Inclusion in Practice: SEND Reform Briefing for School Leaders

A Senior Leaders' Guide on the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, the Inclusion Strategy Deadline, and What Good Inclusion Looks Like in Practice

Your school's Inclusive Mainstream Fund allocation is arriving in June — and with it, some urgent decisions to make before summer. 

By 31 December 2026, every mainstream school must publish an Inclusion Strategy setting out how it understands the needs of its pupils and the approaches being taken to meet them, including how the IMF is being deployed.

The decisions about how to use that funding need to happen now, before summer. Schools that go into the holidays without a clear plan will find September too late for a comfortable run to December.

This 60-minute online briefing is designed to help senior leaders and CPD leads focus on what matters right now: what the IMF can be spent on, what the Inclusion Strategy actually needs to contain, and what effective inclusion looks like in practice in mainstream schools.

In this session:

Gary Aubin, EEF SEND Associate, author of The Lone SENDCO, and member of the Government's Curriculum and Assessment Review panel, breaks down the funding landscape: what the IMF covers, what the Inclusion Strategy requires, what the national SEND training programme does and does not provide, and the questions every school leader should be answering before the end of term.

We then hear from Silverwood School, a specialist SEN school with years of experience working directly alongside mainstream schools to build inclusive practice from the ground up. Their keynote draws on what they see every day: the approaches that work, the barriers that keep getting in the way, and what the professional learning infrastructure looks like in mainstream schools where inclusion genuinely sticks.

The session closes with a facilitated Q&A where both speakers take your questions directly.

This event is for: Headteachers, deputies, SENCOs, and trust-level CPD and inclusion leads in mainstream schools.

Format: Online, 60 minutes. Free to attend. Can't make it live? Register anyway and we'll send you the recording.

Hosted by IRIS Connect.