To become more inclusive, we should first agree on what inclusion is.
What will it look like once achieved?
Attending your local mainstream school?
What does the evidence tell us? And how useful is the evidence that’s being used for the SEND consultation?
inco14.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/s...
It feels like increased rigidity and less needs-led, on the whole.
Me too, but I also think there is a way forward that will be better for children and improve the system longer term. There’s elements of it in the consultation.
Please take time to have a read of Nicole's reflections on the SEND reforms.
She's taken a deep dive into the evidence, and it casts a lot of doubt on the DfE's central inclusion bases concept.
SEND Reform Reflections, part 1 – ‘Presence vs. Participation’
Or, ‘When is inclusion not really inclusion?’ I set aside an entire evening to read the SEND reforms consultation but ended up, in that first sitting, only getting as far as page 8. I got stuck on some peculiar wording and ended up…
EHCPs are often very ‘cut and paste’, detached from the reality and don’t have good enough knowledge of the child. They’re often not written in a way that covers an appropriate timeframe. It’s probably more a consequence of an overstretched system than lack of expertise?
There’s a lot of putting the cart before the horse in the proposals. There’s also a lot of substituting existing systems and issues with renamed and, in some cases, more fragile, less inclusive ones. My biggest fear was always that we’d swap a well intentioned bad system for a reactive worse one.
So much of the proposed reforms skip over the children, families and schools that desperately need action now and focus on ideals that are only even timelines for when many will have aged out of education.
Instead of coming up with more jargon and more criteria, why don’t the my just focus on investing in these services in general? And instead of creating idealistic systems reliant on services that don’t yet exist or have capacity, do what needs to be done and then build on it as it evolves?
There are still tickets left for our upcoming regional conference, taking placing in Leeds on 3rd March!!!
MAXIMISING INCLUSION IN THE CLASSROOM - ideal for school leaders, SENCOs and teachers... and it is free! Get your ticket here: www.wholeschoolsend.org.uk/events/yorks...
It seems like it’s human nature to polarise, but solutions with depth are unlikely to be either or when it comes to complex challenges. This isn’t about standards or support; it’s standards and support - there isn’t a child that isn’t entitled to both. Great, as always, @mrjlauder.bsky.social
Golden, as always. Bureaucratic barriers to common sense solutions are especially frustrating. It feels like a sensible but huge ask - how are the grassroots examples being shared across and up?
Tea with dad sounds lovely. I’m off to see a comedian and stay up way later than I should heading a very long early drive tomorrow morning!
Why don’t you just stop doing all that pesky paperwork?
Yep: I think the logical and achievable solutions that are apparent based on a superficial understanding of the system and the ones apparent based on a deeper understanding are not at all the same thing. This is how we end up with a lot of ‘why don’t you just…?’
I feel like I’ve said this to lots of people in lots of ways over the last couple of years! I know many others have too. I lose sleep over what might be on the horizon.
Exactly this. A SENCO saying they don’t have time to do the paperwork for an annual review or needs assessment, or the APDR process in their school, is like a plumber saying they don’t have time for pipes or a mechanic saying they don’t have time to look at engines.
The big one though is access to the services that support us. In this system or the next, timely access to EP, SALT, specialist teams, CAMHS, school nurses, counselling, need to be available at the earliest, most preventative point. To me, this alone would bring balance to the system.
There are things that, whatever change is on the horizon, need to be addressed either way. One is this issue of SEND understanding across leadership and SENCO line management. Another is the postcode lottery and another is how SEND and inclusion are represented in ITT/ECF/NPQ.
Well done Nicole Dempsey (is she on here?) ‘The Sendco role is certainly bureaucratic, but it is paperwork with purpose, and involves administrative tasks that require a high level of knowledge and expertise - for example, by knowing the child, the setting, the local landscape and the national
The exclusive findings in @johngroberts.bsky.social story make clear that, whatever comes out of the education white paper & broader inclusion push, it mustn't simply heap more tasks onto overworked sencos.
If there’s a possibility of reducing bureaucracy without losing important process then we should take it, of course. What really needs to happen though is for the knowledge, expertise and ownership to be distributed across more people, taking that single point of pressure off one person alone.
I worry when I hear talk of reducing SEND admin - there’s a lot for sure, but SENCOs aren’t drowning in a sea of paperwork that could just be ignored or given to someone else to do. That’s almost a bit insulting to assume, isn’t it?
I’m here!
A focus on teachers teaching, silos being broken down and lessons being made accessible are all key features of the Dixons approach. Read the case study in full here: inclusioninpractice.org.uk/wp-content/u... (2/3)
🔎 Friday Focus 🔍
This week we wanted to share more about Dixons Academies Trust's approach to inclusion. In this case study Nicole Dempsey @ndempseyinco14.bsky.social talks about how it is possible to avoid creating a segregated, two-tier teaching system if inclusion is everyone's business. (1/3)
I don’t have my own personal experience. I do think that, under this system or a future one (good or bad), for a child and their family and within each school, it will come down to the ownership, effort and implementation choices of the leadership there.
Better depth of understanding, better implemented systems, and so real soul searching and reflection I know can change the culture.
I don’t disagree. This is why I think reform needs to include training incorporating understanding ableism and bias, and I do think better clarity on best practice and what works would help - poor outcomes associated with SEND are due to poor practice related to SEND, not the children.
Inclusion isn’t a bolt-on. It’s the measure of whether our education system is working at all.
