A school could publish an inclusion strategy this December and still struggle to say whether inclusion has improved. It might show how it spent its funding, which staff attended training and how many pupils received support. Those are necessary records. They are not yet an account of who feels safer, participates fully, or can learn on fairer terms. Inclusion is becoming funded, published, inspected and governed. Mainstream state-funded schools must publish their strategies by 31 December. Ofsted grades Inclusion separately. The Academy Trust Handbook, effective from 1 October, brings the question into the boardroom. Trusts should monitor access, participation and outcomes, evaluate provision and secure assurance about inclusive practice. The question is what evidence makes those responsibilities meaningful. The DfE’s strategy guidance already asks schools to gather pupil and family voice, support staff wellbeing and evaluate belonging, participation and engagement – alongside attendance and attainment. Its seven principles span leadership, early help, teaching, enrichment, culture, partnerships and accessibility. This is a welcome breadth. The challenge is equipping leaders to understand whether provision changes experience, and why it works differently across groups. Our familiar and traditional measures often arrive after a barrier has taken hold. Attendance shows who missed school, but cannot explain why Tuesday became impossible. Behaviour data records an incident, but it may miss the inaccessible lesson, broken trust with adults or overwhelming corridor that preceded it. A provision map tells us what was planned, not whether an adjustment survived a change of teacher. Five lenses As a former teacher and current researcher, I use five lenses from my doctoral work to investigate what those records leave out. Identity asks whose experiences differ, including where circumstances intersect. Experience asks what happened before the recorded event. Voice asks whose account shapes the explanation. Social capital asks who has trusted relationships and access to help. Environment asks which policies, routines and spaces enable participation. A family that knows who to call may secure help quickly. Another repeats its concern for months. Unequal access to relationships can widen gaps, even when provision looks identical on paper. Consider a pupil whose attendance falls. Staff may identify a need for support, while the pupil describes feeling unsafe at lunchtime and their parent describes months of unanswered messages. Another pupil with the same attendance figure may face a different barrier. Neither story is visible in the percentage. Combined with administrative evidence, those accounts help leaders decide what to change and test whether it helped. The new SEND and inclusion training, informed by the Education Endowment Foundation, offers support for classroom practice. Curriculum reform and SEND proposals make its implementation consequential. But teaching expertise needs to work alongside expertise in disability, race equity, health, family relationships and organisational culture. A technique supported by evidence does not remove the need to investigate how it is experienced locally. Cross-sector inclusion experts, pupils and families must help interpret the evidence and shape the response. Our inclusion index, published on 28 September, draws on more than 36,000 survey contributions and 2.82 million quantitative and qualitative data points from participating settings. On one question, 44.9 per cent of student responses were positive about feeling seen in the curriculum. Prompt investigation Staff belonging was positive for 79 per cent of respondents reporting no disability or additional needs, compared with 53.7 per cent of those reporting additional needs. These figures prompt investigation, not institutional rankings. Interoperable records could improve coordination and spare families repeated explanations. AI can assist with analysing patterns. Neither should assign a predictive inclusion profile to a child. Leaders need to triangulate anonymous experience, professional knowledge and administrative measures together, protect privacy and check their interpretations with the people affected. There is a practical role for every tier. Schools can identify a disparity, listen, act and revisit the experience. Trust boards can ask whose participation improved and what explains persistent differences. Local authorities and health partners can connect evidence across services, transitions and settings. The government’s new experts-at-hand service provides a route for specialist professionals, schools and families to collaborate. The DfE can support proportionate evaluation methods. Ofsted can ask what leaders learned when their first response failed. That requires protected time, accessible listening and support for interpretation. A board cannot secure meaningful assurance from a polished account that leaves difficult experiences out. Nor can a school resolve barriers that require local or national action. The reforms create an opportunity to make inclusion a shared responsibility. The test is whether pupils can learn and participate on fairer terms, families can secure support, and staff have the conditions to make that possible.