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Lukas Hudson
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Every mainstream school in England has to publish an inclusion strategy by 31 December 2026, setting out the barriers to learning and participation identified across its cohort, the activity being invested in to alleviate them, the budgeted costs and the intended outcomes.
There is a tempting way to write that document, which is backwards. Start from what the school already does, group it under the seven principles, attach some costs, publish. It takes an afternoon. It also produces a strategy that says nothing about your pupils, and one that will be hard to defend when someone asks how it is embedded in practice.
The DfE’s five-step process starts somewhere harder. Step one is identifying the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation your pupils actually face — and, explicitly, not being led solely by diagnoses or by the current SEN register.
The guidance asks schools to draw on classroom observation, internal assessment, engagement with families and pupils, discussion with external professionals, and data on attendance, behaviour and attainment.
Most schools can assemble half of that by Friday. Attendance data is in the MIS. Behaviour data is in the MIS. You know which pupils are on the SEN register and you know what your persistent absence figure looks like.
The other half is the problem. Attainment data tells you that a pupil is behind. It rarely tells you what they are behind on. A grade 3 in combined science is a summary of a problem, not a description of one — and a strategy built on summaries ends up proposing generic interventions, because generic is all the evidence supports.
This is where inclusion strategies tend to get thin. Not because schools lack data, but because the curriculum half of the picture takes weeks of teacher time to extract, and teachers do not have weeks in the autumn term.
You have already run the assessments. Mocks, end-of-unit tests, trial exams. The marks exist. What usually doesn’t exist is the time to break them down question by question and look at the pattern across a class, a year group or a cohort.
Done properly, that analysis answers a different sort of question:
Those are barriers to learning in the sense the DfE means. They are specific, they are commonly occurring, they sit across the cohort rather than inside a diagnosis, and they point at something you can actually do.
Student Progress in SAM Learning turns assessment marks into colour-coded question-level analysis in minutes, then recommends and sets targeted work for each pupil against the gaps it finds. No manual analysis, no resource creation, no extra marking. It works with any curriculum, any subject, any age group, and it can push data to your MIS or to a trust’s central dashboard.
It was built in collaboration with Leigh Academies Trust — over 30 schools and 20,000 pupils — and won the ERA 2026 award for Collaboration Between School & Supplier.
The part that matters for your strategy is the loop it closes. Assessment, analysis, intervention, and then the same analysis again next cycle, which is step five: evaluating and sustaining. You need measurable outcomes and an ongoing process rather than a one-off judgement. Running the same question-level analysis after the next assessment point gives you exactly that, in a form you can put in a published document.
It won’t write your strategy. It won’t decide your priorities, and it shouldn’t — the guidance is clear that you should implement fewer approaches well, and that means choosing, which is a leadership judgement about your school.
It also won’t work on its own. Our own independent evaluation is blunt about this: the effects were found among pupils who actually used the platform, and there was no consistent effect for those who didn’t. Implementation is the variable. That’s why every school we work with gets a named School Success Manager and CPD as part of the subscription, rather than a login and good luck.
What it will do is give you the half of the evidence base that is genuinely hard to get, in time to use it.
An independent evaluation by FFT Education Datalab, published by the Education Endowment Foundation under its Education Data Service pilot, analysed 297,973 pupils across 252 schools from 2011 to 2018. It found significant positive effects for pupils who completed ten or more hours during Year 11, and the strongest effects for disadvantaged pupils — around two months’ additional progress in the most recent cohort. The evaluation found no consistent effect for pupils who did not use the platform.
See it on your own data. Book a demo or start a fully supported 30-day pilot at samlearning.com/get-in-touch. Bring a set of mock results and we’ll show you what your cohort’s question-level picture looks like.
The post Your inclusion strategy is due in December. Do you know what’s actually blocking your cohort? first appeared on SAM Learning.
There is a tempting way to write that document, which is backwards. Start from what the school already does, group it under the seven principles, attach some costs, publish. It takes an afternoon. It also produces a strategy that says nothing about your pupils, and one that will be hard to defend when someone asks how it is embedded in practice.
