Guidance

Developing an inclusion strategy using the inclusive mainstream fund

Published 25 June 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

This publication provides non-statutory guidance from the Department for Education (DfE).

It has been produced to help school leaders and those involved with managing the use of the inclusive mainstream fund (IMF) in schools and 16 to 19 academies, such as:

• academy trust leaders
• head teachers
• trustees and governors.

It is to help you make the most effective use of the IMF and ensure you adhere to the conditions of grant, including:

• investing your IMF allocation in line with the 7 principles of inclusion
• publishing an inclusion strategy on your school website by 31 December 2026 - this must include detail of activity invested in to alleviate barriers to learning and participation and budgeted costs (we have provided a template you can use to help you develop your strategy)

If you opt to create a multi-year strategy, you must ensure that this is reviewed annually and note this on the cover page of the document.

This guidance may also be useful for parents and local authorities who want to:

• know how schools can invest their IMF allocation alongside their core budget (including their notional special educational needs (SEN) budget) to support inclusive practice
• understand the requirement to produce an inclusion strategy

Separate guidance has been published on the:

• Inclusive early years fund: 2026 to 2027 for local authorities
• Using the inclusive mainstream fund: guidance for leaders of 16 to 19 provision and fund managers including further education (FE) colleges, sixth form colleges and post-16 independent training providers

Purpose

Schools must be places where every child is included and supported to achieve and thrive in their learning, regardless of their needs or background.

The IMF forms part of the government’s commitment to support the development of a more inclusive mainstream system. Over £500 million per financial year over the next 3 years will equip schools, colleges and early years settings with upfront funding to help them to become inclusive by design. Inclusive activity should be funded by the school’s core funding allocations, including their notional special SEN budget calculated and communicated by their local authority, as well as the IMF.  

Our recent consultation SEND reform: putting children and young people first set out our proposals for a reformed special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. We set out a vision for a system in which schools have a strong universal offer and for mainstream funding reforms to support early intervention and more flexible support. Early help and support for children with SEND has too often not been present and our investment through the IMF is a step towards improving outcomes - by ensuring every child and young person receives high quality, adaptive teaching, early help when they need it, and support that is proven to work.

You can use the IMF to strengthen inclusion for all pupils through investment in whole-school approaches and to support the development or delivery of early, evidence-based support for children with SEND. As we move towards a reformed system, we will look to further rebalance funding, directing more into core budgets for schools, so that they are better equipped with consistent funding to support children and young people with SEND.

Under our proposals, this will align with changes to accountability to ensure that this investment leads to improvements. We have proposed placing a legal duty on schools to produce an inclusion strategy, which will be more comprehensive and set out in greater detail how resources are used to benefit children and young people with SEND so parents and local partners can understand how inclusion is being delivered.

As part of this longer-term ambition, through their inspection framework, Ofsted will assess how:

• leaders ensure the inclusion strategy is embedded in practice
• staff are equipped to deliver it

This guidance sets out how schools should develop an initial inclusion strategy which is a first step towards a reformed system. Schools should plan how they intend to use additional funding provided through their IMF allocation, alongside their core budget allocation (including their notional SEN budget), to start building a more inclusive core offer for all children and young people, including those with SEND.

This should include taking meaningful steps to:

• build a strong universal offer that embeds inclusion within the core school offer – in line with the 7 principles of inclusion – and has a positive impact on attainment, progress in learning, wellbeing, belonging and engagement
• support the delivery of early, effective, targeted support for those who need it, without the need for formal assessment or diagnosis

In this first year, we recommend that most schools focus their investment on a small number of impactful activities to establish a strong foundation of inclusive practice within their universal offer. Schools with an established inclusive universal offer may wish to allocate investment towards targeted support.

Our proposed reforms also include every school eventually being part of a local group which will pool funding, share resources, and work together to expand help and support available to children and young people. Ahead of these proposed system changes we encourage schools to work collaboratively across any existing clusters and groups to consider how they can best address commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation. Each school must still publish their own inclusion strategy and IMF conditions of grant explain how pooling of funding is permitted, provided suitable financial governance is in place.  

The using evidence section contains a range of resources which you can use to inform the selection of inclusive approaches appropriate to your school cohort.

As we move towards a reformed system, DfE will develop new national inclusion standards that set out evidence-informed tools, strategies and approaches that you can draw on to implement whole school approaches for inclusion and develop effective support for children and young people with additional needs.

The standards will be developed by an independent panel of experts and regularly reviewed to ensure they continue to reflect the best available evidence on SEND. These will support you in the development of future iterations of your inclusion strategy and effectively use of your core budget allocations to remove barriers to learning and participation.

Scope of your strategy

The 7 principles of inclusion are:

• ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion
• evidence-based support prioritising early intervention
• high quality adaptive teaching with curriculum designed for all learners
• enriching provision beyond the classroom that all children can access
• a safe and respectful culture fostering belonging, attendance, and participation in learning
• strong partnerships with families and wider services
• inclusive environments with continuous improvements to accessibility

When developing your inclusion strategy, you should select approaches that fall under the 7 principles of inclusion.

