Inclusion Strategy
Template
The Department for Education (DfE) has published its official Inclusion Strategy Template.
The template gives you the format. Our free preparation toolkit for Inclusion Strategy development is designed to help your school or trust gather the evidence, identify priorities and do the strategic thinking needed to complete the template well.
Built around the DfE template
Mirrors the DfE Inclusion Strategy Template, its 5-step process and the 7 inclusion themes, so your preparation maps straight onto the official format.
Light on workload
Updated with national SEND benchmark data from the DfE 2025/26 statistics, so you move from headline data to clear priorities faster.
Clear for every audience
Structured prompts take you from evidence and barriers to a statement of intent for leaders, governors, trustees and inspectors.
Download our free Inclusion Strategy Template Preparation Toolkit
A practical planning companion to the DfE Inclusion Strategy Template, updated with national SEND benchmark data. Inside the free 25-page toolkit you will:
- Benchmark your SEND profile against national DfE 2025/26 data
- Map your provision against the 7 inclusion themes
- Pinpoint the barriers to learning that matter most for your pupils
- Link your priorities, IMF funding and intended outcomes
- Draft a statement of intent, ready to drop into the DfE template
What is an inclusion strategy?
An inclusion strategy, sometimes called a SEND strategy, is a published statement that sets out how your school or trust identifies and meets the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), and others who face barriers to learning, and how you embed inclusive practice across the whole school.
It is different from a SEN information report or an individual pupil’s plan. Where those describe current provision or one child’s support, an inclusion strategy looks across the whole setting, brings together your work on SEND, behaviour, attendance and wellbeing, and sets the direction for the next few years.
It gives everyone, from governors and trustees to teachers, families and inspectors, a shared and honest picture of where you are, where you are heading and how you will know you have arrived.
Why schools must act now
In March 2026, the Department for Education published the methodology for its new Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF), a grant worth £400 million a year for mainstream schools. Alongside the funding comes a clear condition: every mainstream primary and secondary school in England must develop and publish an inclusion strategy, as a statement on the school website, by 31 December 2026.
The strategy must be refreshed each academic year, kept accessible to parents, made available to Ofsted inspectors, and scrutinised by governors and trustees. It should set out your cohort’s commonly occurring needs and barriers, how you spend your inclusion funding, and your plan to improve provision across the 7 inclusion themes.
This sits within a wider shift. Under Ofsted’s updated inspection framework, inclusion is now a standalone evaluation area, and almost a fifth of pupils in England have SEND. The reforms ask every school to show a clear, evidenced and inclusive approach, and the inclusion strategy is how leaders set that direction and demonstrate it.
The official DfE template and how our toolkit helps
On 25 June 2026, the DfE published its best-practice guidance and an official Inclusion Strategy Template for schools and trusts. You can download the Word template directly from GOV.UK.
The template gives you the format. The harder part is the thinking behind it: understanding your cohort’s commonly occurring and predictable needs, identifying the barriers that matter most, and deciding where to invest. That is the blank-page problem our free Inclusion Strategy Template Preparation Toolkit is built to solve. Work through it first, then transfer your conclusions straight into the DfE template.
What your inclusion strategy needs to cover
The Department for Education expects your published statement to report on your cohort’s needs and barriers, how your inclusion funding is spent, your planned investment, and the activities you are undertaking, organised around 7 themes of inclusive practice. These 7 themes form the spine of a strong strategy.
The 7 inclusion themes
- Ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion in planning
- Evidence based support that prioritises early intervention
- High quality teaching, with a curriculum designed for all learners
- Accessible and enriching provision beyond the classroom
- A safe and respectful culture that fosters belonging and attendance
- Strong partnerships with families and wider services
- Inclusive environments, with continued improvements to accessibility
Want to go deeper?
A strong inclusion strategy is built on an honest picture of where you are now.
Once you have worked through the toolkit, you can baseline your provision in more depth with our evaluation and reporting tool: SEND Lens.
Structured against the inspection framework, it shows you where you stand, what your priorities are and what to do next, giving you the evidence your strategy will be built on.
SEND Lens is completely free for our first 25 founding partners for the remainder of the 2025 to 2026 academic year, and the full 2026 to 2027 academic year. That is a saving of at least £750 per school.
Dedicated SEND Lens programmes for local authorities and schools are coming in the 2026 to 2027 academic year. Join the waiting list for priority access: