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“Some schools are more inclusive than others - let’s just be honest - and is that right?”

This comment by a senior Ofsted director last year indicated that, for the first time, the watchdog was looking at how it could begin inspecting schools on inclusion.

For some, this focus - mirroring that of a newly elected government - raised the prospect that the accountability system was about to be rebalanced.

In Ofsted’s plan for new school inspections, due to start later this year, inclusion is set to become a main area of evaluation.

And the Department for Education has made clear that making mainstream schools more inclusive will be at the heart of its special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reform, and has appointed a panel of inclusion advisers to identify good practice.

But there are concerns that something is missing from the government’s inclusion drive.

There has been a longstanding concern that the current accountability system penalises schools for being inclusive, and conversely rewards those that are not.

And some fear that not enough has been proposed to change this.

Jonny Uttley, an academy trust CEO and visiting fellow at the Centre for Young Lives think tank, warns that at present, there is no drive to identify schools that are not being inclusive.

“There is still a lack of curiosity about who is on a school’s roll. As such, the efforts to promote inclusion so far risk missing the point,” he warns.

Inclusion group: what about ‘bad practice’?

The DfE’s Inclusion in Practice group, led by multi-academy trust CEO Tom Rees, launched a call for evidence to find best practice and has published a report identifying principles to underpin an inclusive education.

But what about any bad practice that exists in the sector, and the factors holding schools back from being more inclusive?

Mr Rees says that the Inclusion in Practice group has not only set out to find positive examples of what is working well in the system, but has also highlighted “a real issue with variability in the quality of advice, support and guidance that exists to help teachers support pupils with SEND”.

“This advice and guidance can sometimes be conflicting, which contributes to a confusing and sub-optimal space for practitioners to operate in,” he says, adding: “It’s something I think we can do much better at as a school system and is an area of real interest and focus for the expert advisory group as we move forward.”

Ofsted won’t look at SEND representation

One of the biggest sticking points in Ofsted’s controversial plans for report card inspections is around the “toolkits” it has produced, showing how inspectors will assign one of five grades in at least eight areas, with 51���� receiving a binary judgement on whether standards are met or not.

The proposed toolkits contain descriptors setting out how and why a school might be found to be classed as “causing concern” - the lowest grade - on inclusion.

But, according to Mr Uttley, “it will be quite possible for a school to meet the Ofsted criteria on inclusion and the principles for a good inclusive education set out by the DfE’s group and still be running an exclusive school”.

This echoes a concern raised by Margaret Mulholland, an inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, who told a parliamentary inquiry into the SEND crisis that Ofsted’s plans to inspect inclusion do not include an assessment of how representative a school’s intake is of pupils with SEND in the local area.

Inspecting inclusion ‘feels utterly tokenistic’

Tes understands that Ofsted is rewriting the toolkits and considering whether to reduce the number of evaluation areas in its inspections. Its finalised plans will not be published until September.

But there are broader concerns about Ofsted’s ability to meaningfully inspect inclusion.

Warren Carratt, CEO of Nexus Multi Academy Trust, which runs 17 schools in South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, says: “The idea of Ofsted inspecting inclusion as part of nine areas for 1.5 days every four years feels utterly tokenistic and is unlikely to result in any meaningful change.”

For the ASCL school leaders’ union, Ofsted’s focus on inclusion is welcome, but general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio questions its ability to accurately assess this.

“The five-point grading scale is excessive and the criteria for judgements in the toolkits are vague,” he says. The wording is “often descriptive and lacks precision”, he adds.

An Ofsted spokesperson says: “[Chief inspector] Sir Martyn [Oliver] has been clear that inclusion will be at the heart of Ofsted’s renewed framework. The inspection toolkits are being revised following the consultation and will be published in early September.”

Call for more focus on admissions

Some in the sector calling for a sharper focus on schools that exclude, rather than include, pupils point to admissions rules as an area ripe for scrutiny.

Mr Uttley, who leads The Education Alliance, which runs 12 schools in Yorkshire, tells Tes that this should be the starting point with any focus on inclusion.

“If we are serious about inclusion, we should be looking at who attends a school, how representative it is of its local community, how long pupils stay on roll for, who leaves, and why and who goes into elective home education,” he says.

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“Ofsted says that it does not have the power to look at admissions, but if it is serious about inclusion, it should be asking for this power.”

The impact of behaviour policies

Jarlath O’ Brien, director of school improvement at Solent Academies Trust, which runs five special schools in the South of England, also believes more could be done to look at admissions, along with school culture and behaviour management.

He warns against the government seeking to identify good or bad practice in terms of pedagogy or specific approaches, saying this can have “clear unintended consequences”, such as “school leaders developing checklists of things that teachers then need to be seen to be doing”.

“It is not the thing in itself, but the effect of its implementation that I think should be examined,” he adds, giving the example of a silent corridors culture, which “can be either oppressive or safe and calming”.

However, he says schools should know whether pupils with SEND are more likely to be sanctioned, for instance by being placed in isolation. “The government can and should be bolder here,” Mr O’Brien says.

“Firstly, schools and trusts need to know this information and be judged on it if they don’t; and secondly, if they do know it and still don’t adjust their practice, then this again is a judgement on leadership and a school or trust’s commitment to inclusion. Ofsted grade descriptors could be used as a lever here.”

The government’s approach to behaviour could well be an area where we see a more proactive drive towards inclusion. Its job description for new says they will “advocate for government policy on attendance and behaviour and the implementation of an inclusive approach to mainstream education”.

This comes as the latest government statistics show suspensions reaching a record high, prompting education minister Stephen Morgan to claim that the government has inherited “classrooms in chaos”.

Curriculum: ‘You can’t have it both ways’

Another area where the government could make material changes to inclusion is through curriculum and assessment, which are being examined in an ongoing national review.

Asked about inclusion at a Commons Education Select Committee hearing last week, review chair Professor Becky Francis said that there was a tension between the need for rigour and high expectations for all pupils, and the need for diversification and flexibility.

Here, the government is chasing potentially conflicting goals, Mr Carratt warns.

“The government has placed itself between the devil and the deep blue sea because it has committed to high expectations and raising academic standards and accountability for this, while also giving us sweet words about the importance of inclusion, but the issue is that you can’t have it both ways.”

He says the accountability system can also “often be at odds with inclusive practice”.

For example, “there are schools that have achieved academic success while managing their cohorts, and young people who find it difficult to acclimatise to their offer are shouted at, penalised, excluded or strongly encouraged to move on to a more ‘inclusive’ school,” he warns.

Conversely, the reward for being inclusive is “to be asked - and then directed - to take a disproportionate number of pupils with additional needs, usually with no extra resource”, he says.

What is ‘inclusion’?

One of the barriers to identifying bad practice is the absence of a definition of “inclusive education”.

The Public Accounts Committee has previously urged the government to produce such a definition and, in January, called on ministers to define this in the first six months of the year.

Earlier this month, when asked about this by MPs, schools minister Catherine McKinnell pointed to the Schools White Paper due to be published in the autumn, in which the government is set to lay out its plans for SEND reform.

‘Poor’ use of inclusion data

As well as a working definition on inclusion, scrutinising schools more closely in this area will also require a more effective use of data by Ofsted and the DfE, leaders say.

“The intelligence on school admissions, exclusions and mid-year moves is there, but it’s not being used in school inspections,” says Mr Carratt.

Sheffield City Council’s recent SEND area inspection says the school system is not inclusive, but this is not reflected in individual school reports, he says.

Mr Uttley agrees that data is an area for improvement. “Historically, the DfE’s use of data has been really poor,” he says.

“Too little is centrally held, and too much important data is published too late or not at all. For example, the national data on suspensions is always at least two terms out of date. As a result, we have few real insights into how inclusive schools are across the country.”

He adds: “We should support the DfE in its efforts to improve this and I hope we will soon have live school rolls in the way we have live attendance data so that pupil movement can be tracked in real time.”

Schools face major change

There is an element of uncertainty caused by the fact that there are three major changes set to happen to schools sector policy all at once.

Schools starting the academic year will have to digest Ofsted’s plan for its new inspections, the government’s White Paper on SEND reform and the final recommendations of the curriculum and assessment review.

And this means that Ofsted’s new framework will no doubt have to change again to accommodate the government’s plans for SEND and inclusion. Chief inspector Sir Martyn has already indicated that the area inspections of SEND services will also be changing.

Mr Rees says: “It’s right to say there are lots of interconnected pieces of policy that relate to inclusion, which is why I believe it’s a good thing the department is considering wider system levers, such as Ofsted, curriculum and teaching training, in their work on inclusion.

“This enables us to think about inclusion as part of the whole school system, rather than limiting the focus to the SEND system.”

For some, the concern remains that despite all this policy focus on inclusion, identifying best practice needs to be accompanied by an effort to root out the bad.

The DfE has been contacted for comment.

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