Since taking office, the Labour government has been clear about its ambitions: more children with SEND should be educated in their local mainstream schools.
Bridget Phillipson has repeated the message that “schools must be inclusive for every child.” Georgia Gould has spoken of creating “a system rooted in inclusion, where every child receives high‑quality support early on and can achieve and thrive in their local school.” The Department for Education has echoed this direction, signalling a shift away from specialist expansion and towards a renewed mainstream‑first model.
These aspirations resonate with many families who want their children welcomed, valued, and supported close to home. But what issues are there when it comes to making it a reality?
One critical question has been raised in a new qualitative study by Gemma McCabe (University College London), based on interviews with SENDCos and senior SEND leaders in the Multi‑Academy Trust where she works: What happens when political ambition for greater inclusion collides with the lived reality of schools already stretched to breaking point?
The role of the SENDCO today
McCabe’s study Inclusion at Any Price? Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of the Contemporary Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Coordinator explores the role of the SENDCo in England today. Interviews revealed five recurring themes:
- leading SEND,
- inclusion,
- role pressure,
- changes to the role, and
- the future of SENDCo work.
We think this small‑scale study offers a valuable window into the context to which the government’s SEND reforms will land, as well as the struggles SEND leaders working in mainstream schools are already facing. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
The researcher does not criticise inclusion, nor do the SENDCos who took part. In fact, as McCabe notes:
“SENDCos expressed strong support for the principles of inclusion.”
Nor does the study criticise the professionals working hard to make inclusion meaningful. Instead, it exposes a widening gulf between policy direction and practical capacity—a gulf that will only widen unless the government confronts the systemic pressures SENDCos describe so vividly.
Increasing Complexity of Needs
It is evident from this study that schools are attempting to address these challenges with limited support, inadequate resources, and insufficient funding.
SENDCos described encountering levels of need they had “never seen” before, with several participants emphasising the increasing number of children with high‑level needs (HLN) entering mainstream settings.
One SENDCo explained that “school is at breaking point… we are living on a knife edge,” while another noted “the number of children with HLN that should be in special schools,” highlighting a sense that mainstream schools are now supporting pupils whose needs mainstream SENDCos believe should be met in specialist provision.
Participants spoke about children whose needs created significant challenges around safety, regulation and staffing—including pupils who were “in danger of hurting [themselves] or others,” or who required multiple adults to keep them safe.
These accounts illustrate the growing complexity of needs being managed in mainstream classrooms and the pressure this places on staff, resources and school environments. This is the context into which the government’s ambitions land. Without a clear plan for staffing, specialist support, or capacity building, the risk is that the policy becomes aspirational rhetoric rather than meaningful reform.
The recent announcements of funding for building accessibility projects and for training won’t touch this. However, Georgia Gould has indicated there will be further funding for whatever is in the White Paper.
Staffing: The Fragile Backbone of Inclusion
If inclusion is to work for all, staff in education are the foundation. Yet the study reveals a SEND workforce under immense strain.
One SENDCo described the emotional and physical toll on support staff: “TAs are phoning in sick… they don’t want to come to work to be punched or bitten.”
Another emphasised how dependent inclusion has become on an increasingly fragile support workforce: “Without them we couldn’t teach, and we couldn’t have SEND children in school.”
Teachers are struggling to balance the demands of whole‑class teaching with the intensity of individual needs. As one participant explained: “Trying to juggle teaching, safeguarding, and very high needs is actually a huge job.”
Without addressing issues facing the education workforce currently, the government risks placing even greater pressure on the very people who can make inclusion possible.
Parental engagement: Partnership under pressure
The research also highlights the complex pressures SENDCos face around parental engagement. Participants described encountering a wide spectrum of parental involvement, with some families feeling they had no choice but to be “pushy” and persistent, while others, often overwhelmed or unsure of the system, appeared less engaged.
In our experience, parents who push hard often do so because they have spent years fighting for assessments, support or recognition. Their assertiveness is shaped by a system that routinely requires families to advocate fiercely just to secure basic provision. On the other end of the spectrum, parents who seem less involved are often dealing with barriers such as language, culture, literacy, work pressures, or a lack of confidence in navigating SEND processes.
SENDCos spoke with empathy about both groups. One explained that they often become “the frontline for parents,” absorbing the emotional weight of families’ experiences, because external services are slow or inconsistent. Another described situations where they felt they were “doing the role from both sides,” supporting the child while also guiding parents through unfamiliar or overwhelming systems. Participants noted that many parents arrive at school already exhausted or “in crisis,” long before they reach the SENDCo’s door. In communities with high deprivation or high proportions of families with English as an additional language, these pressures are often even more pronounced.
What this study makes clear is that parental engagement is not a challenge created by parents, it is a challenge created by a system that leaves families to navigate too much alone. When health, social care, and SEND services are stretched, schools can become the place where the pressures inevitably explode, leaving school leaders to pick up the broken pieces.
When inclusion isn’t equitable
One of the most sensitive findings in the research concerns the impact of rising levels of need on the education of other children in the classroom. SENDCos were clear that inclusion, when properly supported, enriches school communities and benefits all children. But they also described the strain when a child’s needs escalate, but the required staffing, training and specialist input isn’t available to make inclusion work safely and fairly.
