Academy trusts will run schools that are inclusive because of their moral purpose - not because the state tells them to, a sector leader has said.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), said the sector would build more inclusive schools “where all our children feel that they belong”.
This would happen not because the state is looking at how to measure inclusion, but because it is “core to our mission and moral purpose”.
Her speech at the CST conference in Birmingham followed announcements by education secretary Bridget Phillipson at the event yesterday on how the government aimed to ensure mainstream schools were more inclusive for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Worries over pupils’ sense of belonging
Ms Cruddas said there were worrying trends around young people’s sense of belonging in schools.
She highlighted a 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (usually known as Pisa) report which found that fewer young people in England felt they belonged at school than their peers across countries and territories in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
She also pointed to the Children’s Society 2023 The Good Childhood Report, which found almost a third of children surveyed reported being unhappy with at least one aspect of their lives.
Ms Cruddas said that a CST survey published at the start of this academic year showed that providing inclusive education and tackling attendance problems are the top priorities for members.
Of trust leaders who responded to the CST annual survey, 73 per cent said inclusion and SEND provision is the most important thing to them in 2024-25.
Ms Cruddas added: “Schooling in England does not speak to some of our communities.”
She asked CST members how they could engage and rebuild trust with some of the communities they serve.
Ofsted is poised to include a criterion looking at inclusion in its new inspection framework. Tes revealed earlier this year that inclusion was to become a focus of school inspections.
Trusts ‘at the vanguard’ of opportunities for all
Ms Cruddas paid tribute to the trust sector for being “already at the vanguard” of the government’s mission to provide opportunity for all children.
She said that 82 per cent of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are educated in academy trust secondary schools.
She added that with “collective effort and deeper partnership” government and schools could “go faster and further” in “transforming” children’s opportunities, but that trusts “must also continue to innovate and improve”.
Education policy is “fiercely contested” and the sector must free itself of the “short-termism of political cycles”, Ms Cruddas said.
“We must think longer term in building public institutions,” she said, while reform must lead to an accountability system that is “both coherent and intelligent”.
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