📖 Inclusion Is Not JUST a Policy Document

Why true inclusion in schools is lived practice, not paperwork

👋 Welcome to SEMH Education

I post weekly strategies and insights for professionals supporting children with social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) needs.

I’m Kieran, a former teacher and current Education Officer. Each week, I share evidence-informed tools, practical advice, and real-world reflections to help you create safer, more inclusive learning environments.

📌 In this post: How genuine inclusion can reduce suspensions & exclusions

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📄 When Inclusion Gets Stuck on Paper

Every school has an Inclusion Policy. Some have glossy documents packed with legal references, aspirational statements, and carefully chosen wording.

But here’s the reality: inclusion doesn’t live in a folder on the staff drive. It lives in the day-to-day interactions between adults and pupils. It’s in the seating plan you adjust, the language you use when correcting a child, and the flexibility you show when a student’s mental health takes a dip.

A policy is a starting point, but inclusion is proven (or disproved) in the classroom, the corridor, and the playground.

🚨 The Wake-Up Call: When Policy and Practice Don’t Match

Early in my career, I worked in a school where the inclusion policy talked at length about how the school made efforts to include every child in every lesson, regardless of ability or need. A relatively standard statement for a school’s inclusion policy.

In a music lesson (why is it always music?!), a child was ignoring instructions and continually interrupting the teacher with different musical instruments. The Music teacher and I agreed that the child, after many warnings and offers of support, should be removed from the lesson, as it was disrupting the entire class.

On the walk back to the classroom, the child said, “It’s not fair, I never get to do music.” Suddenly, I realised this wasn’t inclusive at all, removing a child from a lesson to take part in a completely different activity is more akin to exclusion…

I radioed the music teacher and asked for the lesson objective. It was about pitch. I asked if we could borrow some drumsticks and go into the playground to find objects that made different sounds. They agreed. Ten minutes later, we went around the playground and recorded different sounds.

The child achieved the learning objective; they just needed a different route to get there. Our inclusion policy was full of phrases like ‘every child in every lesson,’ but what it should have said was ‘every child accessing every objective, in whatever way works.’ That day taught me that inclusion requires imagination, not just good intentions.”

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🛠️ Inclusion in Action: What It Actually Looks Like

So, if inclusion isn’t just a policy document, what is it? Here’s what I’ve learned it looks like in practice:

Flexible Teaching 🎒

It’s not about elaborate, time-consuming adjustments. It’s about the small pivots that remove barriers.

I had a child in my class who was a historic non-engager with reading and writing. Every strategy in the book had been tried, including reading interventions, rewards, and one-to-one time, but nothing stuck. They’d sit through guided reading with their head on the desk, avoidance written all over their body language.

Then, during a casual conversation, they mentioned they liked anime. On a hunch, I bought a few manga books for the classroom library.

The transformation was immediate. This child, who “hated reading”, suddenly refused to go out at playtime because they wanted to keep reading. They devoured volume after volume, their reading age climbing as their engagement soared. But the real breakthrough came during the next writing assessment, when they asked if they could write their piece using inspiration from the Manga they had been reading.

With support from class staff, that child co-wrote a 13-page story. Thirteen pages. From a child who previously wouldn’t write more than a reluctant sentence.

The point? Flexible teaching isn’t extra work; it’s responsive work. I didn’t lower expectations or create a separate curriculum. I just found the door that worked for this child. And once they were through it, they accessed everything we’d been trying to teach them all along. The benefit wasn’t just for them; other children in the class discovered manga too, and suddenly we had more readers than ever.

True inclusion means meeting children where their interests and strengths lie, not insisting they come to us on our terms.

Belonging First 🤝

Inclusion starts with relationships. A child who doesn’t feel safe or valued won’t access learning, no matter how good your differentiation is.

I once worked with a child who had refused to engage in my class from September onwards. Every morning started the same way: a radio call to say they were at the gates, refusing to come in. When they did make it to the classroom, it was head down on the desk, hostile language, and repeated requests to leave. Other staff were exhausted. The child was stuck in a cycle of avoidance and conflict.

Connection had to come first. So I did some detective work. I spoke to their previous teacher about their interests: motorbikes, specifically motorbike hill-climbing videos (genuinely impressive if you’ve never seen them). Their parents mentioned they loved a cup of tea at home.

The next time I got the radio call, I queued up a YouTube video of a motorbike hill climb, made a cup of tea, and had a toasted bagel waiting.

