We’ve talked a lot about Inclusion Bases and the non-statutory guidance that was being developed. Today it has been published, so you will be able to see for yourselves what it’s all about. This guidance is not up for consultation, but it will need to be updated if any legislation is changed.
Bases are part of current Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson’s big idea to stop those children in special schools from costing LAs too much money. These poor children, the DfE narrative goes, have no local community and don’t know “the kid up the road”. Every family of a SEND child knows this to be absolute tosh, but BP Does Not Care. Evidence is not her concern, as you will see.
SNJ was part of the expert advisory group for this guidance, but you won’t find our name on it. You’ll find out why below. We do want to acknowledge the hard work of the people who pulled it together, but it was an impossible task to create robust guidance without similarly robust evidence, and without being underpinned by a legal duty.
A recap on what Inclusion Bases are
An inclusion base is the collective term for mainstream units and resourced provision. But that made the acronym “SERPS” and didn’t give off the right touchy-feely vibe, hence the new name.
Inclusion bases can be run by a mainstream school (support base) or be funded by the local authority (specialist base).
This is what the guidance says:
“Inclusion bases are provisions within mainstream settings for children and young people with additional needs. Typically, they support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), or requiring support for behavioural or pastoral reasons, including those at risk of exclusion or low attendance. Inclusion bases are part of the mainstream setting; they are not registered as educational institutions in their own right. They typically require a dedicated space in the setting, which might be separate classes, specialist facilities, or a base where professionals with particular expertise are located. They deliver specific interventions, teaching, or support, often in place of or in addition to mainstream classes. Children and young people might access the base for a specific period of time, or access might be ongoing. They will normally be designed with a specific cohort or provision offer in mind.”
But, it says, “the SEND department space” or other areas where “ad hoc” support is delivered, is not an Inclusion Base, as bases need to have a formal set-up procedure. So your spare space or corridor cannot be designated as such.
At the moment, children almost always have an EHCP to access a units/resourced provision. This means their needs have been assessed and set out in a statutory document that can be appealed, or acted on if a parent finds it’s not being carried out. Under the new system that is being envisaged, it is very likely that this won’t be the case. The guidance acknowledges this and makes suggestions on how to avoid them becoming a dumping ground for “troublesome” pupils. But of course, this is NON-statutory guidance, so leaders in those schools who prize achievement more than inclusion can just go ahead and ignore it.
Horse before the cart
LAs and schools have not been waiting for guidance to arrive, and have been setting up new bases all year. LAs in particular aren’t waiting around; they’ve been promised a 90% SEND debt write off if they get with the Government’s programme of reform. Considering most of the proposals came from LAs, relieving them of most of their statutory duties and giving them the last word about which school a child should attend, it’s hardly surprising they’re all for it.
The Government thinks equipping mainstream schools with “specialist places” is the answer to existing over-subscribed special schools, and will cut down on spending on generally more expensive independent special provision. In some cases, it might, but most children who end up in independent specialist provision do so only when no other provision is suitable–and often after a Tribunal hearing. A mainstream base is unlikely to be a suitable replacement.
Nevertheless, the aim is to divert children waiting for a special school place to an inclusion base instead, becoming the prime destination for children not thriving in mainstream. Even fewer are likely to get an actual special school place as the Government has cancelled most proposals to build new ones as part of its LA bribe.
We have raised important questions over the past few months, such as who will be staffing these new bases? Given the shortage of specialists and lack of funding for more teaching assistants, this is not a hypothetical question. If you have no one to provide the lessons and support, you don’t have a new specialist provision, you have a sparkly new empty classroom.
Inclusion bases, the guidance says, “typically operate on a continuum”, with two main approaches: one where children get to be in the main school more often and the other, where they’re mainly in the base. The second one is where “inclusion” comes from being on the same site rather than part of the school life.
“Inclusion Bases operate on a continuum, delivering high-quality teaching, bespoke learning environments and flexible access to specialist education or health support, helping children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Bases should be designed with a particular target cohort of children and young people in mind, and the needs and strengths of these children and young people will drive the specification of the base and the operational model. Settings will need to reflect on their own context when establishing a base. However, there are consistent principles of good practice settings need to consider. The following text box provides a summary of good practice under the six principles, drawing on examples from schools with inclusion bases.”
If your child is in, or their school has a base, does this describe it?