You should focus on implementing fewer approaches well, to ensure inclusive practice is embedded with impact, consistency and quality in mind. This should include prioritising high quality, adaptive teaching and reflecting on where you can build on existing inclusive practice to strengthen your inclusive offer for all pupils, particularly those with SEND.

As stated in the conditions of grant, any activity that you fund, in part or in full, using your IMF allocation must fall under one of the principles.

The approaches you choose must be evidence-informed and consider the barriers to learning and participation present in your cohort.

Our Inclusive mainstream fund: best practice for schools provides further details on the type of activities that might support each of these principles across both the universal offer and targeted support.

Universal offer

Central to a stronger inclusive mainstream system is a universal offer built on high quality, adaptive teaching and whole-school practices that enable all children, including those who face barriers to learning and participation, to achieve and thrive.  

We expect you to use your IMF allocation and core budget allocation (including your notional SEN budget) to help you build a strong universal offer in line with the 7 principles of inclusion.

We encourage you to focus on strengthening your universal offer, building on existing practice, so more needs can be met earlier before the need for targeted support arises.

Targeted support

For children and young people whose needs cannot be met through the universal offer alone, targeted support should be provided to enable them to achieve and thrive.

Where you have a strong universal offer already, you can supplement your approach to inclusion with a more focused selection of targeted interventions.

This may include small group interventions to remove ongoing barriers to learning and participation, such as interventions to develop language skills, or pre-teaching vocabulary to help children access the curriculum, without formal assessment or statutory process.

Targeted support should be selected and implemented carefully, with particular attention paid to how it aligns with the curriculum to avoid a fragmented learning experience.

DfE has published new guidance to support the development and expansion of inclusion bases within mainstream schools, backed by our high needs capital investment. Schools should consider this guidance and how they can utilise both their IMF allocation and core funding to develop high quality inclusion bases that provide targeted support as part of developing an inclusion strategy.

Developing and delivering an effective inclusion strategy

As part of the IMF conditions of grant, you are required to produce an inclusion strategy to explain your plan to use your overall funding allocation to help you build a strong inclusive offer.

This section explains how you can use a 5-step approach, which is an ongoing process, to support you to develop and refine your strategy and is similar to the one you undertake for your pupil premium strategy:

1. Identifying and understanding the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation pupils face

2. Using evidence to consider inclusive practice

3. Developing an effective strategy

4. Delivering and monitoring your strategy

5. Evaluating and sustaining your strategy

Effective implementation is important for making best use of the IMF and your core budget allocations. You should treat implementation as a process to be executed over a series of stages, not as an event. The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF’s) guide to implementation supports schools to embed an evidence-informed approach to implementation.

Step 1: Identifying barriers to learning and participation commonly occurring in your cohort

Identification of additional needs and commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation is an important part of the process for building a strong universal offer and considering the targeted support needed to improve inclusion for your cohort, without the need for statutory process.

This step should not solely be led by specific diagnoses or limited by the current identified need profile of children on SEN support or with education, health and care (EHC) plans, but rather the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation identified across your cohort.

This will help you move towards an environment where all children can access learning, feel valued and safe, build capability and independence, and succeed.  

To identify the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation facing your cohort, you should draw on a range of sources, including:

• classroom observation and engagement with teachers
• internal assessments
• engagement with families and pupils
• discussions with external professionals
• data on SEND, including attendance, behaviour, and attainment
• evidence on local or national trends in changing need

Step 2: Using evidence

The conditions of grant require schools to spend their IMF funding on activity in line with the 7 principles of inclusion and available evidence.

To support you to make the best use of your available funding, we encourage you to:

• reflect on DfE’s Inclusive mainstream fund: best practice for schools
• use well-supported evidence on inclusive universal provision that benefits all pupils and what works for children with SEND

High quality teaching is the most important lever for improving outcomes for all pupils in mainstream schools, particularly those with SEND. We encourage you to think about how you can strengthen and sustain these practices at a cohort-level to remove barriers to learning and participation for children with additional needs. The EEF’s guidance on inclusive teaching, intended for publication in the summer of 2026, will provide further details on how schools can ensure strong practice in this area.

Examples of other evidence you should draw on include:

• DfE’s RISE support for inclusive mainstream education, which provides programmes and resources to help mainstream schools improve inclusivity and support those with SEND
• EEF’s guidance report, Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools, a starting point to review your approach to SEND, alongside practical ideas you can implement and signposts to helpful resources
• EEF’s list of Promising Programmes, which provides information on externally funded evidence-based targeted interventions the IMF could be used to support
• DfE’s guidance to support the development and expansion of inclusion bases within mainstream schools
• DfE’s attendance toolkit for schools, which details ways in which schools have created a supportive school environment, including for pupils with SEND, and reflecting the need to tackle very high absence levels in this cohort
• Inclusion in Practice’s deep-dive explorations of promising inclusive mainstream practice
• Speech and Language UK’s Resource library for educators which provides a range of resources on best practice for children with speech, language and communication needs
• Mentally Healthy Schools’ Targeted support which provides guidance to help schools develop effective targeted mental wellbeing support
• The Difference’s Content Hub - Case studies for examples of promising inclusive practice

We encourage you to consider a range of external research evidence and use your own judgement and knowledge of your cohort’s needs and the barriers to learning and participation your pupils face. The EEF has produced guidance on Using research evidence to help you understand, identify and examine evidence to successfully develop and implement practice.

