Research School Network: 3 EEF resources to support inclusive teaching Practical, evidence-informed support for inclusive classrooms

Inclusive teaching is about making sure every pupil has the opportunity to participate and succeed at school. It means thinking carefully about the barriers some pupils face and what we can do to help remove them.

There’s a growing range of evidence and guidance available to help schools think through these challenges. Here, we’ve picked out three EEF resources that offer practical, evidence-informed support for teachers, school leaders and SENDCos.

Guide to Inclusive Teaching

The EEF’s Guide to Inclusive Teaching is a great starting point for thinking about how we can meet the needs of all pupils in the classroom.

The guide sets out a two-part model:

1. Universal approaches that are likely to be especially important for pupils with additional needs.
2. Adaptations and additional support that might also be needed by some pupils.

Alongside the guide, the EEF has also produced free scenario-based training sessions through ScenarioSpace, and we think these are particularly worth exploring. They give teachers the chance to work through realistic classroom situations and think about how they might respond, making them a really useful option for staff meetings or professional development.

Each session takes around 30 to 45 minutes and focuses on a specific aspect of inclusive teaching. Current sessions cover checking for understanding, scaffolding, making effective adaptations, working with teaching assistants, and creating a calm classroom environment. There’s also a facilitation guide to help get the most of the sessions.

Deployment of Teaching Assistants

When TAs are deployed well, they can make a valuable contribution to pupils’ learning.

The EEF’s updated Deployment of Teaching Assistants guidance report draws on an extensive review of the evidence and sets out five recommendations to help schools deploy TAs effectively:

1. Deploy TAs in ways that enable all pupils to access high-quality teaching
2. Deploy TAs to scaffold learning and to develop pupils’ independence
3. Deploy TAs to deliver well chosen, evidence based, structured interventions where appropriate
4. Prepare and train staff around effective TA deployment
5. Engage all staff in the process of implementing effective TA deployment

There are also some useful practical resources alongside the report to help schools put the recommendations into practice. They offer support with some of the key challenges around TA deployment, including building effective teacher-TA partnerships and helping pupils become more independent. We love the pupil interactions scaffolding framework, which is a simple tool that reminds all staff (not just TAs) of ways to support without ​‘telling’.

Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools

The EEF’s Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools guidance report helps schools think about what effective support for pupils with SEND looks like in a mainstream setting, with high-quality teaching at its heart.

The report sets out five recommendations:

1. Create a positive and supportive environment for all pupils, without exception
2. Build an ongoing, holistic understanding of your pupils and their needs
3. Ensure all pupils have access to high-quality teaching
4. Complement high-quality teaching with carefully selected small-group and one-to-one interventions
5. Work effectively with teaching assistants

As with the other resources mentioned above, there’s plenty of practical support alongside the report to help schools explore the recommendations and put them into practice. For example, there’s a set of questions to help school leaders reflect on how they are meeting the recommendations.

Bringing the resources together

Each of these resources works well on its own, but as you explore them, you’ll start to make all kinds of connections. Taken as a whole, they provide a strong evidence-informed foundation for supporting pupils with SEND in mainstream classrooms and schools.

Have you used any of these resources in your school? We’d love to hear how you’ve used them and what you’ve found most useful.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll also be hearing from schools about how they’re putting recommendations from these resources, and the wider evidence base, into practice.