Research School Network: Inclusion and Pupil Premium: different strategies, shared challenges Director Phil Stock considers the DfE’s new Inclusion Strategy and the importance of a needs-led approach.

The new Inclusion Strategies that form part of the DfE’s SEND reforms are due to be published by schools by the end of December. Fully costed plans for inclusion are also a condition of receiving the Department for Education’s (DfE) Inclusive Mainstream Fund.

Having spent some time reading the guidance and looking closely at the strategy template, there are several areas that are likely to require careful thought from school leaders over the coming weeks. Perhaps the most significant is how the new Inclusion Strategy relates to the Pupil Premium Strategy and to existing school improvement planning.

There is clearly potential for overlap. The same pupils may feature in both strategies. So might the same needs, barriers and approaches. At the same time, the two strategies have different purposes and should not simply become versions of the same document.

This raises some important questions:

- What should sit within an Inclusion Strategy? 

- How is it different from a Pupil Premium Strategy? 

- How do we identify barriers to learning and participation without simply inferring them from pupil characteristics or labels? 

- And how can schools avoid creating another standalone plan that sits apart from their wider improvement work?

These are some of the questions we will explore in our new three-part webinar series, Developing Your Inclusion Strategy. Across three 75-minute sessions, we will work through the process of developing a strategy, from setting the direction and understanding barriers through to identifying intended outcomes, selecting appropriate approaches and considering how their impact will be evaluated. Participants will be able to build and refine their own strategy alongside the programme.

In this blog, however, I want to explore one of the issues at the heart of that process: the relationship between Pupil Premium and Inclusion, and why a needs-led approach matters to both.

There will be overlap

The first thing to recognise is that there will be – and should be – overlap between the barriers and activities identified in your Pupil Premium Strategy and your Inclusion Strategy. Whilst the two strategies have different purposes, the needs and barriers they identify, and the responses schools put in place, will often intersect.

The same challenge or response may therefore legitimately appear in both strategy documents. Rather than seeing this as unnecessary duplication, it provides an opportunity to coordinate different resources and approaches around the needs of the pupils in your school.

Different purposes but a shared approach

It is probably worth briefly sketching out the core purpose of the two strategy documents, so when it comes to completing them, leaders have clarity about what each one is ultimately trying to achieve. I’ve summarised below what I see as the crucial elements of the two strategies.

What might this look like in practice?

Now we’ve established the core purpose of the Inclusion Strategy and in what fundamental ways it different from the Pupil Premium Strategy, we can look at some of the typical barriers that we may find in each or indeed across both.

The examples below illustrate some of the barriers that might emerge through each strategy. They are not intended as fixed categories. The same barrier may be relevant to disadvantaged pupils, pupils with additional needs or a much wider group of pupils, depending on the context of the school and what the evidence tells us.

The final column illustrates this particularly clearly. These are barriers that might legitimately feature in both strategies where they are affecting disadvantaged pupils while also representing a commonly occurring barrier to learning or participation across the wider cohort.

Of course, these examples come with an important warning. A barrier should not be assumed simply because a pupil belongs to a particular group.

Some pupils require more deliberate attention

Whilst many of these barriers may be experienced across the pupil population, they are not experienced equally. Some pupils are more likely to experience vulnerability and consequently require more deliberate attention. We therefore need to be clear about which pupils may be more likely to experience vulnerability, without treating them as a homogeneous group.

I have found it helpful to develop a shared understanding of what we mean by vulnerability and how pupils may experience it at different stages of their education. The phrase ​‘experience vulnerability’ is deliberate: it reminds us that vulnerability is a state rather than a trait and helps us avoid slipping too easily into deficit thinking.

How do we identify these barriers?

It is useful to think about the evidence that helps us identify barriers to learning and participation in two different ways.

The first tells us what is happening now, or what has happened recently. Here we are thinking about familiar outcome data such as attainment and progress, attendance, behaviour and suspensions, alongside evidence of pupil and parent experience gathered through surveys, focus groups or other forms of consultation.

This evidence helps us understand the impact of our provision to date and prompts important questions:

- What appears to be working well for our cohort?

- Where are outcomes less positive?

- Are particular groups of pupils experiencing school differently?

- Who might require closer attention?

Inevitably, much of this evidence is retrospective: by the time a pattern becomes visible in the data, the experiences that produced it have already happened.

The second source of evidence is more predictive and cuts to the heart of the ambition to identify and remove commonly occurring and predictable barriers to learning and participation. It starts with what we already know about our pupils and what this might tell us about the needs or barriers they are more likely to experience.

Some of what we know is more informative than others. A pupil with an EHCP, for example, will already have had their needs explored in considerable depth, with identified barriers and recommended provision. Identification at SEN Support may provide useful information but will often be the starting point for further exploration through the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle.

Labels such as Pupil Premium tell us considerably less about an individual pupil’s needs. Eligibility indicates an increased likelihood of some barriers associated with social and economic disadvantage, but it does not tell us which barriers a particular pupil experiences. Those barriers will vary considerably between pupils, may not be present at all and, where they are present, may not necessarily be affecting learning or educational outcomes.

Prior attainment provides another useful indicator. It is strongly associated with subsequent attainment, so pupils with lower prior attainment require particular attention. But again, it does not diagnose the barrier. A pupil’s prior attainment may vary considerably between subjects and reflect very different underlying factors.

The diagram below brings these two sources of evidence together: evidence of pupils’ current experiences and outcomes, which often comes with a lag, and indicators of need and vulnerability, which can help us anticipate where barriers may be more likely. Neither is sufficient on its own. By triangulating different sources of evidence, exploring pupils’ experiences and testing our assumptions, we can develop a much richer understanding of the barriers to learning and participation within our cohort.

That understanding provides the basis for deciding what needs to change and how the school should respond. This is where the Inclusion Strategy begins to take shape.

Our forthcoming Developing Your Inclusion Strategy webinar series will explore this process in more detail, supporting leaders to move from understanding their cohort and identifying barriers through to defining intended outcomes, selecting appropriate approaches and evaluating their impact.