For the past few years, the debate about inclusion has focused on clarity.
Clearer expectations.
Clearer guidance.
Stronger accountability.
But clarity isn’t what schools are lacking.
In a recent survey of 1,018 education professionals across England, 85 per cent said they understand what’s expected of their setting in relation to inclusion and wellbeing. Yet only 23 per cent believe they have sufficient time and staffing to put those expectations into practice.
That gap isn’t marginal. It’s structural.
Where capacity is sufficient, readiness exceeds 90 per cent. Where it isn’t, it falls to just over 40. The difference is stark.
We’re not dealing with confusion. We’re dealing with constraint.
And right now, we’re raising expectations faster than we’re redesigning capacity.
I’ve spent more than ten years working nationally with school and system leaders, and before that was a teacher myself. In that time, I’ve seen inclusion framed either as a moral appeal to commitment or as a specialist function sitting largely with SEND teams. It’s neither. Inclusion at scale depends on how the system is organised.
Ambition has rightly increased. We expect earlier identification of need, stronger mental health support, more inclusive curriculum design, closer partnership with families and better coordination with external services. There is renewed emphasis on training and expanding specialist provision. Both matter.
But neither compensates for structural misalignment.
The pattern across responses is clear. Confidence in identifying mental health and SEND needs is relatively strong. Confidence drops when it comes to adapting curriculum, coordinating external services and embedding inclusive practice across classrooms.
Readiness is uneven across roles. Forty-two per cent of teaching staff fall into the lowest readiness quartile, compared with 21 per cent of SEND and safeguarding leads. Expertise exists. But readiness remains concentrated in specialist roles rather than across the workforce.
Secondary schools appear particularly exposed. They are over-represented in the lowest readiness group and report lower confidence navigating external services. The difficulty is rarely identifying need. It’s acting on it within larger, more complex systems where time and coordination are stretched thin.
Nearly seven in ten respondents (69 per cent) say the demands of supporting inclusion and pupil wellbeing have placed significant strain on staff wellbeing and retention. As one primary SENDCo put it: “It is demoralising knowing what needs to be done, but not having enough time or resources to do it.”
Schools know what good looks like. The question is whether the system is built to sustain it.
If expectations continue to rise without workforce capacity keeping pace, inclusion will increasingly be delivered through personal sacrifice rather than structural support. That is not a sustainable reform model.
The risk is that we misdiagnose the problem. If inclusion is framed as a clarity issue, the response will be more frameworks and tighter monitoring. If it’s recognised as a capacity issue, attention shifts to workforce design: time allocation, staffing models, distributed expertise and reliable access to specialist support.
That shift changes the conversation.
Where capacity and specialist access are strong, readiness rises. Where they are weak, it doesn’t. Inclusion works where the system is built to carry it, and falters where it is layered onto an already stretched structure.
For trust and local authority leaders, the implication is straightforward. Inclusion cannot sit solely within specialist teams. It must be embedded in recruitment, professional development, timetabling, service partnerships and leadership accountability. It has to be treated as core operating design.
The ambition for inclusive education is right. But unless workforce capacity becomes central to reform, we risk building policy on foundations that won’t hold.
These findings come from our recent joint research with ImpactEd, Inclusion Readiness in Schools: Evidence on Capacity, Confidence and Workforce Conditions, based on responses from more than 1,000 education professionals across England. The full report explores in detail what distinguishes higher-readiness settings from those under greatest pressure.
Schools aren’t confused about inclusion. They are constrained. Until ambition and capacity move in step, readiness will remain fragile - however clear the expectations.
- Tom Preston is Director of Thrive.
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