh data in their strategy, Mulholland says.

She advises that the leadership team should be driving this work - it’s not the job of the Sendco alone but is a whole leadership team responsibility. The headteacher, Sendco and other senior leaders can use the inclusion strategy to collectively and collaboratively scrutinise the impact of their systems and practices for inclusion.

It may also be helpful to get pupil and parent voice on the impact of the school’s current SEND support offer, and refer to this in the strategy, Mulholland says. In particular, this may help to identify areas of focus in relation to engagement and belonging.

3. Consider how you can embed a whole-school approach

“I’m really keen that we’re not adding and adding, but using systems and processes already in place to get a deeper, more intensive feedback loop happening around SEND and inclusion,” Mulholland says.

To that end, she advises that schools will want to explore what role their middle leaders are playing to lead inclusion and how they can be supported to develop inclusive practice across their teams.

“Many leaders tell us they plan to invest in further CPD time to build consistency and the confidence of teachers and support staff to deliver high-quality inclusive teaching,” she says.

The government announced earlier this year that it would invest in new training to help teachers support children with SEND to aid schools becoming more inclusive. The DfE expects to launch the procurement tendering process for this CPD next month.

Classroom teachers also have a role. Consider how you can gather staff voices on what would make it easier for them to be inclusive in the classroom.

“Leaders have overarching responsibility, but it is also the core business of those with responsibility for core teaching and learning across the school, as well as the Sendcos, in terms of how to effectively implement inclusive teaching guidance,” says Chris Paterson, director of impact at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).

You want to get everyone in the school on board, understanding the strategy and their role in it, the timelines for it, and how it’s being monitored, says Jon Eaton, director of Devon Research School and research lead for Education South West.

“You’re probably going to get better investment in the strategy if people feel included in it,” he advises.

4. Consider how you can build on what you’ve already got and use existing resources

Schools have already warned that the Mainstream Inclusion Fund, which is supposed to help them become more inclusive ahead of the big reforms to the SEND system coming in at the end of the decade, won’t go as far as they would like.

The DfE recommends that you first focus on making sure that your universal offer helps all pupils to achieve, and is in line with the seven principles of inclusion. It says you should start looking at targeted support you may be able to fund as part of the strategy.

It’s advised that schools prioritise a “small number of impactful approaches” in the first year of funding.

One of the main resources to refer to is the EEF’s Guide to Inclusive Teaching. The guide details both evidence-based universal approaches to improve inclusion, as well as targeted ones, and is intended to help leaders with their strategies.

“The areas of universal practice we particularly draw on in the guide, because the evidence is perhaps the strongest about them, are around high-quality feedback, explicit instruction, scaffolding, relationships and calm classroom environments,” says Paterson.

For these, Eaton advises reviewing the evidence and guidance around implementation to see where it could be better embedded into teaching.

“Model how it should look, give staff time to rehearse it. You are probably doing much of it already, but being more explicit can improve it,” he says.

The research schools network website provides clips from the classroom so teachers can see the research in practice. Eaton also recommends reaching out to your local research schools for further help with this.

Investing in professional development for staff in these areas is likely to be key to the strategies of schools looking to improve their universal offer. The EEF offers training resources in these areas as part of the guide.

“It’s not about trying to reinvent the wheel,” says Julia Harnden, deputy director of policy at ASCL. “Look at the guidance, see how that can support what you’re already doing and where you might be able to build on that.”

In terms of targeted support, your initial evaluation of need may highlight gaps where you want to go further.

“You might find that when you take stock of the need in your school you realise, say, that loads of kids are specifically struggling with handwriting and we don’t have specific provision for that,” Harris says.

“As well as looking at what you’re doing well, you can identify where to go further or where what you have is based on old evidence.”

The DfE also lists a range of other evidence sources you may want to consider when deciding which activities to focus on, including its own guidance on inclusion bases, and the Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence advice for inclusive mainstream education.

5. Don’t start identifying spend for inclusion cash too quickly

Your inclusion strategy should justify how you spend your allocation of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, DfE guidance says.

“I think it’s really important to not start identifying how you’re spending it before you’ve done some evaluation,” Mulholland says. “There will be lots of immediate demands - the tricky balance for heads is getting to a proactive point where they’re forward planning rather than reacting too quickly to immediate needs.”

Spend some time learning from particularly inclusive local schools, Harris advises. It may even be that you can collaborate on aspects of provision across schools.

“It’s not a huge pot [of funding],” Harnden says “So there’s some strategic thinking to do around how you use it in conjunction with other income streams.”

6. Consider how you will monitor the strategy as it’s happening

In the template strategy provided by the DfE, from the second year of the strategy you are expected to outline the progress towards your intended outcomes for year one.

As well as this retrospective evaluation, Eaton also recommends including a bit on how you will monitor the impact of the strategy as it is ongoing.

“Is it reaching all classrooms? Or at a trust-level, all schools? If we have a small school in our trust, do they have the resources to deliver extra training, for example? Are staff finding it manageable?” he advises.

“Don’t wait until a year later to find out something you are doing didn’t work.”

7. Focus on what you can influence, rather than unknowns

The SEND system will be undergoing big reforms from the end of the decade, and for some heads, it may feel overwhelming trying to write your strategy in the context of so many unknowns about how it will look.

Also, since the plans were set out, we’ve had both a new prime minister and a new education secretary, so there’s a possibility the reforms will be tweaked.

As things stand, from September 2030, children with EHCPs will see this support reviewed when they reach the end of their education phase. Assessments for the new Individual Support Plans (ISPs), which schools will be responsible for, will be coming in from 2029.

“Look to what you can do at the moment,” Mulholland advises. “Try to shut out some of the noise around things you can’t yet influence, because schools know their communities, and this is a valuable opportunity to sharpen local priorities and put an intentional lens on improving provision for those who struggle the most.”

“This is really hard work,” says Harris. “I have enormous respect for headteachers going into this academic year thinking about it. Other headteachers are a huge source of advice, but also sympathy as well.”