Step 3: Developing an effective strategy

Develop a strategy for effective use of your inclusive mainstream funding, that:

• reflects on existing inclusive practice within your school and how effectively it removes barriers to learning and participation to support all pupils, particularly those with SEND, and where you can go further to deliver a high quality universal offer
• identifies the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation across your cohort
• prioritises activities that will have the greatest impact on your cohort considering the evidence that supports these approaches
• sets clear, realistic and measurable outcomes for reflecting on the extent to which you have strengthened inclusion

DfE requires that schools publish their strategy on their website. We have provided a template to help you develop your strategy. If you do not choose to use the template, you must still cover the following areas:

• the barriers to learning and participation identified across your cohort
• activities invested in to alleviate these barriers
• intended outcomes
• review of the previous academic year

Further information on what should be included in these sections is provided in the Inclusion strategy template.

This approach is similar to the one you are expected to undertake when writing your pupil premium strategy statement. You may find the EEF’s guide to the pupil premium, with its tiered approach to strategy planning, a helpful tool in informing the development of your inclusion strategy.

Schools should use their IMF, alongside their core school budget (including the notional SEN budget), to embed inclusion through their universal offer and targeted support.

How you choose to allocate spending across different elements of inclusion principles will depend on the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation your pupils face and the extent to which inclusive practice, including a high quality universal offer, is already embedded in your school.

We encourage you to use evidence to build on what works for your pupils and use your IMF allocation to strengthen select areas of inclusion from which your pupils would most benefit.

The development of your strategy should be a shared responsibility across your whole leadership team. This could include:

• senior leaders such as the head teacher, deputy head teachers, assistant head teachers, school business manager, and special education needs coordinator (SENCO)
• governors, trustees, and academy trust leaders (as appropriate to your settings)
• middle leaders such as heads of departments and curriculum leads
• other school staff involved in pastoral support, curriculum development, and other relevant areas of school practice

You should consult with families, pupils and other stakeholders in your school community to ensure that the strategy reflects your unique local context. This might include:

• special or alternative provision (AP) schools you may have links with
• local area partners such as health and specialist education professionals

You may also find it helpful to work closely with other schools developing their own inclusion strategies and consider whether peer review and challenge could help to improve your own strategy.  

Step 4: Delivering and monitoring your strategy

The EEF’s Schools Guide to Implementation has:

• information on how to develop and embed evidence-informed approaches
• practical advice about how to unite values, understanding and skills around your strategy

To deliver your strategy, you should ensure:

• all staff understand inclusion, and display commitment to removing barriers to learning and participation for all children, including those with SEND
• the IMF is not considered the only source of funding for approaches you deploy and should be seen as a supplement to equip you to plan, prepare and implement inclusive practice and prepare for reforms
• your plan is realistic and you have planned how it will be effectively delivered, including any local partners that will help you deliver the strategy

Once your strategy is in place, you should ensure it is being delivered effectively through:

• monitoring pupil outcomes for inclusion by using, sharing and understanding data and insights on progress - this includes creating time and opportunities for staff to reflect on:
  • data and feedback
  • how well the strategy is being delivered
  • further opportunities for strengthening inclusion
• supporting staff wellbeing and workload, expectations and understanding of how you plan to embed inclusion through your strategy - this can be done through engagement, collaboration, setting realistic goals and providing extra time and support for staff
• reinforcing the strategy through:
  • ongoing professional development for inclusion and supporting pupils with SEND
  • communicating and reminding staff that inclusion is everyone’s responsibility and how they can support the aims of the strategy

We expect that all pupils will benefit from high quality teaching and whole-school approaches that seek to embed inclusive practice. You should identify and monitor pupils with additional needs to ensure that:

• these approaches are having a positive impact on attainment, progress in learning, wellbeing, belonging and engagement
• barriers to learning and participation are being alleviated through any targeted interventions for those specific pupils

Step 5: Evaluating and sustaining your strategy

To evaluate the impact of your approaches, you should:

• set realistic goals of what you can achieve in this first year and build on this going forward, considering the short, medium and long-term outcomes needed to achieve your strategy objectives
• measure success based on outcomes for pupils with SEND such as attendance, attainment, progress in learning, belonging, wellbeing at school, participation, engagement, and behaviour - supported by a robust and transparent evaluation framework
• ensure that evaluation is an ongoing process - strategies that have been effective in one year may not continue to be effective the next