Some participants reflected on how stretched resources can create a sense of imbalance in classrooms. One SENDCo noted that, in the current climate, “your gifted and talented children… aren’t going to get a look in.” On the surface, this could be read as suggesting that children with SEND are somehow “taking something away” from others. But this research also makes it clear that this is not what SENDCos believe. What they are describing is a system that forces impossible choices, where teachers are asked to meet profoundly different needs and priorities without the tools, time or support to do so.
Impossible choices mean children are failed
The problem, of course, is not the children. The problem is a model of inclusion that is under‑resourced, under‑planned and fails to recognise the issues that both families and schools are raising. SENDCos repeatedly emphasised that every child deserves a rich, ambitious education. They also stressed that children with the highest levels of need are often the ones most failed if they are placed in mainstream settings without the specialist support that they require.
This is the uncomfortable truth the research exposes: when inclusion is attempted without the right foundations, it risks creating tensions between families who should be natural allies. Parents of children with SEND are made to feel guilty for asking for support. Parents of all other children in the classroom are led to feel their children are losing out. And then there are the parents whose children are both academically gifted AND have significant needs. They can be made to feel that they shouldn’t ask at all because their child isn’t failing at coursework, even though they might be almost suicidal.
School staff are then left trying to hold the emotional and practical fallout. Labour’s ambition for more children to attend their local mainstream school is laudable and welcome, but without greater support and investment, it risks deepening these tensions rather than resolving them.
The Emotional Labour of SEND Leadership
Perhaps the most powerful part of the study is the emotional toll described by SENDCos. They are the people who hold the anxieties of families, the frustrations of staff, the gaps left by external agencies, and the moral weight of decisions that affect children’s lives.
One SENDCo described the constant worry: “There’s always someone I’m worried about… I don’t sleep.”
Another spoke of the guilt that comes from knowing what children need but being unable to provide it: “Coping shouldn’t be the bar we are setting… you feel horrible.”
And yet, despite the strain, SENDCos also spoke of the joy and purpose they find in the role: “For all its negatives, it’s positive… those tiny successes mean so much.”
This deep fulfilment alongside deep emotional burden is a defining feature of SEND leadership today. It is also a serious and important warning sign. Emotional labour is not an infinite resource.
The Policy–Practice Gap: Rhetoric Without Resourcing
The study highlights a multi‑agency landscape characterised by fragmentation and long waits for inconsistent support. SENDCos described being left to hold cases that should have been supported by health or social care, often for months at a time. One participant summarised the situation with painful accuracy:
“Agencies are battling against each other… everybody is drowning.”
Meanwhile, the government continues to emphasise early intervention and joined‑up working; both admirable goals, but currently about as tangible as a unicorn sighting. Without a clear plan for how health, social care and education will actually be aligned and funded, schools will continue to absorb responsibilities that sit far beyond their remit.
Labour’s vision for inclusion is rooted in values many families share: belonging, community, fairness. But the study makes clear that values alone cannot deliver inclusion. Schools need staffing, training, specialist support, therapeutic input and time—none of which can be conjured out of thin air, no matter how many times a minister says “inclusive culture” in an online webinar and no matter how many glossy PR videos are shared.
The government’s statements promise a more inclusive system without offering any clarity about how mainstream schools, already stretched to their limits as McCabe’s study shows, will be supported to deliver it. There is no detailed plan for staffing, no clear investment in specialist workforce capacity, and no explanation of how the system will prevent the very pressures this research lays bare.
In short: the government is potentially asking schools to do more with less, and is presenting it as a bold new vision rather than the logistical impossibility it currently is.
What Happens When Policy Outruns Reality?
“But belief alone cannot compensate for a system that is underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed.”
This study offers a timely warning. School staff and leaders believe in inclusion. Families want inclusion that is meaningful, safe, and properly supported. But belief alone cannot compensate for a system that is underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed.
The government’s direction of travel places even greater emphasis on mainstream schools, yet offers no clear plan for how those schools will be equipped to meet increasing numbers of children who need support—many with increasingly complex needs. Without urgent action, the gap between policy aspiration and lived experience will continue to widen.
One SENDCo’s words linger long after reading the study:
“We are living on a knife-edge.”
Knife‑edge inclusion is not inclusion. It is crisis management. And unless the government confronts the realities illuminated by this small‑scale research study, the system risks tipping from strain into collapse, with children, families and staff caught in the fallout.
Study: Gemma McCabe: Inclusion at Any Price? Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of the Contemporary Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Coordinator
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The problem at the heart of SEND reforms is that since 1994 and the signing of the international agreement at Salamanca, it has been assumed by successive governments, not only here but around the world, that providing for children in mainstream schools would be less expensive than in specialist settings. The opposite, of course, has been proved to be the case, as it requires all mainstream schools (instead of a relatively few special schools) to be appropriately resourced with the equipment, staffing and expertise which the local authority cannot afford to do well. Rather than closing down those specialist provisions that were deemed inadequate and non-inclusive in the past, it would have been far better to invest more in them so that they could genuinely provide high quality alternative settings, specifically targeted to address the learning needs of children with SEND, at the first possible opportunity. Thereby many more children’s needs would have been addressed and enabled to return to mainstream in the long run. In addition, huge sums would have been saved by not having taxi children to school over long distances in pursuit of any school that might still be open to them which has been so detrimental to their overall health and development. Local authorities woud not have had to face endless court battles with parents desparate to secure an appropriate place in a specialist setting or more appropriate private school. Above all, the good will and support of parents would not have been lost and faith in the Government to run a good healthy education system would, as in Finland in the early 2000s, have been maintained.