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Inclusive Mainstream Fund

Every child at Ashdon should be able to take a full part in school life, whatever their needs. The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is new government funding that helps us do that well.

What is the Inclusive Mainstream Fund?

The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is a grant from the Department for Education, introduced in 2026 as part of the government’s wider reforms to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision. It provides £400 million a year to mainstream schools across England over three years.

Its purpose is to help schools become, in the government’s words, inclusive by design. That means building a classroom offer that works for every child, and providing early support to children who need it without waiting for a formal assessment or diagnosis.

The funding is additional to our main school budget and to the money already set aside for pupils with special educational needs. It is not used to pay for things we were already doing.

The seven principles of inclusion

Anything a school funds through this grant must sit under one of seven principles set by the Department for Education:

  1. Ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion

  2. Evidence-based support prioritising early intervention

  3. High-quality adaptive teaching, with a curriculum designed for all learners

  4. Enriching provision beyond the classroom that all children can access

  5. A safe and respectful culture fostering belonging, attendance and participation in learning

  6. Strong partnerships with families and wider services

  7. Inclusive environments, with continuous improvements to accessibility

What this means at Ashdon

Inclusion here is not a separate programme. It is how we work every day, and it runs through our values of Challenge, Care and Celebrate, and through the Ashdon Way — Ready, Respectful, Responsible, Resilient.

We are a school of around 57 children in three mixed-age classes. Our allocation is correspondingly small, so rather than spreading it thinly we are focusing it on a few things we believe will make a real difference. This also reflects the Department’s own advice that schools should do fewer things well in the first year of the fund.

Because we are small, whole-school approaches reach every child. Anything funded here is not an intervention for a handful of pupils — it becomes part of the daily experience of all our children, including those with SEND.

Our inclusion strategy

​Every school in England must publish an inclusion strategy on its website by 31 December 2026. Ours will set out:

  • the barriers to learning and participation we see most commonly across our children

  • the activities we are investing in to remove those barriers, and what they cost

  • the outcomes we expect for our children, and how we will know whether we have achieved them

  • a review of the previous year

It is being written by the Headteacher and the SENCo together, with input from staff, governors, families and children, and will be scrutinised by the governing body before publication. We will publish it on this page in the autumn term, and update it each year.

How we will know it is working

We will judge this funding on outcomes for our children — attendance, attainment and progress, participation, and how far every child feels they belong here. Governors review progress through the year, and each year’s strategy will include an honest account of what worked and what we have changed as a result.

Talking to us

If you would like to discuss your child’s needs, or anything on this page, we would be glad to hear from you.

Related information

  • Our SEND Information Report

  • Our Accessibility Plan

  • Our Pupil Premium Strategy Statement

  • Inclusive mainstream fund: support for school leaders (GOV.UK)

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