There is a date coming up that I don't think every governing board has clocked yet. By 31 December 2026, every mainstream school that receives the inclusive mainstream fund has to publish an inclusion strategy on its website. That is nearly every mainstream school in England. In a multi-academy trust it means a separate strategy for each academy, even where the trust pools the money.
Take out October half term and the Christmas break and there are not many board meetings left between now and then. If your board meets once in the second half of term, that meeting is probably where the strategy gets signed off. So the question for this week is a simple one. Who has your school asked?
What the strategy actually is
The requirement comes from the conditions of grant the Department for Education published in June. It is a condition of taking the money rather than a duty in law, although the DfE has said it wants to make it a legal duty as part of the wider SEND reforms. The strategy has to set out the barriers to learning and participation that are common across your pupils, the activity you are paying for to reduce them, what you expect that to achieve and what it costs. There is a template on GOV.UK, and the DfE says the process is similar to the one schools already follow for their pupil premium statement.
Anything paid for from the fund has to sit under one of seven principles of inclusion. Two of them stood out to me straight away. One is ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion. Another is strong partnerships with families and wider services.
The DfE will review a sample of published strategies to check the money has been spent properly, and the strategies will be available to Ofsted inspectors when they evaluate inclusion.
The board's part in this
The conditions of grant are quite direct about governors. Because boards are responsible for making sure funding is used properly and for holding the school to account, governors and trustees should scrutinise the inclusion strategy. That includes the plans for the money, how it has been used and the outcomes achieved in the previous year.
The DfE's guidance also says developing the strategy should be a shared responsibility across the whole leadership team, and it names governors and trustees as part of that group. So this is a document the board should help shape and then check, rather than one that simply arrives in the papers.
A strategy written by one person over half term and approved in ten minutes in December will meet the deadline. I'm not sure it will do the job it is meant to do.
The line about families and pupils
This is the part I suspect will get skipped most often. The guidance says that to identify the barriers your pupils face you should draw on a range of sources, and one of them is engagement with families and pupils. Further on it says schools should consult with families, pupils and other stakeholders in the school community so the strategy reflects their own local context.
I can see how that gets squeezed. Staff knowledge, assessment data and the SEND register are already in the building. Asking parents and pupils takes a bit of organising, and the deadline is before Christmas. But the guidance is clear that identifying barriers should not be led only by diagnoses, or limited to pupils already on SEN support or with an EHC plan. The barriers that sit just below that threshold are often the ones families and pupils notice first. The child who holds it together all day and falls apart at the school gate. The pupil who never puts their hand up because they didn't follow the instruction in the first place. The parent who stopped coming to events because nothing worked for their family.
A head or a SENCO knows a great deal. They don't see what happens at home after a hard day, and pupils will often say things in a confidential survey that they would never say to a teacher's face.
What I would do between now and December
- Put it on the agenda by name. Ask who is writing the strategy, whether they are using the DfE template, and which meeting the board will see a draft at. If the answer is the last meeting before Christmas, ask to see an earlier version as well.
- Ask families a few short questions. What gets in the way of your child learning or taking part? What has helped? Is there anything the school does that makes it harder? Keep it short enough that a busy parent can finish it on their phone.
- Ask pupils too. Pupils are good at telling you what gets in their way if they know their name isn't attached. The same handful of questions, worded for their age, will tell you a lot.
- Make it easy for everyone to answer. The families you most need to hear from are often the least likely to come to a meeting or reply to a letter. Think about language, reading level and how people actually get your messages.
- Look at who answered, not just what they said. If most replies came from families who are already involved, say so in the strategy and decide how you will reach the others next time.
- Keep the record. Note what you asked, when, how many people replied and what changed in the strategy because of it. That gives the board something real to scrutinise, and it gives next year's review a starting point.
A review section with something in it
One detail catches people out. The strategy has to include a review of the previous academic year, even in this first year. For most schools that means looking back at what was already being done for inclusion and being honest about how well it worked.
Next December the review will be of this strategy. If you asked families and pupils this term, you will have something to compare against, because you can go back to them with the same questions and see whether anything has moved. If you didn't, next year's review will rest on what staff believe has improved, and that is a much harder thing for a board to test.
The families who answer your questions this term are the people the strategy is meant to help. They should be able to recognise themselves in it.
Closing the loop
When the strategy goes live on your website, tell families what you heard and what you are doing about it. A short note that says parents told us this, so this year we are doing that, builds more trust than any amount of policy wording. It is also the most visible way to show that partnership with families principle is real.
If it would help to run a short, confidential survey of parents or pupils before the strategy comes to your board, that is exactly the kind of thing we do at Choice Voting. But the first step doesn't need any platform. It needs one question at your next meeting. Before this strategy comes to us for sign off, who will we have asked?