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The Inclusive Mainstream Fund brings new funding and responsibilities for mainstream schools. Here’s what you need to know about the funding, inclusion principles and spending rules…
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Teachwire - Classroom expertise and free resources for teachers
What is the Inclusive Mainstream Fund?
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is over £500 million of government funding per year to improve universal and targeted provision.
Of this, £400 million will go to mainstream schools, with the rest allocated to early years and post-16 settings.
The government has promised the fund for three years, making the total around £1.6 billion.
The government has powers to attach rules to school funding and they have set rules for your Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant. They require schools to publish an inclusion strategy to say how they’ll spend the grant (as well as how they spend their notional SEN budget).
Download our Ultimate Inclusive Mainstream Fund Toolkit [Coming Soon]
Our free Inclusive Mainstream Fund toolkit covers:
- Identifying and understanding commonly occurring barriers
- Using evidence to consider inclusive practice
- Developing a strategy and delivering and monitoring it effectively
- Evaluating and sustaining your strategy
- Funding Q&A
The guide also contains a worked example of what a good inclusion strategy looks like.
The author of the guide is Aaron King – an inclusion specialist since 2008. His guidance on inclusion and governance is recommended by the DfE and he wrote the Governors’ Guide to Children in Care, now on its fifth edition.
What are the seven principles of inclusion?
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant is to help schools become inclusive by design. To help you know what that means, the government has set out seven principles of inclusion. If your school excels at the seven principles, it should excel at inclusion:
- Ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion
- Evidence-based support prioritising early intervention
- High-quality adaptive teaching with a curriculum designed for all learners
- Enriching provision beyond the classroom that all children can access
- A safe and respectful culture fostering belonging, attendance, and participation in learning
- Strong partnerships with families and wider services
- Inclusive environments with continuous improvements to accessibility
Inclusive Mainstream Fund FAQs
How much Inclusive Mainstream Fund money will we get for our primary school?
Each primary school gets £3,000. The DfE then adds £16 for every child and £79 for every child with low prior attainment (Reception to Y6).
For schools in local authorities with higher staffing costs (such as central London), the formula then adds up to 25%.
The median grant is about £12,000 per primary school. For context, the average-size primary is about 265 pupils.
The range of grants is from £3,037 (a rural school that is due to close) to £75,000 (a school of 1,600 primary pupils).
How much Inclusive Mainstream Fund money will we get for our secondary school?
Each secondary school gets a lump sum of £3,000. The DfE then adds £14 for all pupils up to the age of 16, and £88 for every pupil with low prior attainment.
Ministers claim that the average secondary will receive £48,000. For context, the average secondary school has about 1,060 pupils.
The largest grant is £140,000: Robert Clack School is an all-through school with 3,200 pupils. The smallest grants are around £10,000 (e.g. a Cumbrian school with 100 pupils).
How much Inclusive Mainstream Fund money will we get in our middle or all-through school?
You will receive the £3,000 lump sum. Pupils will then be funded at the appropriate rate according to whether they are primary or secondary age.
Does an inclusion strategy need to include nursery pupils?
No. The Inclusion Strategy outlines the work you do for pupils from Reception onwards.
There is a separate Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant for children under five, but this comes via local councils and the rules do not require schools to account for it in their inclusion strategy.
Do special schools or PRUs need to publish an inclusion strategy?
No. The requirement to publish an inclusion strategy is only for mainstream schools.
Do post-16 providers have to publish an inclusion strategy?
Post-16 Inclusive Mainstream Fund grants have different rules:
We are a new/growing school. How does that affect our Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant?
The DfE has extra advice for how your funding is calculated.
Is there anything else we cannot spend our Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant on?
The DfE has listed five things that your Inclusive Mainstream Fund cannot be spent on:
- general school running costs or operational expenditure
- subsidising spending on pre-existing activity
- time for staff to undertake activities unrelated to inclusion
- capital works
- anything not aligned with at least one of the seven principles of inclusion
Can we spend our Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant on setting up a new inclusion base?
No and yes. New walls and doors are capital works (and must not be funded from the grant), but any equipment within your inclusion base can be funded from the grant.
Can we carry forward our Inclusive Mainstream Fund grant into next financial year?
The grant conditions say that you can do so this year. You are not required to spend all of your Inclusive Mainstream Fund allocation that you receive in the financial year 2026 to 2027. It can be carried forward to future financial years but must be used by 31 March 2028.
