Imagine two schools. The first welcomes pupils with a wide range of needs. It invests in specialist training, adapts its curriculum, works persistently with families and continues supporting children when attendance, behaviour or progress become difficult. The second protects its results more carefully. It discourages certain admissions, applies rigid policies and quietly allows pupils who do not “fit its model” to move elsewhere. Which school does our education system make it easier to call successful? This is the uncomfortable question at the heart of the current SEND reform. The government’s current proposals for England rightly place greater emphasis on identifying needs earlier, strengthening support in mainstream schools and creating a more inclusive education system. The ambition is for inclusion and high standards to operate together, rather than as competing priorities. Schools will also be expected to take a more strategic approach to inclusion, including through the publication of inclusion strategies in place of SEN information reports. However, there is a contradiction we must confront. Schools are expected to become more inclusive, but at the same time they are judged through measures that can make inclusion feel like an institutional risk. Schools remain under intense pressure and scrutiny regarding attainment, attendance, behaviour, exclusions and financial sustainability. Of course, these things matter, and I doubt any serious advocate for inclusion would argue against such expectations. However, when the measures used to define a successful school are too narrow, they can unintentionally create incentives that work against the very children they are designed to support. A pupil experiencing anxiety may reduce a school’s attendance figures. A child with communication needs may struggle within a behaviour system built around immediate compliance. Severe financial constraints A young person whose progress is significant but not easily captured by age-related benchmarks may appear to weaken the school’s academic profile. At the same time, the school must find the staff, the expertise, the time and the physical space needed to provide the right support, often while managing severe financial constraints. What all of this means in practice is that those schools doing the most demanding work of inclusion (the “SEND magnets” as I call them) often carry the greatest operational, financial and reputational burden. To be clear, this is not an argument that schools do not want pupils with SEND. It is an argument about systems. The reality is that organisations are most likely to respond to what is measured and what is funded. If we genuinely want schools to welcome and retain pupils with additional needs, inclusion must be embedded within our definition of success, rather than being treated as an additional responsibility to be accommodated after the “real” measures have been secured. The ambition of the government’s SEND reform makes sense. But good classroom practice alone cannot carry the entire weight of this reform. Teachers need realistic workloads, access to specialist advice and meaningful professional development. SENCOs need the authority and capacity to influence curriculum, staffing and strategy. Governors and trustees need information that goes beyond headline attainment and absence data. The renewed inspection framework does give greater prominence to inclusion. It also asks inspectors to consider how leaders identify and address the needs of pupils with SEND and others facing barriers to learning. That is an important shift. But we need to acknowledge that there are conflicting incentives for school leaders. The same direction Funding, accountability, admissions, workforce development and performance measures must all point in the same direction. It is unfair to tell school leaders that inclusion is fundamental within a wider system in which it remains easier and cheaper to serve a less complex population. The real test of the government’s SEND reform will be whether the school which welcomes, understands and persists with children that others find difficult is recognised, and not penalised, as the more successful school.