Using your Inclusive Mainstream Fund
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What is the Inclusive Mainstream Fund?
£1.6 billion will be paid directly to schools over three years to be used on resources and training that enable more inclusive practices and targeted evidence-based support for pupils.
What is the goal?
The goal of the fund is to create inclusive whole-school environments that allow all children to thrive. The DfE aims to achieve this through high-quality adaptive teaching and proactive interventions to remove barriers to learning before the need escalates.
What can I use it for?
Your school should now have received the first Inclusive Mainstream Fund payment. This money has been allocated by the Department for Education for embedding inclusion across the mainstream school system, split into two key focus areas:
- Improving the inclusivity of your universal practice and
- Developing more targeted group-based interventions.
We can help you meaningfully respond to both of these components, ready for your inclusion strategy to be published by 31 December 2026 which is a requirement for schools receiving the fund.
Get started with the Inclusive Mainstream Fund
Improve the inclusivity of your universal offer
The Department for Education recommend starting with your universal offer, before moving onto your targeted interventions once you have established a solid whole-school culture of inclusion.
If the IMF is the engine of our new inclusive classrooms, the Boxall Profile® Online is the GPS.
The Boxall Profile® Online is a whole-school assessment and planning platform, used by thousands of schools to identify need early and target support effectively. This is a foundational step to building a strong universal offer in your school.
Often, the barriers to learning are invisible. The Boxall Profile® Online removes the guesswork by providing a robust assessment of social and emotional development needs across cohorts of pupils. This is the evidence the Department for Education is looking for in your Inclusion Strategy to justify your IMF spend.
Next steps for your universal offer
Explore 3 common pupil profiles and unlock strategies to strengthen your universal offer
Build your universal offer with the Boxall Profile® Online:
Continue your inclusion journey with the Inclusive Mainstream Fund
Develop targeted evidence-based support
Nurture groups are the original inclusion base.
The Department for Education advises that "for children and young people whose needs cannot be met through the universal offer alone, targeted support should be provided to enable them to achieve and thrive."
Now that you've established your inclusive universal offer, it's time to allocate investment towards targeted support. The DfE advises using your funding to create or enhance your inclusion bases to support children whose needs cannot be met with your universal provision.
Create targeted support with nurture group training:
You must publish by 31 December 2026
Your inclusion strategy led by nurture
Nurture is the foundation of inclusion.
Your inclusion strategy "must include detail of activity invested in to alleviate barriers to learning and participation and budgeted costs."
The guidance set out in the Inclusive Mainstream Fund and Inclusion bases in schools aligns closely with the nurture principles. We believe that if inclusion is the destination, nurture is how we get there. If you've already invested in your nurture journey, this can form the basis of your inclusion strategy. Your inclusion strategy must answer: What are you doing to remove predictable barriers to learning?
By pairing the Boxall Profile® Online with nurture training, this is your answer:
- Identification: "We use the Boxall Profile® to identify and monitor SEMH needs before they escalate."
- Implementation: "Our staff are trained in Nurture Principles to provide high-quality adaptive teaching."
- Impact: "Our data shows a measurable increase in pupil engagement and a decrease in dysregulated incidents."
Please note: The IMF cannot be allocated for pre-existing activity, but you can use it to enhance your nurture provisions: The DfE recommends "the development or expansion of high-quality inclusion bases." If you've already established your inclusion base, this could look like training more staff, improving your physical nurture spaces, or renewing and upgrading your Boxall Profile® subscription.
Next steps for your inclusion strategy
FAQs on the Inclusive Mainstream Fund