Research School Network: Quality, Not Quantity: Great Teaching for Greater Inclusion Quality, Not Quantity: Great Teaching for Greater Inclusion

When a pupil is struggling, our instinct is often to add something. An intervention. An extra resource. More teaching assistant support. Another intervention programme. Sometimes that additional support is exactly what a pupil needs. But before we add more, there is another question worth asking:

- ​‘How strong is the teaching that a pupil experiences every day?’

This question feels particularly important for us at MCA. Many of our pupils experience socio-economic disadvantage, but we know that disadvantage does not tell us what an individual pupil can do or exactly what support they might need. Our job is to understand the barriers our pupils face and think carefully about what is within our control to address themStart with what happens every day

The EEF’s Guide to Inclusive Teaching gives us a useful way of thinking about this. Its two-part model considers the universal approaches that are particularly important for pupils with additional needs, alongside the adaptations and additional support that some pupils may require.

For me, the important bit is the focus on what pupils experience every day. A strong universal offer benefits everyone, while being particularly important for pupils who face additional barriers to learning.

At MCA, this brings us back to some fairly simple questions:

- ​‘Are our explanations clear enough?’

- ​‘Have we modelled not just what to do, but the thinking behind it?’

- ​‘Are we checking what pupils have actually understood?’

- ​‘What do we do when that check tells us something has not landed?’


These decisions might seem small, but they are happening in every lesson. Over time, they really matter.

Great teaching is an inclusion strategy

This is why the Somerset Research School blog Closing the gap through great teaching, not more interventions really stood out to me.

It is not saying that interventions are not needed. Sometimes they absolutely are. But it does make us stop and think about whether our first response is too often to add something else, rather than look closely at what pupils are experiencing in lessons every day.

We had lots of conversations about this at MCA when we were developing the inclusive teaching section of our teaching and learning playbook. We were clear that we did not want inclusive teaching to become a separate list of strategies for different groups of pupils. Instead, we wanted to strengthen the everyday classroom experience for everyone, while recognising that some pupils will need more support at different points.

For us, that meant coming back to some simple principles: reducing unnecessary cognitive load, modelling clearly, checking understanding and using scaffolds where they are needed. One message we kept coming back to was:

​‘The ambition stays the same, but the support might need to change.’

Inclusive teaching is not about making the work easier. It is about noticing the barrier and doing something about it so that more pupils can access the same ambitious learning.

We also did not want adaptive teaching to turn into lots of different versions of the same lesson. For us, it is much more about noticing what pupils need and responding to that. That might mean modelling something again, breaking it down further, changing the scaffold, giving pupils more time to think or simply asking a better question. They are often small adjustments, but they happen all the time.


Quality before quantity

There is an important link here to socio-economic disadvantage. Disadvantaged pupils are not one group with one set of needs. We should not make assumptions about what a pupil needs simply because they are eligible for the Pupil Premium. We need to understand the pupil, identify the barrier and think about what is most likely to help. That might involve additional or specialist support. But it might also mean strengthening something within everyday teaching.

The Somerset blog highlights explicit modelling, structured talk and high-quality feedback as approaches that can be built into normal classroom practice rather than added around it. I think this is the bit that is worth holding onto. Improving outcomes for pupils experiencing disadvantage does not always require the next initiative. It can begin with getting even better at the things that happen in classrooms every day: clear explanations, strong modelling, carefully chosen scaffolds, checking understanding and maintaining ambitious expectations.


Before we add more…

Perhaps the useful question for leaders and teachers is not simply, ​‘What else could we provide?’ but:

- ​‘What is the barrier we are actually trying to address?’

- ​‘Could anything in our everyday teaching be strengthened first?’

- ​‘If additional support is needed, how will it connect back to what is happening in the classroom?’


There will always be pupils who need additional and specialist support. A strong universal offer cannot, and should not, replace that. But if we want inclusion to reach every classroom and every pupil, the quality of the everyday experience has to be our starting point. So before we add another intervention or another layer of support, it is probably worth asking whether there is something in the everyday teaching we could strengthen first.

Further reading

Gamble, J. (2026). Closing the gap through great teaching, not more interventions. Somerset Research School.

Education Endowment Foundation. (2026). The EEF Guide to Inclusive Teaching.

Education Endowment Foundation. (2026). The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium.