Inclusive Environments for Every Child: What the project is, and how schools learn from it together

Inclusive Environments for Every Child: what the project is, and how schools learn from it together

ImpactEd Evaluation | Inclusive Environments for Every Child

There is broad agreement that schools should be inclusive, and far less clarity about what an inclusive environment actually looks like day to day. Around 1.5 million pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are educated in mainstream schools in England, out of a total SEND population of roughly 1.7 million, yet schools rarely have structured evidence to tell them where their provision is working and where it is not.

Inclusive Environments for Every Child is a research project set up to help with that. This blog gives an overview of what the project is, how it works for a participating school, and the part we think matters most for turning data into change: the guided reflection and sharing practice sessions that Challenge Partners runs, where schools learn from one another rather than from a report alone.

The project has been co-developed by ImpactEd Group in partnership with Challenge Partners, with an independent steering group chaired by David Bartram OBE. ImpactEd has led on the research design, onboarding, data collection and reporting. Challenge Partners, an England-wide school improvement partnership built around collaboration and knowledge sharing between schools and trusts, leads on bringing schools together, convening the steering group, and running the sessions where schools reflect on their results and share practice.

“These early findings underline a simple but powerful truth: inclusive environments do not emerge by accident. They are shaped every day by the decisions leaders make about culture, curriculum, relationships and the physical spaces in which children learn. What stands out most in this research is that many of the gaps pupils describe, particularly around the physical environment, clarity of learning, and the experiences of pupils with intersecting disadvantages, are areas within our collective control.

‍By strengthening the conditions that help pupils feel seen, supported and able to thrive, we can ensure that every child, including those with SEND, experiences a school environment that enables them to flourish.”

David Bartram OBE, Chair of the Inclusive Environments for Every Child Steering Group

What Inclusive Environments measured

The project looks at inclusion through three environments rather than treating it as a single thing. The leadership environment covers whole-school inclusion, recognition, everyday systems and pupil voice. The teaching environment covers instructional practice, pupils’ understanding of their own progress, and how teachers respond to individual needs. The physical environment covers practical access, sensory conditions such as noise and lighting, and belonging. Each is broken into three subdomains, and the framework was designed with the steering group drawing on the Primary Colours Model of Leadership and the work of Packer and Bartram on leading SEND provision.

Rather than looking only at pupils with SEND, the project gathers the views of the whole school community: pupils, parents and carers, and teaching staff. Involving all pupils gives a comparison point, so schools can see whether a barrier affects everyone or falls hardest on pupils with SEND, and it reflects a view that inclusive environments are built by, and for, the whole community.

In the pilot, the pupil survey was completed by 6,568 pupils from Year 3 to Year 13 across 13 schools, rated on a 0 to 10 scale. That gives each participating school a detailed, comparable picture of how inclusion is experienced across year groups and pupil characteristics, not just an overall average.

What the first cohort is showing

These are early insights from the first cohort of 13 schools, drawn from pupils' own survey responses, so they point to patterns worth exploring rather than settled conclusions. Of the findings, two stand out in particular:

The physical environment is the consistent weak spot

Across pupil groups, the physical environment scores lower than both the leadership and teaching environments, with sensory conditions such as noise, lighting and temperature the lowest-scoring part of all. These scores stay low even for pupils who are positive about their teaching and leadership experiences. It suggests inclusion is not only about the quality of teaching, but about the everyday conditions pupils are asked to learn in.

Pupils with SEND feel known, but that does not yet translate into learning

Pupils with SEND are more likely than their peers to say their teachers ask what helps them learn and notice when they are struggling. That relational understanding is a real strength. It does not yet carry through to the classroom, though: pupils with SEND score lower on understanding their own progress and on having the tools they need, with access to learning technology the widest gap of all. So, the recognition is there, but turning it into confident, well-resourced learning is the harder step.

“This research offers important insights into the diverse educational environments experienced by young people. Findings from this initial project indicate that many pupils with SEND feel recognised, supported, and understood by their teachers. However, the findings suggest there is still scope to strengthen access to learning opportunities and enhance the inclusivity of physical environments.  

