For more than a decade, I’ve led a 0-11 (All Year Round – 0-18 in holidays) mainstream primary school for over 600 children. We run a highly successful 55‑place specialist provision embedded within the heart of our school. Over 130 children are on our SEND register. We have exclusion rates well below national (No PEX), reintegrate many children who have been permanently excluded or have had failed mainstream placements, and welcome pupils with every complexity imaginable.

So when a new White Paper arrives promising inclusion, investment, national standards, Experts at Hand, and a rebalanced funding system, I read it with two simultaneous reactions:

  1. Hope — because reform is genuinely needed and the profession has been waiting for it for what seems like an eternity.
  2. Weariness — because so much of what is being promoted as “new thinking” is work that schools like mine have been doing quietly, consistently, and without glossy infographics for years.

This isn’t cynicism (well… maybe?). You see, I host loads of visits and people walk way from my school praising us and saying how great what we do is… But when Ofsted walk in they are surprised (and have no reference point so they fudge it) and have anyone from the DFE asked us how we became Alternative Provision School of the Year; or shortlisted for Inclusive School of the Year? Not once – many schools like us (Though I’m still to meet a school exactly like us – SO please get in contact if you are reading this and think – That’s US!) feel forgotten in a place where we just keep our head down and get on with the day to day… and then we read the White Paper and think lovely – meh… Cynicism over…

It’s perspective — the perspective of someone who has lived the reality for decades, not theorised it.

The Truth: Inclusion Is Not a Poster. It Is a Culture.

One of the striking things about the current narrative around inclusion is how simple people make it look. My Social Media threads are suddenly full of posters with words like Belonging and Every Child, Every Day. Since Ofsted bought in the word ‘Belonging’ – oh boy, can we monitise that!?! It’s neat. They’re uplifting. They’re… fine.

But they are not inclusion.

Inclusion is what happens, on the ground as part of the ‘everyday’.

  • when a timetable collapses for the fourth time in a term
  • when Y6 are preparing pupils for SATs after three false fire alarms (in a day!) caused by a child’s sensory profile
  • when complaints land on your desk because a child swore in an assembly
  • when a new initiative is proudly launched only to realise they no one had spoken to your Specialist Provision staff
  • when leaders are under scrutiny, yet still have to model calm, compassionate decision‑making even when internally they’re thinking, “I have no idea what to do next either.”

Inclusion, in short, is:
Hard work.
Messy work.
Human work.

And the people who know this best are the ones doing it — not designing posters about it.

What the White Paper Gets Right

To its credit, the White Paper acknowledges several realities that practitioners have been raising for years. The introduction of:

  • Layers of support (Targeted, Targeted Plus, Specialist)
  • Experts at Hand — access to S&LT, OT, EPs without a statutory process – though God Knows where these Experts are hiding?
  • Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for all children with SEND
  • The Inclusive Mainstream Fund to put more financial control directly into schools
  • National Inclusion Standards to drive consistency
  • A Review of the Independent Sector though this feels more like a hint than a reality

These all respond to genuine systemic gaps. If implemented well, they could reduce the exhausting bureaucracy that too often keeps support out of classrooms rather than putting it into them.

But — and it’s a big but — none of this will work if people think inclusion is a toolkit or badge – rather than a mindset supported systemically.

Culture Is As Important As Money (I Know, I Said It)

Money matters — absolutely. As Vic Goddard is putting across so passionately – we can’t do this without the proper funding… so to directly quote Vic, ‘Show me the money!’

But culture determines impact.

You can pour millions into inclusion, but if a school’s culture is:

  • punitive rather than relational
  • rigid rather than flexible
  • compliance‑driven rather than curiosity‑driven
  • protective of “my class/ my school/ my trust” rather than united around “our children”

— then no White Paper reform will work.

Conversely, in a school where we aim to get the culture right:

  • the timetable is flexible
  • the curriculum is adapted intelligently – provision is curriculum rather than Alternatives
  • teachers collaborate, not compete
  • SP teachers have a voice at the senior table
  • focus is on how pupils feel they belong even on their hardest days
  • success is redefined beyond levels and scores
  • staff understand behaviour through a neurological, developmental lens. This is not only evidence based – we are intelligent enough to put that evidence through our own context and our own research… not blindly try to fit it into our experiences, knowledge and understanding.

The additional money will amplify what is already working.

Culture is the multiplier.
Without it, reforms remain theory. The danger being – too many influential people who do not have to walk the corridors, teacher or lead will create what is expected.

Ten Lessons From Actually Doing This Work

I wrote the book Lessons From the Heads Office 4 years ago (Time flies)- so it is great to see many of those lessons now becoming the focus of a White Paper. The lessons are not abstract principles; they are lived truths:

  • Inclusion is f*%king hard work.
  • Expect complaints — and respond with integrity.
  • Staff awareness varies — and must be built intentionally.
  • Training is essential — not optional.
  • Advocacy is part of the job — for pupils and staff.
  • Flexibility is key — in timetables, spaces, thinking.
  • Communication is crucial — in all directions.
  • Redefine success — because progress is personal.
  • Isolation happens — so networks matter.
  • Inclusion is a journey – Schools should be the leading light in this area— not an endpoint.

These aren’t bullet points for a CPD slide. They are the emotional, practical, cultural reality of running inclusion well. For example, at my school any exclusion is now led from the staff working with the child as a first point of decision making. My exclusions are very low but when my staff say, we have done X and we have done Y… but I feel that this needs to be a short term exclusion – as a leader I always respond to support the staff because we have built a culture where I am 100% confident staff want to do the best for the very complex children we work with. It is staff at my school stopping exclusions – not leadership and that is how it should be. But also, children and staff are not suffering because issues are not being address transparently and reflectivily.

What I Hope Comes Next

My hope is that the new reforms:

  1. Listen to the schools already doing this well; not high profile glossy rhetoric and bluster based on SATS results
    We exist. Learn from us.
  2. Shift from compliance to collaboration
    Inclusion cannot be quality‑assured into existence.
  3. Prioritise culture-building as much as capacity-building
    Training, modelling, relational leadership, and staff wellbeing are foundations, not luxuries.
  4. Avoid creating another cycle of “best practice posters”
    Because inclusion is not a brand.
  5. Give schools the trust, autonomy, and resources to implement flexibly
    One-size-fits-all inclusion is not inclusion.
  6. Create an Ofsted/DFE regime that recognises and celebrates complex inclusion rather than punishes it

This last point is vital – Currently my school would be punished under the current Ofsted toolkit – there is no nuance (Joy! I can’t wait for the call!). I see it in my IDSR. The system does not recognise a school like mine. This year I have 14 EHCPs in Year 6 – 17% of the Cohort (Which has 42% SEND across the Cohort). The current SATs system will only produce negative statistics for these children. Statistics that will impact outcomes dramatically, in complex ways that are hard to unpick, hitting factors such as our deprivation outcomes etc. It’s a classic way in which the current system punishes rather than celebrates. A system that can’t see progress outside of age old systems. For example my attendance is above national at 95.6% – this includes a significant number of children who would be compared only to Specialist Provision attendance data (approx. 88%). If I compare Mainstream attendance only – it goes up to 96.7% – A significant difference.

The same was true of SATs. Last year my published Reading results (therefore on the IDSR without real context) was 61% significantly behind national. If you take out children from Specialist Provision (who did not sit the test) this goes up to 74%. Therefore, being an inclusive schools equates to a 13% negative impact on statutory tests. Mathematics 67% changed to 81% when taking out children in the Specialist Provision. Having to remove children or justify your provision in this way is inequitable – it is not inclusive… but you have to do this to justify a system that does not understand nuance and complexity.

Final Thought: Inclusion Is Built from Within

The White Paper provides a way forward and it is an important step. But policy (no matter how well intentioned) does not build culture. What is missing is a lot of the how are we going to get here. I can’t see this, at the moment – and the timelines are tight. For example, reassessing children at Year 6 is a good idea. Anyone who works with children with EHCPs knows that they are out of touch with the child/ family very quickly and are often written with primary education in mind. But the current system is already failing – annual reviews are basically the parent and the school – An Education HEALTH and CARE plan – should be exactly this. The proposed system does little to give many parents confidence it will be better for their child. This White Paper needs to join the national system up better so that we support children (and therefore families) earlier and more effectively than we currently do. This is an Education, Health, Care and Public Service agenda and we need to move away from the School will solve this issue alone ethos every time there’s a national crisis- which is how it feels to many of us.

And then there’s the Elephant in the Room- the current system must change. I recently spent most of a school day in court; in a tribunal where the difference between the very bespoke and specialist provision we offered (Which was Approx. £30,000) went to an independent school who were charging £160,000 a year. The differences in what is being charged in the current system to meet complex need is utterly broken and needs massive scrutiny and a national review. If this is addressed surely the system can fully invest in mainstream provision. Money can then be invested into resourcing, expertise and most importantly the culture to reassure parents that their local maintained primary school is a fantastic first choice to meet their child’s needs. I still believe that there needs to be independent, regulated and accountable schools for us to be able to meet all need. But, it has to be held up to the same accountabilities that other schools are.

And those of us who have spent decades or more building genuinely inclusive mainstream education know that no reform will succeed unless it honours the messy, beautiful, human complexity of what inclusion truly is.

Like running an inclusive school this White Paper is:

… not neat.
… not simple.
… not instant.

It will need a LOT of leadership to bring everyone together to see this vision through. If done well it will be so much better than what is currently in place. It’s now vital that we learn from the ground up rather than make this whole process about ideology, infographics, selective case studying and examples that are far too smooth to have really lived through trying to lead or teach at a truly inclusive school.