Nessy

Inclusion is changing.

With the introduction of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) and the wider 2026 SEND reforms, schools are being encouraged to rethink how support is delivered across mainstream education. The direction of travel is becoming increasingly clear: support should be built into everyday teaching and learning, rather than added only once difficulties become more significant.

Alongside £400 million in annual funding for mainstream schools, the Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that all schools will be required to publish an Inclusion Strategy by December 2026. These strategies are expected to demonstrate how schools identify and meet the needs of their cohort through inclusive, evidence-informed practice.

For school leaders, SENDCos, and MATs, this represents far more than a new reporting requirement. It reflects a wider shift in how inclusion is understood across education - from something delivered separately, to something embedded within the everyday life of the classroom.

The Shift Towards ‘Inclusive by Design’ Practice

For many schools, support for pupils with additional needs has often relied heavily on specialist intervention once barriers to learning have already become significant. However, rising levels of need, growing pressure on specialist services, and long waits for assessment have made this increasingly difficult to sustain.

The government’s new guidance reflects a growing recognition that schools cannot rely on reactive models of support. Instead, the focus is shifting towards earlier intervention, adaptive teaching, and strengthening the universal provision available to all learners.

This is what the DfE describes as provision that is ‘inclusive by design’.

The seven principles of inclusion outlined within the guidance place particular emphasis on early intervention, accessibility, adaptive teaching, staff development, and creating environments where pupils feel a genuine sense of belonging. Together, these principles point towards a more proactive model of support - one where barriers are identified and addressed earlier, before they become more deeply embedded.

Importantly, inclusion is no longer viewed as the responsibility of the SENDco. It increasingly sits at the centre of curriculum design, teaching practice, attendance, wellbeing, accessibility, and wider school culture.

Why Literacy Is Central to Inclusion

Literacy is often one of the first and most significant barriers to learning.

Difficulties with reading, vocabulary, decoding, and language development rarely exist in isolation. They can quickly affect confidence, classroom participation, curriculum access, attendance, and wider wellbeing, particularly when pupils begin to disengage from learning altogether.

This is one reason literacy is becoming increasingly central to conversations around inclusion.

The DfE’s guidance highlights the importance of evidence-based support, adaptive teaching, scaffolding, targeted interventions, and early identification of need. In practice, many of these approaches are closely connected to effective literacy provision.

This growing focus on evidence-informed literacy practice also aligns closely with the DfE’s Reading Framework and wider research around structured literacy and early intervention, including guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation.

Learning to read is not a simple or natural process for every child. Some children require more explicit teaching, more opportunities for practice, and more personalised support to develop the confidence and fluency needed to access the wider curriculum successfully.

Evidence-based, structured literacy approaches are designed to meet children where they are, helping them build skills progressively and at their own pace. Early support in areas such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and spelling can make a significant difference, particularly for children at risk of dyslexia or other literacy difficulties.

As schools begin developing their Inclusion Strategies, many are reviewing how they can strengthen literacy support across both universal and targeted provision. The goal is not simply to ‘close gaps’, but to create learning environments where more pupils can access high-quality teaching from the outset.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Across the sector, many schools are already moving towards more structured and inclusive approaches to literacy support.

This may include personalised learning pathways, teaching assistant-led interventions, adaptive digital tools, structured literacy instruction, small-group support, or approaches that help strengthen home-school learning continuity. Increasingly, schools are also investing in staff confidence and professional development around dyslexia, adaptive teaching, and evidence-informed intervention.

What matters is not necessarily adopting a single programme or approach, but building a sustainable system of support that can respond to a wide range of learner needs within the realities of mainstream education.

This is particularly important as schools prepare to evidence the impact of their inclusion strategies, while also balancing workload pressures, staffing challenges, and increasing demand for support.

The reforms place significant emphasis on creating provision that is both scalable and measurable - support that can be consistently delivered across classrooms and settings, while still responding to individual needs.

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Looking Ahead

The direction of travel across both SEND reform and wider education policy is becoming increasingly clear: inclusion must become part of everyday teaching and learning, not something delivered separately once challenges become more severe.

For schools, the introduction of Inclusion Strategies presents an opportunity to rethink how literacy, accessibility, adaptive teaching, and early intervention work together within a more connected model of support.

This is the thinking behind Nessy’s Universal Literacy Offer.

Grounded in the Science of Reading and developed over more than 25 years, Nessy’s literacy programs are designed to support structured, evidence-informed intervention that can be embedded directly into everyday classroom practice. Through adaptive learning pathways, built-in assessment, independent learner support, and accessible literacy instruction, schools are able to provide earlier and more responsive intervention without relying solely on specialist delivery.

Programs such as Hairy Reading and Nessy Reading & Spelling help schools strengthen both universal and targeted provision, while also empowering teaching assistants, non-specialist staff, and classroom teachers to deliver consistent literacy support.

Importantly, the approach is designed to be scalable across whole-school and MAT-wide settings, helping schools evidence impact within their wider inclusion strategy while supporting more children to become confident, capable readers.

As schools continue planning for 2026 and beyond, many are exploring how structured, adaptive literacy approaches can help remove barriers to learning earlier, strengthen inclusive practice, and support the wider goal of creating classrooms that are genuinely inclusive by design.

Explore Nessy’s Universal Literacy Offer and discover how schools are strengthening inclusive literacy provision through evidence-informed, scalable support.