By 31 December 2026, mainstream schools receiving the Inclusive Mainstream Fund must publish an inclusion strategy explaining how they identify and remove barriers to learning and participation. It must set out which activities the funding is being invested in, and their budgeted costs. Multi-year strategies must be reviewed annually.

The biggest risk to any inclusion strategy is not the document. It is the pupils who never make it into the conversation. Purple exists to provide that evidence: it brings attendance, behaviour, achievement, suspensions and vulnerability into one view, so a strategy rests on what the data shows rather than on who leaders already know about.

In short

• Start with evidence of need, not the DfE template

• The pupils at greatest risk often sit across several indicators at once, which is what makes them easy to miss

• A strategy is only credible if it connects need to provision to impact

What the strategy has to include

The Department for Education has published an inclusion strategy template. It asks for objectives for whole-school inclusion, the barriers identified, the activities prioritised, the intended outcomes, the budgeted costs, how the work supports the seven principles of inclusion, and how the strategy will be reviewed.

The DfE recommends the published statement stays concise and accessible to pupils, parents and the wider community.

The final statement may be short. The analysis behind it should not be. A meaningful strategy needs a clear line between four things: need, barriers, provision and impact. Without it, the strategy records activity rather than planning change.

The strategy is the output, not the starting point

It is tempting to open the template and work through each section. An evidence-informed strategy cannot start with an empty document, though. It starts with an accurate understanding of the school's pupils.

Before deciding where to invest, leaders need to know which barriers are present, which pupils and cohorts are most affected, whether those barriers are becoming more common, where vulnerability factors overlap, who is already receiving support, and whether that support is working.

The fund is allocated at setting level rather than against individual pupils. Schools are expected to assess the needs of their cohort and review the evidence for the universal and targeted approaches most likely to remove barriers. That requires far more than listing the pupils on a single register.

The pupils who are hardest to see

Schools already hold a great deal of information. Leaders know who receives SEN Support, who has an Education, Health and Care Plan and who is eligible for Pupil Premium. Attendance, behaviour, achievement, suspensions and intervention participation are all recorded.

The difficulty is that this information is usually viewed separately. Attendance sits in one report, behaviour in another, SEND and demographic data somewhere else, and intervention records often in spreadsheets of their own. Considered in isolation, each measure shows an individual concern. It does not show the pupil's whole experience of school.

A pupil might have declining attendance, repeated late marks, a rise in behaviour incidents, lower achievement, SEND, Pupil Premium eligibility and little engagement with the support already offered. No single indicator explains their circumstances. Together they describe a pupil who warrants closer attention.

Vulnerability does not always sit neatly in one category either. Some pupils experience poor attendance, behaviour concerns or declining achievement without a formally identified need. Others sit in several vulnerable groups at once. The questions worth asking include:

• Are pupils with SEND more likely to experience persistent or severe absence?

• Are disadvantaged pupils receiving a disproportionate share of behaviour sanctions?

• Are repeat suspensions concentrated in particular cohorts?

• Which pupils are affected by several vulnerability factors at once?

• Are pupils with the greatest need actually receiving support?

• Are equity gaps widening, narrowing or holding steady?

An isolated concern may call for individual support. A recurring pattern across a year group or cohort points to a barrier that needs a strategic response, and possibly a change to universal provision.

Purple supports this analysis across SEND, SEN Support, EHCP, Pupil Premium, free school meals, children in need, child protection, looked-after children and English as an additional language, examined alongside attendance, behaviour, achievement, suspensions and intervention outcomes. The purpose is not to let software label a child as vulnerable. Data narrows where leaders look. Professional knowledge of the pupil does the rest.

From barriers to activity

Identifying need is only the beginning. The strategy must create a credible link between a barrier and the activity funded to address it. The DfE template recognises that activity may strengthen universal provision or provide targeted support, and that one activity may address several barriers.

For every priority, leaders should be able to answer:

1. What barrier have we identified?

2. Which pupils or cohorts are affected?

3. What evidence supports that conclusion?

4. What activity are we putting in place?

5. Who should benefit from it?

6. What outcome do we expect?

7. How and when will we evaluate its impact?

Rather than stating that attendance is a priority, the strategy can show which pupils are affected, which patterns were identified and what change is expected. Rather than listing an intervention, leaders can explain why it was chosen, who it is meant to reach and how its effectiveness will be judged.

Provision is not the same as impact

The hardest shift in school inclusion is moving from recording activity to understanding change. Schools know an intervention took place. They know how many sessions ran and who attended. None of that shows whether it worked.

Meaningful evaluation asks whether attendance improved during or after the provision, whether behaviour patterns changed, whether suspensions fell, whether achievement moved, whether pupils could access the support consistently, whether different groups experienced different outcomes, and whether any improvement held.

Purple's approach to impact evaluation uses baseline, delivery, follow-up and custom periods, alongside prior and longer-term context, across attendance, behaviour, achievement and suspensions. It moves the conversation from "what did we provide?" to "what changed, for whom, and what next?" That is what turns a strategy into an improvement tool rather than a statement.

Four questions every strategy should answer

1. Who may need support? Pupils already known to the school, and those whose attendance, behaviour, achievement, suspensions or wider indicators suggest emerging need.

2. What barriers are they experiencing? How those barriers appear across different areas of school life, and where several factors affect the same pupil.

3. What support are they receiving? Whether provision is reaching the pupils it was designed for, and whether they are engaging with it.

4. Is it making a difference? A clear approach to monitoring outcomes and using the evidence to improve what comes next.

Together they form a cycle: identify need, understand barriers, track provision, evaluate impact.

Why the evidence work should not wait

The published statement may be concise, but the work behind it should not be rushed. Identifying barriers, exploring cohort patterns, reviewing provision and agreeing how impact will be measured all take time.

Schools starting now can establish a clearer baseline, agree priorities, connect provision to identified need, define meaningful outcomes and give governors a clearer view of inclusion. That also creates a stronger foundation for the annual review.

For multi-academy trusts, the same logic applies across schools: comparing settings consistently, identifying where need is concentrated and examining whether support is making a difference in different contexts.

The objective is not to publish a compliant document by 31 December. It is to build a strategy the school can use all year.

Build your strategy on stronger evidence

The strongest inclusion strategies will not be the ones with the longest list of activities. They will be the ones with the clearest connection between need, provision and impact.

If your school is developing its strategy, book a Purple demo to see how your existing data can become a stronger evidence base for inclusion.

About Purple

Purple helps schools and trusts identify vulnerable and at-risk pupils, understand barriers to learning, track provision and evaluate impact through connected attendance, behaviour, achievement and inclusion analytics. Insights can be explored from whole-school trends down to individual pupil journeys, helping leaders make evidence-informed decisions with confidence.

Purple Education, 81 Sherwin Road, Nottingham NG7 2FB.

Sources and further reading

• Developing an inclusion strategy using the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, Department for Education

• Inclusive Mainstream Fund for schools: conditions of grant 2026 to 2027, Department for Education

• Inclusion strategy template, Department for Education