The greatest risk facing the new Inclusion Strategy is that it becomes the next Pupil Premium Strategy.
The introduction of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) presents a significant opportunity for schools to strengthen inclusive practice and improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND. The government has been clear that the purpose of the fund is to help schools become “inclusive by design”, investing in sustainable improvements that remove barriers to learning and participation through high-quality inclusive practice rather than isolated interventions (Department for Education [DfE], 2026).
Schools are expected to publish an Inclusion Strategy that identifies barriers to learning and participation and explains how funding will be used to address them (DfE, 2026). This should be welcomed. Done well, the strategy could become a powerful school improvement tool.
However, school leaders should be cautious. There is a danger that the Inclusion Strategy could follow the same path as many Pupil Premium strategies have over time.
When Pupil Premium was introduced, it brought additional funding intended to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. In some schools it led to genuine innovation and improvement. In others, however, the funding gradually lost its distinct purpose and became absorbed into the wider school budget. Once it disappeared into the financial systems of a school or trust, it was often distributed across multiple priorities like slices of a cake, making it difficult to maintain a clear line of sight between spending, intended impact and actual outcomes.
As a result, the Pupil Premium Strategy frequently became a retrospective justification for expenditure rather than a carefully planned improvement strategy. Spending decisions were made first and plans were written afterwards. Impact was something schools sought to demonstrate retrospectively rather than something designed and evaluated from the outset.
The risks associated with this approach have been highlighted in national reports. The Public Accounts Committee reported that 47% of school leaders said they had used Pupil Premium funding to plug wider budget gaps, compared with 23% in 2019 (House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, 2025). The same report noted concerns about the difficulty of tracking and evaluating the impact of disadvantage-related funding when it becomes absorbed within wider school finances.
At the same time, the attainment gap remains stubbornly persistent. The Education Endowment Foundation reports that disadvantaged pupils are approximately 19 months behind their peers by the end of secondary school (Education Endowment Foundation, 2026). Similarly, the Education Policy Institute found that the disadvantage gap had widened to 19.2 months in 2023, making it the largest gap recorded since 2011 (Education Policy Institute, 2024).
While many factors contribute to this picture, including broader social and economic influences, these findings serve as a reminder that funding alone does not improve outcomes. How funding is used matters.
This is why the Inclusion Strategy must be different.
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund should not be viewed as simply another funding stream to relieve financial pressures. Nor should the Inclusion Strategy become a narrative explaining where the money went. Instead, it should be a prospectively planned improvement strategy that identifies barriers to learning, sets out the actions required to address them, defines what success will look like, and establishes how impact will be evaluated from the outset.
The Department for Education states that IMF funding should support schools to develop sustainable inclusive practice, strengthen staff expertise, improve participation, and build capacity within mainstream settings (DfE, 2026). This emphasis on systemic improvement is important. The strongest Inclusion Strategies will focus on building inclusive capacity across the whole school through improvements in universal provision, adaptive teaching, staff development, early intervention, and participation.
The lesson from Pupil Premium is simple. Additional funding can easily lose its purpose when it becomes absorbed into the wider budget and accountability becomes focused on expenditure rather than outcomes. The Inclusive Mainstream Fund offers schools an opportunity to avoid that mistake. School leaders should ensure that the Inclusion Strategy remains a genuine vehicle for improvement, not merely a mechanism for explaining spending after the event.
If used well, this funding has the potential to create lasting improvements in inclusive practice and deliver better experiences and outcomes for all learners.
Department for Education. (2026). Developing an inclusion strategy using the inclusive mainstream fund. GOV.UK.
Education Endowment Foundation. (2026). The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium. Education Endowment Foundation.
Education Policy Institute. (2024). Annual Report 2024: Disadvantage. Education Policy Institute.
House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts. (2025). Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children. UK Parliament.