Through our partnership with Challenge Partners, we have brought schools together to explore and interpret these findings, using the evidence to inform meaningful and sustainable improvement. We hope this research serves as a foundation for further collaboration across the sector, enabling schools, practitioners, and researchers to build on these findings and strengthen educational experiences and outcomes for young people with SEND.”

Dr Lauren Bellaera, Director of Research, ImpactEd Group

How it works for a participating school

Inclusive Environments has run this academic year, and the shape of it is deliberately built so that data leads to conversation rather than sitting in a drawer.

Schools join and onboard, then complete a round of data collection in the new year. Each school receives its own report, and is supported to understand and interpret it through a one-to-one meeting with their ImpactEd partnership manager. This enables schools to understand where it is performing, where the gaps are, and which patterns are worth further investigation.

That individual support then help shape a cohort picture which provides a national picture of inclusion.

The guided reflection and sharing practice sessions

Challenge Partners leads a guided reflection and sharing practice session. This is the project’s knowledge sharing session and it puts schools in the same room to compare notes, test interpretations against each other, and share what is actually working.

The design is collaborative rather than top-down. In the session the schools have supportive conversations between professionals, so that a school working to improve a a steep drop in belonging at transition can hear from another that has worked on it, and a school with strong family engagement can explain how it got there. This is the model Challenge Partners works in across its programmes and networks, where improvement comes from challenge and collaboration between peers rather than from a single source of expertise.

All schools gain access to benchmarking. For example, benchmarked scores can tell a school that its physical environment is weaker than the cohort, or that secondary-age girls report feeling less noticed than boys. The guided reflection session is where leaders move from the findings to the harder questions of why it might be happening and what to try to drive improvement. Several of the themes that ran through the pilot, including how hard it can be to reach and involve the families who matter most, surfaced and were worked through in exactly this kind of cross-school conversation.  

“Challenge Partners is an education charity led by practitioners that seeks to reduce educational inequality and improve the life chances of all children.

We were pleased to contribute to this important programme of research and to support the dissemination and critical reflection of its findings as part of an ongoing developmental process. During our knowledge exchange session, we heard from school leaders who are, in many respects, ‘bucking the trend’ by achieving strong outcomes despite challenging circumstances.

The research reinforces the importance of creating inclusive educational environments in which positive relationships are central to learning and development. Nevertheless, high-quality teaching remains the most powerful mechanism available to schools for improving outcomes for pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium and those with SEND.

The findings within the Learning sub-domain provide a clear indication that school leaders must ensure that classroom practice is consistently inclusive, enabling all pupils to participate fully, engage meaningfully, and achieve success.

Importantly, the research moves beyond a deficit-based model of educational disadvantage. Instead, it advocates an approach grounded in ambition, belonging, and flourishing, with the aim of enabling all young people to realise their potential.”

Dame Sue John, Executive Director, Challenge Partners

Why this design matters

The project is built on the view that evidence becomes useful when it is interpreted in context and then discussed with others facing the same questions. The one-to-one interpretation makes the data personal to each school, and the Challenge Partners sessions make it collective, turning 13 separate sets of results into shared, practical knowledge.

For schools and trusts, that is the offer: a rigorous, whole-community picture of how inclusive their environment really is, the support to understand it, and a structured way to learn from peers who are working on the same thing.

These are two of several patterns emerging from the first cohort. The full findings, including how experiences differ for pupils eligible for Pupil Premium and across the school community, are set out in our report.

The Inclusive Environments for Every Child project is a collaboration between ImpactEd Evaluation and Challenge Partners, with an independent steering group chaired by David Bartram OBE. The pilot pupil survey was completed by 6,568 pupils across 13 schools in Spring 2025-26. Authors of the underlying analysis: Beth Williams, Associate Director, Corina Fung, Senior Analyst, and Dr Lauren Bellaera, Director of Research, ImpactEd Group.

If you are interested in delving deeper into this research, get in touch: hello@impactedgroup.uk | www.impactedgroup.uk

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