Making mainstream inclusion work

The Government has set out an ambitious vision for a more inclusive education system, with more children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) learning and thriving in mainstream settings alongside their peers. Significant investment in workforce development and specialist support is already being made.

But there are significant challenges to overcome for this investment to translate into the capacity and expertise schools need to make inclusion work in practice. 

Training is not a substitute for strengthening inclusive practice 

Recent NFER research shows some schools are supporting far higher proportions of pupils with SEND than others. Fewer than one in five schools report that they can meet the needs of all pupils on their roll. At the same time, our research found some high-SEND schools have developed particularly strong inclusive cultures and expertise. Inclusion is often embedded in the ethos of these schools, rather than being dependent on a small number of individual staff. 

This points to an important lesson for reform: building workforce capacity is not simply about providing more training. It is about making sure that both the appropriate capacity and expertise is available, shared and supported across the system. 

Training needs to be matched by specialist expertise 

The Government has already committed £200 million to a major SEND teacher training programme. This is an important step towards strengthening the skills and confidence of the wider workforce.  

However, mainstream schools cannot be expected to develop all the expertise they need internally. Some children and young people have complex needs that require specialist knowledge and intervention. The Government has itself recognised the need for longer-term workforce planning, including investment to expand the educational psychology and speech and language therapy workforces. 

The Government’s new Experts at Hand programme is intended to strengthen this link between mainstream education and specialist expertise, with £1.8 billion being invested over three years. But the pace at which specialist capacity can be developed will matter. The key question is therefore not simply whether staff receive SEND training, but whether access to the specialist expertise they require is scaled up rapidly enough and keeps pace with reform.  

Making the most of the workforce schools already have 

Support staff are central to this picture. They make up more than half of the school workforce, and their numbers have continued to grow. As their role in supporting pupils with SEND becomes increasingly important, schools need to ensure that support staff have appropriate training, clear roles and opportunities to work closely with teachers and specialists.  

The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on teaching assistants (TAs) highlights that TA support should complement, rather than replace, access to high-quality teaching. This requires teachers and TAs to have clear roles and opportunities to plan and work together. 

This is an important workforce development issue. Training is much more likely to have an impact when staff have the time, structures and specialist support needed to put it into practice. Workforce development should therefore be considered alongside the wider conditions in which staff work, rather than as a standalone solution. 

Are inclusion bases part of the solution? 

The Government has made a significant commitment to strengthening mainstream inclusion through training, specialist support and new inclusion bases. These measures could help schools build greater capacity, but implementation will be critical. 

Our research on inclusion bases suggests they can strengthen schools’ capacity and expertise when they are well integrated into mainstream provision. However, over a third of schools with a base reported weak collaboration between base staff and mainstream teachers, while over two-thirds said their base placed considerable pressure on staffing or resources. This highlights a key risk: creating additional provision will not automatically create a more inclusive system if it operates separately from the rest of the school. 

Inclusion bases should therefore be seen as part of a wider approach to building expertise, not as a substitute for it. Their value will depend on whether they help spread specialist knowledge across the school and strengthen collaboration between mainstream and specialist staff. 

Inclusion also needs to ensure access to adequate specialist school places 

Mainstream schools cannot compensate for insufficient places in specialist schools. NFER’s research highlighted that many schools felt that a small number of pupils currently in mainstream settings required specialist places to be supported safely and effectively in accessing education. 

A more inclusive system therefore needs capacity across both mainstream and specialist education. The aim should not be to make mainstream provision responsible for meeting every need, but to ensure pupils can access the right provision at the right time, with effective links between mainstream schools, specialist settings and specialist services. 

From investment to implementation 

The Government has made clear that workforce development is a central part of SEND reform. The next challenge is making sure that investment creates lasting capacity across the system. 

That means giving staff access to high-quality training, while also ensuring schools can draw on specialist expertise, support collaboration between teachers and support staff, and develop inclusive cultures across whole schools. It also means recognising that mainstream inclusion must sit alongside sufficient specialist provision for children and young people whose needs cannot be met effectively in mainstream settings. 

The success of reform will ultimately depend on whether these elements work together. Training can build knowledge; specialist expertise can build capability; but both need to be backed by the resources, structures and wider system capacity that allow schools to put inclusion into practice.