‘Inclusion base’ for every school – but who will pay?

Ministers face calls to clarify how their plan for an “inclusion base” in every secondary school will be funded.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced this week that all secondary schools will be expected to have an “inclusion base”, where pupils can “access targeted support that bridges the gap between mainstream and specialist provision”.

According to the DfE, “inclusion bases” could be “additional spaces within the school building or refurbishment or repurposing of existing space”, like a spare classroom.

Guidance on how to run the bases will be published in the spring, but the DfE said they could be either a school or trust commissioned “support” or council commissioned “specialist” space.

Currently, councils typically fund special resourced provision (SRP) or SEN units within mainstream schools. But many schools can and do set up their own provision.

Current provision varies

School census data suggests that around 7 per cent of primary and 15 per cent of secondary schools have either a special resourced provision or “SEN unit”.

But figures given by councils differ slightly, suggesting 9 per cent of primaries and 19 per cent of secondaries have an SRP or unit.

The DfE has said it will work to improve data collection. It will also encourage primary schools to develop an “equivalent number of places” in inclusion bases to those in secondary.

This means for every one place in secondary schools across an area, there would be one place in local primary schools too.

A survey by Teacher Tapp this week showed 86 per cent of headteachers had a base in school to “make additional arrangements and/or teach different curricula” for small groups of pupils for some or all of the day.

But their current names vary. Eighteen per cent call it a “nurture room”, 14 per cent labelled it a “inclusion room or base” and 10 per cent referred to it as resourced provision. But 45 per cent call it something else.

Ninety per cent of heads said this was funded through the school’s main budget. A further 15 per cent said it was through additional funding from the council, while five per cent said it was “another arrangement”.

Funding woes

Vic Goddard, chief executive of Passmores Cooperative Learning, runs two additional resourced provisions and one support base for pupils with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs across his schools in Essex.

While the resourced provisions are funded by the council, Goddard said the SEMH unit was “impossible to finance”.

“I am now sitting in meetings right this second going, ‘if I want to protect that because that keeps the most vulnerable children in school, then what else needs to go?’

“So inherently, which slightly less vulnerable children am I going to let down?”

The DfE said £3 billion in funding over four years for councils will help to support the rollout of the bases. But this funding is capital funding to create the spaces and is available for councils to use in both special and mainstream schools.

It is also not clear whether schools will get more day-to-day funding for teaching or support staff.

Better accountability and practice

Ofsted has confirmed that it will “take into account” a school’s inclusion base during inspections.

Jamie Rogers, from the charity The Difference, said it was a “brilliant opportunity to codify as a country what good looks like”.

But schools must “make sure these spaces are not ‘dumping grounds for the most vulnerable children”, he warned.

Research by The Difference warned internal alternative provision in schools risk serving as pupil “holding pens” that unintentionally reinforce cycles of exclusion.

Hannah Carter, headteacher of Orchard Academy in Kent, said plans were “formalising something that fundamentally already exists”.

Carter’s school has an SRP and a school-funded unit for any pupils requiring support.

“I am very fortunate to have a new-build,” Carter said, but warned against using “leaky, rubbish-looking” rooms or simply “renaming something they have already got”.

The government needs to give schools “the money and the structure and the support and the examples of good practice”.

Carter added that it would be difficult to “quality assure” an inclusion base because of how different school contexts can be.

Dr Vasilis Stroglios, associate professor at the University of Southampton Education School, said bases “should not become places where pupils are routinely withdrawn from mainstream classrooms when this is not their preference … they must not function as ‘small special schools’ within mainstream settings”.

Councils and schools working together

Questions remain over how it will be decided whether a school opens a “support” or “specialist” base.

Rob Williams, senior policy advisor at school leader’s union NAHT, said to “avoid any risk of conflict”, bases “should be planned and established through co-production between councils, local school leaders, parents and other key stakeholders to ensure they complement and build upon existing provision”.

Speaking at Education Estates SEND Conference last week, Isabel Horner, the head of schools infrastructure at Norfolk County Council, said it “took more time to engage” with secondary schools in setting up SRPs.

Rob Walker, senior strategic development officer from Hampshire County Council, agreed: “It’s a different dynamic, but it’s a shared challenge that we have, whether it’s a maintained school or academy.

“We’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years building really strong links with those academy trusts so that we can work together and have really positive discussions about how we help them to support children that they already have within their schools.”