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A clear narrative running through the government’s special educational needs and disabilities reforms is that mainstream schools are not inclusive enough.

Aligned with this goal, Ofsted has made inclusion a key area on which it is grading schools in its new report cards.

The government is also set to create new inclusion standards, wants all secondaries to have an inclusion base and is investing £1.8 billion in ensuring that schools have access to outside experts.

These moves suggest policymakers have decided that inclusion is an area where major change is needed.

However, inclusion is one of the areas where schools are performing most strongly, an analysis of nearly 900 Ofsted reports reveals.

Just 11 per cent of schools have been rated as below the “expected standard” on inclusion, making it the second most highly graded of Ofsted’s six main evaluation areas - behind personal development and wellbeing.

In contrast, almost a third of schools (30 per cent) have been found to be below the “expected standard” on achievement and 23 per cent below the “expected standard” on curriculum and teaching.

Of 877 Ofsted reports published this year up to the end of April, 13 have been graded “exceptional” on inclusion, 320 were graded as “strong standard”, 450 were at the “expected standard”, 81 were graded as “needs attention” and 13 as “urgent improvement”.

This suggests a conflict between Ofsted inspection findings and the focus of government reform: so are most schools doing well at inclusion or is major change needed?

Warning over ‘tick-box’ approach

Nicole Dempsey, director of SEND and safeguarding at Dixons Academies Trust, which runs 21 schools in the North of England, believes the reality lies somewhere between the two.

She believes that separating inclusion into its own distinct evaluation area is a mistake.

“The minute you pull inclusion out as something separate to be ticked off, it ceases to be inclusion. Inclusion needs to be interwoven through the education a school provides,” she says, adding that Ofsted’s framing of inclusion “is a little superficial”.

Dempsey highlights that some of the more outcome-based judgements around inclusion actually sit outside of the inclusion judgement - for example, in curriculum and teaching, and achievement.

Having previously thought that Ofsted was getting better at inspecting inclusion and SEND, she now worries that the system has gone “back to a stage where you can tick that inclusion box while still letting down children with SEND”.

Inspection toolkit ‘looks at intent not impact’

The Ofsted inspection toolkits task inspectors with considering how school staff identify and support pupils who are disadvantaged, have SEND or are known to children’s social care.

Ofsted says schools should set high expectations for all pupils and embed a culture in which an early and accurate assessment of needs is prioritised.

Ofsted also expects schools to reduce barriers to pupils’ learning and/or wellbeing and to involve specialists when necessary.

But there are concerns that the inclusion judgement is based more on a school’s intentions than pupils’ experiences.

One leader of a trust, who has had a school inspection under the new framework, is concerned that inclusion is “being viewed through the lens of systems being in place rather than the impact that these systems are having on pupils’ experiences and outcomes”.

“This makes it easier to evidence than other parts of the framework that are very much driven by a focus on impact,” they say.

They question whether inspectors’ training “sufficiently challenges their own mindsets about inclusion”. In some cases, inspectors’ lines of questioning had “reflected a lowering of expectations for pupils experiencing complexity”.

There is a “very big difference between the intention to be inclusive and the reality”, states Lily Wielar, school researcher at the Education Policy Institute. “Considering the way schools are trying to be inclusive is one element, but you also have to look at the outcomes. Is this actually working?”

She adds: “If you look a bit more closely at the framework, they focus a lot on things like leaders, expectations, creating a culture. It is focusing a lot on schools’ commitments and approaches, which very much indicates they are assessing a school’s intention to be inclusive.”

What about exclusion?

So which areas should Ofsted be paying more attention to?

Since ����Vlog first revealed more than two years ago that Ofsted was set to focus on inclusion, there have been concerns that the watchdog’s focus on inclusion pays too little attention to key issues such as admissions and the number of pupils leaving school rolls.

Last year former headteachers’ union leader Geoff Barton warned it would be wrong to judge schools as strong on inclusion if they were happy for some local students “to be sent in a taxi elsewhere”. Barton, who led an IPPR taskforce on inclusion, warned that unless Ofsted took account of admissions, “any discussion of inclusion will be diluted”.

And today’s findings may show that Ofsted is not looking at the right things, says Jonny Uttley, a visiting fellow at the Centre for Young Lives and former trust CEO.

“I hope what Ofsted is finding is true and that it is reflective of a more inclusive system, but we know there are challenges at system level because of the numbers of young people who are Neet [not in education, employment or training], suspensions and the moves to elective home education we see,” he says.

“The problem, as we said from the start, is that they cannot claim to be making a true judgement on inclusion if they are not looking at who didn’t come to the school in the first place, who is leaving the school roll and why.

“Ofsted is stoically refusing to look at admissions, but unless the first question is who is on the roll and who is leaving the roll, then they cannot claim to be making a full assessment about how inclusive a school is.”

What does ‘inclusion’ mean anyway?

Wielar agrees that any assessment of inclusion must also look at exclusion.

“Having a clear definition of what inclusion is would be a strong place to start. It’s not entirely clear sometimes what Ofsted means by inclusion,” she says.

“The term inclusion is an inherently broad and complex concept, encompassing both the processes by which schools include pupils and the processes by which they may exclude pupils. To truly assess inclusion, it is vital that both these processes are assessed in tandem.”

But Wielar also warns that properly assessing this is challenging in the two days Ofsted has to gather evidence.

“Often these are going to be very small and infrequent cases, so you’re not likely to see a large and clear pattern that will allow inspectors to say, ‘Yes, this is a group of pupils that are being excluded.’”

Fears of Ofsted inconsistency

Leaders also voice concerns that the differences in graded judgements between evaluation areas say more about how Ofsted inspects these areas than about the performance of the schools themselves.

James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “Schools work hard to be inclusive, identifying children’s needs swiftly, providing the support needed to meet ambitious expectations, and recognising progress.

“That said, at this stage, school leaders are not confident that the new Ofsted judgements are giving an accurate picture of what is actually going on in schools.

“These variations in grade profiles could, in reality, be telling us more about the nature of the toolkits rather than really reflecting schools’ effectiveness.”

The achievement grade is one example of where there are concerns over grading: Ofsted’s expectation for school test results to be broadly in line with national averages is feared to penalise schools with disadvantaged cohorts.

Because of Ofsted’s “secure fit” approach, which means schools need to hit every grade descriptor to achieve an “expected standard” or strong grade, if they are not broadly in line with the national average, then they can expect to receive a “needs attention” judgement.

Bowen adds: “It would appear that the secure fit approach, and the fact that some toolkits rely on national data, where others do not, is likely skewing things.”

There are also fears that this approach means that, rather than rewarding inclusive schools, the current framework is actually penalising them in other evaluation areas.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, warns that the “blunt instrument of Ofsted inspections” cannot drive system change, and in some cases is “responsible for creating inconsistencies”.

He adds: “For example, schools with higher proportions of pupils with SEND may have comparatively lower attendance rates.

“Not only are they penalised for this by being benchmarked against national averages, as opposed to similar schools, but they will not be credited for any of the good work being done across the whole of the behaviour and attendance evaluation area, as a result of this secure fit grading approach.

“This methodology lacks nuance and really does seem to be at odds with the aim of strengthening inclusion in mainstream education.”

Ofsted has been approached for comment.