Over the past few months, I've spent a great deal of time speaking with schools, looking at their priorities and thinking about how we can better support young people who sometimes struggle to find their place within the school environment.
One thing that has become increasingly clear to me is that schools already recognise many of the challenges their pupils face. Whether it's difficulties with emotional regulation, low self-esteem, communication, confidence or forming positive relationships, these are often challenges that teachers and pastoral teams are working hard to address every day.
The question isn't always whether the need exists. It's whether schools have the resources, time and opportunities to provide the right support at the right moment.
That's why I've been particularly interested in the government's new Inclusive Mainstream Fund.
For the financial year twenty twenty-six to twenty twenty-seven, the Department for Education has introduced additional funding to help mainstream schools strengthen inclusion, remove barriers to learning and participation, and provide earlier support for pupils with additional needs.
The fund forms part of a wider commitment to creating a more inclusive education system, with four hundred million pounds a year allocated specifically to schools over the three-year spending period.
What interests me most is the emphasis on early intervention.
The guidance recognises that schools need more than universal provision alone. While creating an inclusive environment for every pupil is essential, there will always be young people who benefit from additional, targeted support.
The Department for Education specifically identifies small-group interventions as one way schools can respond to barriers that aren't fully addressed through their existing provision.
I think that's an important recognition.
When we talk about inclusion, it's easy to focus on what can be measured academically. Attainment, attendance and behaviour are all important indicators, and schools quite rightly pay close attention to them.
But behind those measures are young people with their own experiences, emotions, uncertainties and difficulties.
A pupil might be physically present in a classroom but struggle to participate. They might have something valuable to contribute but lack the confidence to express it. They might find it difficult to understand their own emotional responses or build trusting relationships with those around them.
These experiences don't always present themselves as obvious barriers to learning, but they can influence how a young person engages with school and the people within it.
I believe that giving young people opportunities to understand themselves is an important part of helping them participate more confidently in the world around them.
It's also one of the reasons I developed Finding Your Voice.
Finding Your Voice is a structured, twelve-week small-group intervention for secondary school pupils, designed to support emotional awareness, self-understanding, communication, connection and self-belief.
Rather than beginning by asking young people to become more confident or speak up, the intervention creates opportunities for them to explore what they're thinking, recognise how they're feeling and begin to understand what matters to them.
Through guided reflection and supportive group conversation, pupils are encouraged to develop a greater awareness of themselves and how they relate to others.
The programme is designed to complement a school's existing pastoral, SEND and personal development provision, rather than replace it.
It also begins with an initial three-week pilot, followed by a review with the school before deciding whether to continue with the remaining nine weeks. This allows staff to consider the intervention in the context of the pupils they've identified and the support those pupils need.
Having reviewed the Inclusive Mainstream Fund guidance, I can see a clear connection between the fund's emphasis on early, evidence-informed targeted support and the approach we've developed through Finding Your Voice.
The fund provides schools with a way to invest in additional interventions that address identified barriers to learning and participation. Finding Your Voice offers a structured approach to supporting pupils where emotional awareness, communication, self-belief and connection are relevant to those barriers.
Of course, every school has its own community, its own priorities and its own understanding of what its pupils need. That's why I've also been spending time reviewing individual schools' published strategies, looking at the challenges they've identified and considering how the intervention could contribute to their existing work.
The Department for Education is asking schools to publish an inclusion strategy by the end of December twenty twenty-six, setting out the barriers they've identified and how they intend to use their resources to address them.
I see this as an opportunity for schools to think carefully about what inclusion means in practice, not simply as a policy or a statement of intent, but as something young people experience through the support and opportunities available to them.
Because for some pupils, meaningful progress might begin with something that appears quite small.
Recognising an emotion they couldn't previously explain. Feeling comfortable enough to contribute to a conversation. Beginning to understand a reaction rather than simply responding to it. Or discovering that their thoughts and experiences deserve to be heard.
These moments may not immediately appear in attainment data, but they can represent important steps in a young person's development.
And when schools are considering how to strengthen inclusion, I believe those steps deserve attention.
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund creates an opportunity to invest in early support, and I hope it encourages more conversations about the importance of emotional understanding, communication and belonging alongside academic development.
If you're a headteacher, SENCO, pastoral leader or part of a school leadership team currently reviewing your inclusion strategy, I'd welcome the opportunity to share more about Finding Your Voice and how the intervention could support your school's identified priorities.
Scott Muller
Founder, Finding Your Voice
Department for Education reference: Inclusive Mainstream Fund for Schools – Conditions of Grant, twenty twenty-six to twenty twenty-seven.
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