: Creating an Inclusive Classroom: Everyone’s Responsibility for Progress What does a truly inclusive classroom look like?

A few years ago, our school had an OFSTED inspection. I thought the process was tough and definitely rigorous, but also fair. There was a real focus on getting SEND right, the inspection team was led by a SENCO.

The key phrase from the inspection -

“Inclusion is getting everyone responsible for everyone making progress.”

But what is inclusion?

Ask 20 different teachers what it looks like, and you’ll probably get 20 different answers.

The quote from the OFSTED inspector has stayed with me. Everyone being responsible for everyone. It takes a village to raise a kid and all that; well, it takes a whole school working at it to be really inclusive.

How do you measure inclusion?

Perhaps we could use exam outcomes? Maybe, but it’s potentially tricky.

Or perhaps suspensions and behaviour points? Again, maybe, but tricky.

Attendance? Actually, yeah. As a super crude metric, I’d go with attendance. Are the pupils rocking up?

The majority of pupils will show up on a day-to-day basis, but those at the edges, those with additional needs or worries (and I was one of those), will need to be measured. This is how you know if you are getting it right.

However, their attendance may look a little different at the further ends of the bell curve. Maybe some alternative provision one day a week, maybe that occasional lesson in a breakout room and so on.

You go where you feel happy; you go where you feel successful.

You track inclusion by attendance.

So perhaps we should support attendance by making the pupils want to be in school.

We can achieve them wanting to be in school by making them feel successful, safe and emotionally held throughout the day.

How do you do that bit at the end? Ah, here comes the meat of my blog.

Suggestion 1 – Build strong relationships

​“Good teachers have really good subject knowledge, and they actually like the kids.”

This quote is from a seasoned, veteran teacher trainer I know. It’s pretty true. I suggest the absolute baseline for inclusion is making the pupils feel like you actually like them. It amazes me how many teachers I have come across who do not actually like their pupils. They may like the occasional easy student, but as a general rule for the general masses, they don’t like them. Similarly, I’ve met a fair few apparently hardened ​‘black and white’ behaviour managers who really like the pupils (though they may not show it in obvious ways). Part of how you demonstrate that you like the pupils is talking to them and showing an interest. Being on duty and having those interactions really helps for this. As does just knowing one key fact about them that you can trot out every so often. For example, at the start of every new class I get, I go around and learn their names by them telling me their name and one thing interesting about themselves. I then use that as a hook. It’s amazing the relationship you can build off that and, passing them in the corridor saying, ​“Hey, Billy, how is that football team that you follow doing?”

Suggestion 2 – Know their needs

This is partly about whole school systems – good SEND systems highlighting and promoting the needs of the pupils and communicating how best to support them. But this is also more than partly about the classroom teacher being bothered enough to read the information and act on it. Does little Jimmy need to sit at the front? Does Clarice need a few seconds of uptake before answering/​acting on an instruction?

But this is also about the classroom teacher being empowered to give feedback to the SEND team about things they find out – does little Jimmy actually need to sit on the left-hand side due to his nystagmus? Or is there a concern about Hannibal and maybe this needs to be investigated?

Suggestion 3 – Safety

People talk about the culture of feeling safe to fail/​to get things wrong. This is Holy Grail stuff. So many pupils come to school day after day and see other pupils be successful whilst they just fail day after day, no matter how hard they try. That’s soul destroying. If there’s one thing guaranteed to make someone check out of education and think it’s not for them, it’s that. If there’s something guaranteed to make them not feel safe as learners, this is it. We can talk about feeling safe at school in a general sense of behaviour. But there’s also feeling safe in a learning context. Is your classroom safe? Is it ok to get things wrong or will a pupil be ridiculed? Are pupils put on the spot in your room? Which is fine for most of them most of the time. Some pupils are going to need to feel safe to answer questions, they may need to be in a place where they feel strong enough to put their hand up. Getting them there may take a while. Know who those pupils are, let them know it is ok to answer questions and get them wrong in your classroom.

Suggestion 4 – Literacy

Get literacy right in your classroom. Expose the pupils to high quality academic texts. Read it to them with fluency. Pre-teach them vocabulary. Know the keywords.

I’m increasingly minded that, if you get literacy right, you get most of SEND right. High quality literacy instruction in every classroom should be the aim. And getting the curriculum right as well. I think that the curriculum is the single best driver we have for inclusion.

Looking back over my suggestions it all ties back into knowing the pupils. Know where they are, know what they do not know, know what support they need, know something interesting about them.