Wyvern Logo Inclusion Toolkit

Whole-school inclusion

SEND-friendly school implementation guidance

This page gives the whole-school checklist layer: environment, culture, staff skills, and leadership conditions. It is the bridge between OAP classroom practice and the SENCo/APDR support systems.

OAP implementation SENCo and leadership Vulnerability guidance

Environment

  • Check access routes, doors, stairs, transitions, and crowd flow as part of inclusion planning.
  • Audit lighting, glare/flicker, temperature, noise, and visual clutter in teaching rooms.
  • Provide visual supports (signage, timetables, key prompts) across the site, not just in one classroom.
  • Plan quiet/regulation spaces and predictable return routes to learning.
  • Use flexible approaches to reasonable adjustments (seating, equipment, uniform comfort, alternative routes).

Attitude and culture

  • Treat behaviour as communication and respond with empathy plus clarity.
  • Build a culture where students can access a trusted adult and communicate needs safely.
  • Protect dignity during correction, late arrival, re-entry, and support use.
  • Set peer norms that reduce shame, mockery, and exclusion.
  • Use strengths-based language and repair routines to preserve belonging.

Staff skills and HQIT

  • Train all staff in adaptive teaching, language load, sensory access, and de-escalation basics.
  • Use explicit objectives, success criteria, and multiple response routes.
  • Plan multisensory and modelling-based instruction where it improves access.
  • Use responsive assessment and feedback in the lesson, not only after the lesson.
  • Check that classroom routines are consistent enough to be predictable across adults.

Leadership conditions

  • Use progress measures that include attendance, regulation, participation, and access.
  • Review funding and staffing for impact on inclusion quality, not only intervention quantity.
  • Maintain accessibility planning and review cycles.
  • Use APDR and SENCo systems to coordinate targeted support when OAP is not enough.
  • Treat inclusion as a whole-school performance metric, not a bolt-on service.

How to use this with the site

  • Use this page for school-level audit and implementation planning.
  • Use SEND profiles for barrier patterns by need.
  • Use SEND learning strategies and behaviour strategies for classroom routines and scripts.
  • Use APDR and SENCo pages to coordinate escalation, review, and specialist pathways.

Further reading