Inclusion Bases: Good Idea on Paper, But Who's Actually Running Them?

Last week the DfE published its long-awaited guidance on inclusion bases - the new term replacing SEN units, resourced provision and pupil support units in mainstream schools. If you’re a SENCO, you’ve probably already had it forwarded to you by someone in SLT with a note attached: “worth a read, thoughts?”

Here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth.

What the guidance actually says

On paper, it’s hard to disagree with much of it. Inclusion bases should offer a range of support, not an all-or-nothing approach, with most children spending the majority of their time in mainstream classes wherever possible. They should never be used as a sanction or as a way of quietly removing a child from a classroom. And crucially, the guidance is clear that day-to-day responsibility for the base should sit with a qualified teacher, with curriculum content and interventions led by a teacher too.

Good principles. The kind of thing most SENCOs would have written themselves, if asked.

Inclusion bases sound great. Here's what's missing.

Here’s the bit that falls apart the moment it lands in an actual primary school: a teacher-led base assumes you have a teacher to spare, and a base to put them in. Neither of those things grows on trees, and the guidance doesn’t come with either attached.

I’m not the only one saying it. Tes’s own analysis found huge regional gaps in what provision already exists, and pointed out that the government wants a base in every mainstream secondary while still lacking basic data on what’s already there. NASUWT general secretary Matt Wrack put it more bluntly, saying the guidance “passes the buck to overstretched schools and teachers,” and called for an audit of whether the school estate can actually deliver what’s being asked. NAHT’s Paul Whiteman made a similar point: inclusion bases “must be supported by the investment needed” — a polite way of saying the money isn’t obviously there yet.

Even the DfE’s own equality impact assessment admits the risk: badly integrated bases could end up reinforcing the exact separation and stigma the reform is meant to remove. That’s not a union talking point - that’s the department marking its own homework.

What this looks like on a Monday morning

If your school doesn’t already have a dedicated space and a teacher with a gap in their timetable, something else has to flex. In practice, that usually means one of three things: a TA ends up holding the base day-to-day in all but name, an existing room (the library, the spare hall corner, the old ICT suite) gets repurposed without much adaptation, or it simply doesn’t happen and the children who’d benefit from it carry on being supported the way they already are - which is often a SENCO and a handful of TAs stretching themselves further to support more children.

None of those are written into the guidance as an option. All three are very likely to be the reality in a lot of schools, at least for the next few years. The guidance itself isn’t statutory, so there’s no real enforcement mechanism if a school’s version falls short of the model described - which means the gap between the document and the delivery is, for now, only as wide as each school’s budget and floor space allow.

It's not just resourcing - it's intent

Even where a school does have the staff and the space, there’s a second question the guidance doesn’t fully answer: what is the base actually for? A MAT or senior leadership team that genuinely values inclusion will use a base the way the guidance intends - as one part of a wider, flexible offer, with the child spending as much time as possible in mainstream lessons. But not every MAT or SLT will see it that way. For some, the appeal of an inclusion base won’t be inclusion at all - it’ll be a tidy place to send a child who’s disrupting the classroom, with little intention of getting them back in.

That risk isn’t hypothetical, and it isn’t just SENCOs raising it. The DfE’s own equality impact assessment admits that, if not well integrated, inclusion bases could end up reinforcing the exact separation they’re meant to reduce. A base run with the right intent and a base used as a holding bay can look identical on a floor plan. The difference is entirely down to the priorities of the people running the school - and that’s not something a piece of non-statutory guidance can mandate its way around.

Many schools haven't got a spare cupboard, let alone a spare room.

Where that leaves SENCOs

If you’re the one being asked to figure out what an inclusion base could look like in your setting, you’re inheriting a genuinely good set of principles with none of the resourcing questions answered - and very little say over whether your school’s version is led by genuine inclusion or by a desire to clear a classroom. That’s a familiar feeling. It’s the same gap that shows up every time a reform lands with the right intentions and no clear way to deliver them - the thinking is sound, but the staffing, the square footage, and the will to do it properly are someone else’s decisions, made quietly, while everything still lands on your desk.

What doesn’t change in the meantime is the day-to-day workload of making sure every child’s support is actually working - base or no base. Teachers still need targets that are realistic to deliver without specialist training, and SENCOs still need a quick way to check that what’s written for a child is actually fit for purpose.

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The SENDT SENCO is a qualified SENCO and SEND practitioner with over 15 years of experience supporting children with SEND in mainstream schools.