Six base principles
The guidance sets out six principles, summarised in the document along with examples from schools for each (which we haven’t included for space, nor have we included comments on these):
- Supporting inclusion in the school or local area
- Pupils are “active members of the mainstream school community, with time in mainstream classes maximised and carefully planned”
- The base “strengthens inclusion across the whole school, e.g, through shared strategies, peer integration, and staff collaboration”
- High-quality curriculum design
- Pupils “access a broad, ambitious curriculum, aligned with mainstream, but adapted to remove barriers rather than reduce expectations”
- Curriculum planning “balances breadth, focused delivery of key learning, appropriate adaptations, and specialist support and interventions”
- Effective data, assessment and outcomes
- High expectations with “progress tracked against clear baselines and regularly reviewed”
- Responsive provision that’s “adjusted based on evidence of what works and robust evaluation.”
- Effective workforce and leadership
- Bases will be staffed by “a skilled, teacher-led team, often including specialist or multi-disciplinary expertise, to deliver high-quality teaching and specialist support”
- The base “acts as a centre of expertise, building capacity across the whole school” (What does this mean? “Building capacity” sounds like moving those troublesome children. If it means building expertise, it should say so…)
- Effective partnership working
- “strong partnerships” with families, staff, and external professionals
- “collective ownership” to avoid “siloed working”
- Inclusive and accessible physical environments
- “inclusive, integrated” environments, “close” to mainstream spaces, “supporting accessibility, smooth transitions, and connection to everyday school life”
- Bases are “flexible, well‑resourced and purposeful”,
It cautions,
“Schools should focus on developing an inclusive and high-quality universal offer across the whole school before setting up an inclusion base. This is a key pre-requisite for developing an effective base offer that promotes inclusion.”
Of course, a really inclusive school would have less need for an inclusion base, and for those that are not, this isn’t statutory, so ignore the above and create your preferred large-scale full-time isolation room.
Where’s the evidence?
The existing evidence base (outside of BP’s imagination) for the efficacy of inclusion bases is very thin. You may remember that last year, we suggested the DfE survey for lived experience of units and RPs. It took up our suggestion, but proceeded to only seek input from families with children in a unit, not those who turned one down. They closed the survey early because once we’d highlighted this, the “wrong kind” of parents responded.
The results, as reported in The Times, are disturbing. More than a third of respondents said their child did not feel part of the wider school community, with many describing their child’s time in a base as “segregation” rather than inclusion. The figures may well have been higher if the survey had been balanced, properly circulated and had not been closed early. You can read about that debacle here.
The survey found less than half of families were happy with their child’s experience of a base. Yet this is apparently sufficient to base a “transformative” policy on, that will impact hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children. This cannot be right.
“Overall, the most common response when parents were asked about their child’s experience of a base was that the experience was entirely positive (41%, Figure 2). A further 17% said that their child’s experience was at least somewhat positive, with 17% entirely negative and 8% somewhat negative. The following findings describe the key drivers which underpin these experiences.”
DfE Bases parent survey
Rather than treating these survey findings as a warning sign, the Government has concluded that inclusion bases are simply not being used in the right way, with non-statutory guidance as the solution. And this is where the problems begin, because we all know what happens to non-statutory guidance: it is widely ignored.
The guidance itself acknowledges the weakness of the evidence base:
“While there are several academic studies that identify strong benefits associated with inclusion bases as a form of provision, their scale and scope are limited. We are funding new research into what works, with several research projects underway, building on the progress made through greater adoption of evidence-based practice in education. This research will inform future updates to this guidance.”
It’s all very well looking at what works, but it’s also important to look at what doesn’t work, and guard against it. When over a third of families say their children are not included in the whole school experience, this should be taken seriously and protections put in place.
The evening before publication, the DfE sent round links for the published research, so we haven’t seen it yet, but you should be able to find it here. It has also published “insights from academic experts on the impact of SEN units and resourced provision, and features of effective practice. Again, we haven’t yet seen it, but you should be able to find it here. It might have been useful for the advisory group developing the guidance to have been able to study this evidence before making final suggestions for the guidance
It should have been too important to rush
Why race ahead with this guidance and policy when the evidence from families identifies a substantial risk to children with SEND? Why not take the time to gather a wider collection of evidence first, rather than manufacturing evidence to justify the policy after it has already been implemented? One of the pieces of evidence that was cited notes that schools with a base for autistic children benefited the non-base, non-autistic children the most, as they became less likely to bully them.
Even if this were a stellar piece of research, it still wouldn’t be enough to base an entire policy shift on. It means the Bases policy, like much of the SEND proposals, seems ideologically and financially motivated.
SNJ has repeatedly raised the risk that IBs will be used to segregate, rather than support, disabled children. The serious concerns that have been raised by families and disabled people’s organisations in this regard have been ignored.
Its non-statutory nature means guidance such as the following might as well not be there: “Access to an inclusion base, even for behavioural or pastoral support, should never be used as a sanction or for removal from the classroom” If this is the kind of school you are, would you even take time over your summer holiday to read it?
The guidance also includes a bizarre disclaimer: “This non-statutory guidance should not be taken as a complete or definitive statement of the law nor as a substitute for the relevant legislation. Legal advice should be sought as appropriate” We may be being picky, but making sure your government guidance is legally compliant might be a good step before you publish it. Just a thought.
Equality Impact Assessment & Equality duties
DfE’s own Equality Impact Assessment for the SEND reforms proposals identifies the risk that “if not well integrated, Inclusion Bases could inadvertently reinforce separation or stigma.” It suggests non-statutory guidance and Ofsted inspections will mitigate this risk, which, in the context of a failing SEND system with weak accountability, seems irrational. In the context of SEND proposals that aim to reduce legal rights and accountability, it seems delusional.
Given that the policy and guidance overwhelmingly affect disabled children, there remains a serious question as to whether the Public Sector Equality Duty has been fulfilled. This duty requires more than procedural acknowledgement. It requires active consideration of how policy decisions eliminate discrimination. On the evidence available, it is difficult to see how that duty has been met.
It is not enough to say, “Schools should not place children in a base without involving their parents or carers in this decision.” Without enforceable safeguards, Inclusion Bases risk becoming a mechanism through which schools can routinely separate disabled children. While these concerns have been acknowledged, they have not been meaningfully addressed in the final guidance.
Why we asked for our name to be removed
SNJ was part of the expert advisory group for this guidance. We have always been sceptical but went in with an open mind that we might be able to positively impact it. We were far from alone in the group in voicing our concerns over the development and non-statutory nature of the guidance. However, ultimately, we asked for our name to be removed because deep concerns about the lack of meaningful safeguards for children with SEND remained. We are particularly worried about the impact on those with intersectional experiences.
For example, the guidance suggests that whoever is running a base must check for trends of children who are disadvantaged or marginalised being put into these spaces more frequently. It should be considered how “the interconnected nature of social categorisations shape children and young people’s and families’ experiences of education”. In plainer English, this means ‘don’t be a bigot, it traumatises children, and it’s unlawful’. However, it doesn’t suggest any actual action, and of course, if your base looks like this, it won’t be by accident.
As we’ve said time and again, this is an inherent danger of putting pupils into a separate space without any kind of detailed assessment of need. If they don’t fit what you want your school to look like or achieve, a handy base is there to help out.
The guidance does recognise this, saying an inclusion base, “even for behavioural or pastoral support, should never be used as a sanction or for removal from the classroom”. But those who would do this won’t have read that far.
What about the SEND Reforms and Consultation?
There is also a wider issue of transparency. The SEND Consultation closed over a month ago. Some of its relevant findings were funnelled to those writing this guidance, but we don’t know what that entailed or how it shaped the final document.
It remains unclear how different strands of policy—particularly Inclusion Bases, Specialist Provision Packages, and proposed changes to EHCP thresholds—fit together. With reduced legal rights and accountability, particularly the removal of the Tribunal’s power to name a placement, protections are likely to be further reduced and risks amplified.
The guidance includes a rather Orwellian statement: “For some children and young people, where other options have been fully explored, long-term access to a base as a dedicated learning area is fully compatible with being included in a mainstream school and community.”
It isn’t compatible, though. Not if the right to individualised assessment and support is removed, not if accountability is weakened, and not if children and families have no choice. Then it is discrimination. And this is where the SEND reforms are leading.
The government press release is here
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Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Inclusion Bases Guidance published. Take it or leave it, it’s non-statutory
- Inclusion bases: Can they help solve the SEND crisis?
- Why “Specialist Provision Packages” are a Trojan horse, reducing the EHCPs rights of children with SEND
- Inclusion bases: a new label, a big ambition, same unanswered questions
- The DfE’s URGENT survey for data on its new obsession: Mainstream SEND units
- Now you see them, now you don’t: The curious case of the vanishing resource bases and SEN units
- A Resourced Provision toolkit to boost mainstream SEND Inclusion
- Successful Additionally-Resourced Schools: A 13-step strategy and a 7-point “purpose”
- SEN Resource Bases and Unit Provision in Secondary—what are they and do they count as inclusion?
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- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals - September 3, 2026
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children - August 28, 2026
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people - August 25, 2026
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