Ministers’ ambition to meet the needs of more pupils in their local mainstream school won’t be met while pupils with SEND continue to be clustered “in a subset of settings”, a report has warned. The National Foundation for Educational Research said the government must monitor the distribution of pupils with SEND across the school system and “prioritise a more even spread across schools” to support the ambition for “local” suitable places. Bridget Phillipson and her team have put making mainstream schools more inclusive at the heart of their SEND reforms. But today’s report casts doubt on that aim, warning pupils with SEND are “unevenly distributed across mainstream schools and that unevenness is growing”. “The white paper’s focus on access to a suitable place in a local school will not be met while pupils with SEND continue to cluster in a subset of settings,” the report said. They said academy trusts and councils “should therefore routinely monitor the distribution of pupils with EHCPs and SEN support across schools within local areas (including in-year movement) and use this information to identify where intakes appear persistently unrepresentative of local need.” ‘Perceived attainment-inclusion tension’ Although the white paper and Ofsted’s new approach prioritise inclusive practice, the research organisation’s evidence “suggests there are misaligned incentives which contribute to the ‘structural steering effect’”. Amanda Hopgood For example, leaders reported a “perceived attainment–inclusion tension” that can discourage schools from admitting and supporting higher-need pupils. “If schools are expected to admit and support pupils with a wider range of needs, inspection and performance measures should more clearly value inclusive practice, appropriate pathways and meaningful progress for pupils with SEND, alongside outcomes for other pupils,” the report said. Amanda Hopgood, chair of the Local Government Association’s children, young people and families committee, said: “Ofsted’s inspection framework should place greater focus on inclusive practice and whether an individual school meets the needs of the community that it serves when inspected. “Those schools that are not playing a meaningful role in supporting vulnerable children, including those with SEND and who are care-experienced, should be held to account for their lack of action.” ‘Urgently’ evaluate school inclusion bases Government evaluation of school-based inclusion bases is also “urgent”, because integration is “currently uneven”. “Some schools report weak joint working between base and mainstream staff and, in a minority, limited pupil interaction/friendships across the base–mainstream boundary.” More than two thirds of schools also reported staffing and resource pressure from operating a SEND unit or resourced provision. Guidance for the implementation and oversight of inclusion bases should be “clear” and “evidence-based”, the NFER said. By collecting evidence on the bases, the DfE can then use it to inform “practical guidance that sets clear expectations for how these bases should operate within mainstream schools to avoid poorly integrated parallel provision”. Guidance should be tailored for schools and trusts, councils and Ofsted. ‘Be explicit mainstream can’t meet every pupil’s needs’ Ministers must also be “explicit that mainstream schools, including inclusion bases, cannot meet every pupil’s needs, and plan sufficient specialist places accordingly”. Policymakers and councils should treat specialist provision as an “essential part of an inclusive local system to avoid inappropriate mainstream placements becoming the default when specialist capacity is scarce”. The report also warned that where integration and inclusion remain uneven, funding “needs to better match patterns of need across schools so that inclusive practice is sustainable, not goodwill-based”. NFER’s research, its second paper on the subject, found that in 2024-25, primary schools with the highest rate of pupils with EHCPs had around six times as many pupils with EHCPs as those in the lowest quartile. The concentration of pupils with SEND “appears to be driven by a structural steering effect: pupils are pulled towards certain schools with reputations for and expertise in inclusion and pushed towards them when capacity in other schools is constrained”. NFER said this was reinforced by variation in school practices. Some were less willing to develop a reputation for inclusion, or actively discouraged admission of pupils with SEND “whether due to capacity pressures or concerns about performance measures”. Magnet schools The report found that inclusive schools became known locally as places that “will make it work”, shaping parental choice, professional advice and council placement decisions. But leaders “also described some schools actively managing their reputations to limit demand from pupils with SEND to enrol”. Recorded patterns of SEND concentration are shaped “not only by underlying levels of need, but by how need is identified, recorded and supported”. Variation in SEND identification and recording practices also limit the extent to which administrative data can reliably distinguish between underlying need and formal identification. The report also warned that the issue of higher need clustering in particular mainstream schools created “cumulative staffing and resource pressures that are not reflected in current funding arrangements”. The NFER’s Matt Walker warned support for pupils with SEND was “concentrated in a minority of schools and placing unsustainable pressure on them”. “If we want a genuinely inclusive system, responsibility for SEND cannot rest with a few schools. It has to be something every school is expected – and supported – to do. “Without that shift, the government’s ambition for mainstream schools to better meet a wider range of needs will remain difficult to deliver.”