The Schools White Paper promises a re‑engineered SEND system: earlier identification, national standards, consistent expectations, and improved oversight. On paper, it looks like the long‑awaited blueprint for coherence, putting inclusion as a priority at the heart of reform. It even offers some welcome initiatives: new National Inclusion Standards by 2028, compulsory SEND training for every teacher, digital Individual Support Plans, “Experts at Hand” specialist teams, and a requirement for every secondary school to have an inclusion base.
So why does it leave so many of us uneasy?
Because it attempts to reform SEND around a mainstream system that has barely changed for decades. Unless we confront that imbalance, SEND reform will remain a technical exercise, tidying the plumbing around a house with structural cracks. Much of the White Paper focuses on financial architecture; bandings, tariffs, cost controls, and oversight. These technical fixes aim to redistribute funding and make the system more consistent. That matters. Yet changing how money moves (or bolting on additional support services) is not the same as changing how inclusion is lived. You can redistribute money without redistributing mindsets. You can standardise pathways without standardising belonging. You can make SEND systems more efficient without making schools more inclusive.
Crucially, the White Paper leaves the core architecture of mainstream schooling untouched, structures shaped more by industrial‑age imperatives than by human variation. Inclusion cannot be an add‑on to a system built for sameness. Mainstream schooling remains rooted in uniformity; age‑related expectations, a standardised curriculum, batch‑timed assessment, and metrics calibrated around the median. Within these constraints, difference is treated as deviation. Children who learn, communicate, or regulate differently are expected to “fit in”, with adaptations bolted on after the fact.
What the White Paper misses entirely: special schools are not the problem, they are evidence of what works
A striking omission in the White Paper is any serious recognition of what special schools already achieve for children and families. Where is the acknowledgment of the pupils whose progress accelerates when learning is individually designed? The families who finally feel understood and supported? The expertise, ambition, and innovation special schools bring to the most complex learning? Special schools are not a soft option. They are some of the system’s most ambitious environments, places where communication, sensory needs, therapeutic input, regulation, and identity are foundational, not secondary. Their difference is not lower aspiration, but greater freedom: freedom from age‑norms, national averages, and a one‑size‑fits‑all assessment system.
The White Paper does pledge to expand specialist provision, 60,000 new places for children with SEND, backed by £3.7 billion, alongside a review of special‑school curricula. Yet these moves are framed largely as responses to a capacity and cost crisis, not as an opportunity to learn from special schools’ pedagogy. Too often, special schools are treated as a budget pressure rather than what they truly are, the R&D centres of our education system.
If inclusion is a journey, we must accept that children travel along different routes and that some flourish in communities beyond their nearest mainstream school. This is not a failure of inclusion; it is a recognition of human diversity. In ‘Beautiful Lives’, Stephen Unwin traces the deep roots of ableism in how society has historically treated disabled people: as “other”, as less, as burdens to be managed rather than citizens with full human worth. Many would argue that special schools often provide something mainstream still struggles to guarantee, safety, dignity, identity, and belonging. Families do not choose special schools out of avoidance. They choose them because these are communities of expertise, ambition, and emotional safety. Unless we challenge the ableist assumption that mainstream is the “normal” option and everything else an exception, we will continue to misunderstand why specialist provision remains not only necessary, but transformational. We also miss the opportunity to learn from special schools and develop a more inclusive education system.
High expectations for whom? Ofsted, accountability and the limits of narrow standards
Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, has spoken repeatedly about “high expectations for all”. He is right to reject the false choice between inclusion and excellence. We should be ambitious for every child. However, when “high standards” are defined primarily through narrow, age‑related academic benchmarks, they still fail the very learners inclusion is meant to serve. This exposes a central contradiction in our accountability system. Can mainstream be truly inclusive if the first thing we must say is, “these expectations don’t apply if you are learning disabled”? It is not that expectations should be lowered, instead they must be broadened. If Ofsted’s conception of excellence rests on uniform attainment, disabled learners will remain positioned as exceptions to the rule rather than integral to it.
