Experts' report on inclusion in the UK
Is there anything substantive to be learned from people's descriptions of special education practices?
The UK Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion released a report in early July 2025 that described the status of special needs education with regard to inclusion and the recommendations for improving education for individuals with disabilities. The published version of the report, which reads more like advocacy than objective analysis, identified “insights” from a study of people’s accounts of inclusive practices in the UK. Although the themes it championed are are mostly nebulous, I’m glad to say that one of them at least tips a cap toward research: “high quality and evidence informed teaching practice.”
The Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion is a group of seven UK individuals who represent charitable, policy, professional, higher education, local council, and similar organizations that have interests in special education. The group’s purpose is to advise government officials, particularly the UK Department of Education, on improving education outcomes for children and youths with special educational needs and disabilities.
Here is the abstract for the group’s 18-page report
Inclusion in Practice set out to surface and share what is already happening in schools to support inclusive practice for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Over a six-week period in spring 2025, we received 165 submissions through an open call, representing 820 schools through trust submissions, and a further 7,600 schools represented by provider or local authority responses. These submissions do not represent a single view of inclusion. They reflect the priorities and principles that schools and trusts chose to highlight. While each response is shaped by its own context, together they offer a powerful sense of the vision many share for a more inclusive system.
This report sets out five key emerging insights from those submissions. It captures what schools told us they are focusing on, adapting, and learning as they work to strengthen inclusive practice. While it is not a comprehensive picture, it surfaces how schools are navigating complexity and responding with energy and care to support children and young people.
To gather data for its report, in March 2025 the Advisory Group surveyed “schools, colleges, multi-academy trusts, local authorities, and sector organisations to share their experiences and approaches to inclusive education.” As indicated in its summary, the group received 185 responses (and acknowledged ~80 of the organizations that submitted them).1 The survey solicited responses to 10 open-ended questions. They identified similarities and differences in the responses qualitatively. The published report devoted an appendix composed of four paragraphs to the methods of the research.
The report identified five themes (what it referred to as “insights”) across the submissions (quoting here):
Knowing children well, early and often
High quality and evidence informed teaching practice
Coherent and expert targeted support2
Strengthening inclusion through relationships and partnerships
Inclusion as a strategic and shared responsibility
Inclusion in the UK has been the focus of debate (see, e.g., Hornby & Kauffman, 2021). Some advocates use the term to refer to provision of 100% of special education services in general education settings (i.e., “full inclusion”), others use it to mean students with with disabilities generally having access to educational services (i.e., not excluded), and still others seem to use it to refer loosely to both (see Kauffman & Badar, 2020). It seems to me that in this report the term is used mostly in the third sense.
The members of the Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion seem to be holders of administrative positions. Their appointment was reported in January 2025. I saw only one who seemed to be working in the trenches and none whom I recognized as having research experience. I could be simply describing my own uninformed perspective, however, so please correct me if I’ve overlooked something.
More content about this topic is available from a companion Web site, Inclusion in Practice. This site, which is led by the chair of the UK committee, has published case studies promoting inclusion. They are available for free download, as is the full report.
Media coverage
News sources in the UK have covered the report. Here are links.
Richard Adams of The Guardian, 3 July 2025: “Schools in England ‘need complex changes’ to take more pupils with special needs: Review suggests schools establish three tiers of support for pupils depending on their needs”
Eleanor Busby of The Standard 3 July 2025: “Work needed to make schools inclusive for pupils with special needs – adviser: Support for children with Send is inconsistent across schools in England, the chairman of Government’s expert advisory group on inclusion has said.”
Lydia Chandler-Hicks of Schools Week, 23 January 2025: “Revealed: The experts appointed to SEND inclusion panels: The government has appointed a team of experts to evaluate how to make mainstream schools more inclusive.”
As of this post, I haven’t yet seen any discussion of the report by the folks at the UK=centric Special Needs Jungle. The authors for SNJ regularly post concerns about special education needs and disabilities in the UK, often with a critical eye. Readers may want to check the reporting on that site from time to time.
References
Hornby, G., & Kauffman, J. M. (2021). Special and inclusive education: Perspectives, challenges and prospects. Education Sciences, 11(7) [entire issue].
Kauffman, J. M. (2021). The promises and limitations of educational tiers for special and inclusive education. Education Sciences, 11(7), 323-331. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11070323
Kauffman, J. M., & Badar, J. (2020). Definitions and other issues. In J. M. Kauffman (ed.). On educational inclusion: Meanings, history, issues and international perspectives (pp. 1-24). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429344039
Footnote
There is a list of these respondents near the end of the report.
Readers who examine the insights will learn that one of the broad recommendations for this insight is the familiar tiered systems of services (c.f., Kauffman, 2021).