The child walked in. Head on the desk, as usual. I said nothing, just let the video play. Two minutes later, their head lifted. Instead of the usual “I want to leave,” there was silence. They watched the video. Ate the bagel. Drank the tea. Not a word, but no threats either.

When the video finished, the child looked at me and said: “Give me some work then.”

I asked what they’d prefer to do first. “Maths. No help.”

Fast forward a week: their attendance had increased massively. The hostile language had decreased. We were building a genuinely trusting relationship, not just between me and them, but between them and the entire class team.

I want to acknowledge that this was in a specialist setting, so I know this exact approach won’t be replicable in every mainstream classroom. But the principle holds everywhere: behaviour is communication, and inclusion means decoding that communication rather than punishing it.

This child wasn’t refusing to engage because they couldn’t do the work. They were refusing because they didn’t feel safe, seen, or valued. A cup of tea and a motorbike video didn’t solve everything, but it opened the door. And once they felt like they belonged, learning became possible.

Listening to Pupil Voice 🎤

We say we listen to children. But do we actually act on what they tell us?

Children are the experts on their own experience. They know what helps them focus, what makes them feel anxious, and what barriers get in their way. Yet too often, we design support systems for them without ever asking them what actually works. A visual timetable might look great in theory, but if the child finds it overwhelming, we’ve missed the mark. True inclusion means co-creating solutions, not imposing them, and that requires us to ask, listen, and then genuinely act on what we hear.

Consistency Across Staff 🏫

Inclusion falls apart when it depends on which adult a child encounters.

A child with anxiety needs to know that the calm-down strategy they use with their class teacher will also be accepted by the supply teacher, the lunchtime supervisor, and the deputy head. When approaches vary wildly between adults, children feel unsafe; they can’t predict what will happen, and that uncertainty often triggers the very behaviours we’re trying to support.

Worse, inconsistency sends a message: “Your needs only matter with certain people.” In my experience, this is where leadership truly matters, creating systems where every adult knows the strategy and follows through.

Leaders Modelling Inclusion 👩‍🏫

Staff watch what leaders do, not just what they say.

Leaders can talk about high expectations and inclusive values all they want in staff meetings, but your team will take their cues from how they actually behave in the moment.

When a “challenging” child is in crisis in the corridor, do they de-escalate with patience or default to consequences? When a child swears at them, do they respond with curiosity about what’s driving the behaviour, or with punishment? Staff are watching. And when they see leaders embody inclusive values, especially in the difficult moments, it gives everyone else inspiration to do the same.

⚠️ The Pitfall of “Policy-Only” Inclusion

When schools stop at the policy, three risks emerge:

1. Tokenism – Inclusion becomes a box-tick exercise.

2. Inconsistency – Some staff carry the culture, while others default to exclusionary practices.

3. Missed opportunities – Children’s needs are only addressed once they escalate, rather than proactively.

I’ve seen this play out too many times: schools with exemplary policies but rising exclusion rates, families who praise individual teachers but feel let down by “the system,” and children who learn quickly which adults are safe and which aren’t. The outcome is a painful disconnect between what schools say about inclusion and what children and families actually experience, and it’s the children who pay the price.

💡 A Reflective Takeaway

Inclusion is not a policy. It’s a practice.

It shows up in the micro-moments, the daily adjustments, and the culture leaders nurture across the whole school.

It’s in the seating plan you rethink. The language you choose in a heated moment. The five minutes you spend listening to a struggling child. The way you challenge a colleague’s low expectations. The systems you build so inclusion doesn’t depend on individual heroics.

It’s not always comfortable. It’s not always neat. But it’s always worth it.

Because at the end of the day, children don’t remember the policies we wrote. They remember whether they felt seen, safe, and valued. They remember whether we adapted the world to fit them, or demanded they contort themselves to fit our systems. They remember whether we said we believed in inclusion, or whether we actually lived it.

So here’s my challenge to you: What’s one micro-moment where you could practice inclusion differently this week? One conversation you could have with curiosity instead of judgment? One barrier you could remove instead of asking a child to overcome? One system you could shift so that inclusion becomes everyone’s responsibility, not just one person’s heroic effort?

Start small. Start tomorrow. But start with the understanding that inclusion isn’t something we achieve and tick off, it’s something we choose, again and again, in every interaction, every decision, every single day.

That’s how policies become practices. That’s how words become culture. That’s how schools become truly inclusive.

It’s not always comfortable. It’s not always neat. But it’s always worth it.

What’s one micro-moment where you could practice inclusion differently this week?

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