When inclusion is retrofitted: what Ofsted’s special‑school report card change reveals
A recent development from Ofsted illustrates precisely why retrofitting inclusion onto an unchanged system is so problematic. In April 2026, Ofsted confirmed it would stop comparing special schools to mainstream national averages in its inspection report cards, following widespread concern that such comparisons were misleading and confusing for families. Special schools had been described as “well below average”, or “well above average” for EHCP prevalence, not because of underperformance, but because they were being measured against norms they were never designed to meet.
The correction itself is sensible, but the deeper lesson lies in what made it necessary. The problem was not the data; it was the assumption beneath it that mainstream metrics are the default reference point for educational value. Special schools did not fail the system. The system failed to recognise that its measures were never neutral. This is exactly the risk now facing SEND in mainstream. If we retain narrow accountability frameworks and then attempt to “contextualise” why some children fall outside them, we reproduce the same error. We do not question the framework; we simply annotate the deviation.
That is not inclusion. It is exception‑handling.
Without redefining what progress, achievement, and school quality mean, SEND in mainstream will remain conditional, welcomed only where it does not fundamentally challenge the existing structure.
Who do we mean by “SEND children”? And which SEND counts in mainstream?
When we talk about “SEND children”, who exactly do we mean? SEND is not a homogeneous group; it is a vast constellation of learners with profoundly different experiences, identities, and trajectories. And when we discuss “SEND in mainstream”, do we mean all SEND or SEND up to a point? The White Paper answers this, albeit implicitly, through its tiered support model: universal, targeted, targeted‑plus, and specialist. In practice, inclusion in mainstream is offered conditionally available only while a child’s needs do not fundamentally disrupt the system they are entering. Yet, access is not neutral. It depends entirely on what schools are designed to be. If inclusion requires a label in order to belong, then the problem is not the child; it is the system.
Inclusion is not assimilation
Dr Shelley Moore offers a vital corrective. Inclusion, she argues, is not about pulling children toward a dominant norm, but redesigning the norm itself. Learning must be designed from the edges, not retrofitted once difficulty appears. Mainstream schooling is still organised around a mythical “median child”. Until that changes, inclusion will remain aspirational rather than real.
Ableism is not simply individual bias or sentiment; it is a structural organising principle. It shapes curriculum, assessment, timetables, accountability, and our definitions of success. The outcomes are predictable; children with SEND remain disproportionately excluded and under‑attained, not because of deficit within them, but because of a system that treats variation as a problem to be managed. This is why SEND reform will always be limited within an unchanged mainstream architecture.
Where reform must begin and the opportunity Trusts cannot ignore
Reform must begin not with SEND, but with mainstream. This means redesigning curriculum around flexibility and Universal Design for Learning; assessment around diverse forms of mastery; pedagogy around adaptation and relational practice; professional development around deep expertise in learning difference; environments around sensory and emotional needs; accountability around equity rather than averages; and culture around belonging, dignity, and co‑production.
This is where Multi‑Academy Trusts have a significant role to play.
Trusts that bring together mainstream and special schools within the same local communities are well placed to move beyond binary thinking about provision. A ‘Trust‑as‑Campus’ model rooted in place, shared values and collective responsibility offers the potential for genuine collaboration; expertise flowing both ways, and pupils experiencing belonging to a wider community even when they access learning in different forms. At its best, this approach does not collapse difference or force conformity. It recognises that inclusion is strengthened when systems are designed to accommodate variation from the outset, rather than responding to it as an exception. It creates space for children to learn together, apart, and from one another, by design rather than by workaround.
SEND reform will remain limited if it focuses solely on process and placement. A more inclusive education system requires attention to the structures, assumptions and measures that shape everyday practice in mainstream schools. Addressing those foundations offers a more credible route to partnership between mainstream and specialist provision, and to inclusion that is experienced as real by children and families.
If we want a better SEND system, we need to look carefully at the system it sits within and be prepared to reshape it accordingly.