The DfE’s five-step process starts somewhere harder. Step one is identifying the commonly occurring barriers to learning and participation your pupils actually face — and, explicitly, not being led solely by diagnoses or by the current SEN register.
Half your evidence is easy to find
The guidance asks schools to draw on classroom observation, internal assessment, engagement with families and pupils, discussion with external professionals, and data on attendance, behaviour and attainment.
Most schools can assemble half of that by Friday. Attendance data is in the MIS. Behaviour data is in the MIS. You know which pupils are on the SEN register and you know what your persistent absence figure looks like.
The other half is the problem. Attainment data tells you that a pupil is behind. It rarely tells you what they are behind on. A grade 3 in combined science is a summary of a problem, not a description of one — and a strategy built on summaries ends up proposing generic interventions, because generic is all the evidence supports.
This is where inclusion strategies tend to get thin. Not because schools lack data, but because the curriculum half of the picture takes weeks of teacher time to extract, and teachers do not have weeks in the autumn term.
What question-level analysis adds
You have already run the assessments. Mocks, end-of-unit tests, trial exams. The marks exist. What usually doesn’t exist is the time to break them down question by question and look at the pattern across a class, a year group or a cohort.
Done properly, that analysis answers a different sort of question:
- Which topics are costing marks across the whole cohort, not just for pupils who are struggling generally?
- Are pupils losing marks on content, or on question type — the extended response, the multi-step calculation, the command word they haven’t decoded?
- Where do your disadvantaged pupils diverge from the rest of the cohort, and on what specifically?
- Is this pattern the same in every class, or is it a teaching-and-curriculum issue in one department?
Those are barriers to learning in the sense the DfE means. They are specific, they are commonly occurring, they sit across the cohort rather than inside a diagnosis, and they point at something you can actually do.
From analysis to action
Student Progress in SAM Learning turns assessment marks into colour-coded question-level analysis in minutes, then recommends and sets targeted work for each pupil against the gaps it finds. No manual analysis, no resource creation, no extra marking. It works with any curriculum, any subject, any age group, and it can push data to your MIS or to a trust’s central dashboard.
It was built in collaboration with Leigh Academies Trust — over 30 schools and 20,000 pupils — and won the ERA 2026 award for Collaboration Between School & Supplier.
The part that matters for your strategy is the loop it closes. Assessment, analysis, intervention, and then the same analysis again next cycle, which is step five: evaluating and sustaining. You need measurable outcomes and an ongoing process rather than a one-off judgement. Running the same question-level analysis after the next assessment point gives you exactly that, in a form you can put in a published document.
What software won’t do
It won’t write your strategy. It won’t decide your priorities, and it shouldn’t — the guidance is clear that you should implement fewer approaches well, and that means choosing, which is a leadership judgement about your school.
It also won’t work on its own. Our own independent evaluation is blunt about this: the effects were found among pupils who actually used the platform, and there was no consistent effect for those who didn’t. Implementation is the variable. That’s why every school we work with gets a named School Success Manager and CPD as part of the subscription, rather than a login and good luck.
What it will do is give you the half of the evidence base that is genuinely hard to get, in time to use it.
The evidence
An independent evaluation by FFT Education Datalab, published by the Education Endowment Foundation under its Education Data Service pilot, analysed 297,973 pupils across 252 schools from 2011 to 2018. It found significant positive effects for pupils who completed ten or more hours during Year 11, and the strongest effects for disadvantaged pupils — around two months’ additional progress in the most recent cohort. The evaluation found no consistent effect for pupils who did not use the platform.
See it on your own data. Book a demo or start a fully supported 30-day pilot at samlearning.com/get-in-touch. Bring a set of mock results and we’ll show you what your cohort’s question-level picture looks like.
The post Your inclusion strategy is due in December. Do you know what’s actually blocking your cohort? first appeared on SAM Learning.
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