Chris Williams: practical inclusion that helps everyone thrive
Inclusion is a culture bringing clarity, consistency and predictability to ordinary lessons and everyday routines
Inclusion has sometimes been talked about as if it belongs to specialists. In reality, it succeeds or fails in ordinary everyday lessons. Current national policy increasingly expects mainstream classrooms to meet a wider range of needs before specialist intervention. This only works when everyday teaching makes the learning process visible and achievable for all pupils, strengthening teaching that prevents failure and reduces the need for intervention later.
This is entirely possible, demonstrated by countless examples of whole-school inclusive success and belonging. At the same time, for some, it can feel inaccessible or unrealistic, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of exclusion by design. The first step is always to think about the experience of children and young people. Step into their shoes. What does a day at school feel like for them? A week, a term, a year? Is it an experience in which they will be able to thrive?
In some classrooms, the pattern is predictable. When learning is unclear, some pupils cope, and some do not. Those who do not can be described as distracted, disengaged, oppositional, or lacking resilience. Over time, the gap widens academically and emotionally.
Children and young people experience a range of challenges each day. ‘Just telling them’ is not the place to start. Strong teachers and leaders understand practices that support understanding, working memory, sequencing, and processing. They are mindful towards and anticipate regulation, emotional, and attention challenges.
Most teachers care deeply. They work under pressure, with limited time, rising complexity of need, and shrinking resources. Yet for many pupils, school can still feel like guesswork. Guessing what to do. Guessing how to start. Guessing what success looks like.
When confusion is repeated, behaviour is not the problem. It is the outcome. Inclusion is a culture bringing clarity, consistency, and predictability to ordinary lessons and everyday routines. If pupils do not succeed, the system, not the child, becomes something to be questioned.
For some children, young people and families, this is not a policy discussion. It is their daily reality. I have seen it directly with a family I have been supporting. A child who had thrived in primary school entered secondary and quickly became overwhelmed by inflexible routines, inconsistent support, and a lack of understanding about her needs. She had been masking successfully for years, but the increased pressure, confusion, and absence of meaningful adaptations pushed her into sustained anxiety and eventually complete school avoidance.
I was closely involved throughout. I attended meetings, listened to the promises made, and watched as those promises were quietly dropped. Strategies agreed with the family were not implemented. Clinical advice was dismissed or undermined rather than meaningfully implemented. Teachers and leaders contradicted themselves. Conversations were denied.
The pressure placed on the family grew while the child’s distress escalated. Eventually, the school’s position was that they couldn’t meet her needs and suggested she look elsewhere. Two years on, she remains in a state of long‑term overwhelm and anxiety and is enrolled in a provision for children unable to attend school, a situation that did not need to happen.
This is not an isolated story. It is a pattern many families recognise. When schools hold tightly to rigid behaviour policies, uniform rules, sensory expectations, and “no excuses” cultures, children with genuine challenges are set up to fail. Small adjustments, empathy, and a focus on the individual child could have changed everything. Instead, the outcome has been heartbreaking and avoidable.
Learning shouldn’t feel this hard
Imagine being handed an IKEA wardrobe to build with no instructions. You might start confidently, but confusion quickly turns into frustration, doubt, and failure. Give the same person clear visual steps and the task becomes manageable. Nothing about their ability has changed. Only the visibility of the process has.
For many pupils, school feels like that first version. They are asked to think, write, explain, and remember without seeing how to do it, sometimes in an environment which makes it harder. We often judge outcomes before securing understanding. When steps are clearly visible, pupils succeed. When they are not, we can often focus on the struggle instead of understanding it.
Small changes that transform classrooms
The most powerful inclusive practices are simple. They are deliberate, repeated, and essential if pupils are to learn rather than simply cope.
Break learning into steps
Numbered stages, short sequences, and clear success points reduce cognitive load and support working memory. Pupils know where to start and what progress looks like.
Model the thinking
Talk through decisions, show examples, and demonstrate the process, model thinking aloud. Pupils follow a path instead of guessing.
Anchor learning visually
Simple sketches, photos, storyboards, or symbols give something concrete to hold on to. This is vital for many pupils to support processing, working memory and sequencing, but it helps everyone.
Build predictable structure
Routine does not limit independence. It enables it. When pupils feel safe, attention is freed for learning rather than coping.
Start from strengths
Confidence grows fastest when learning connects to what a child can already do. Creativity, humour, curiosity, and pattern spotting are powerful starting points.
Notice effort
Success is incremental for many pupils. Recognition of persistence builds motivation more reliably and builds improvement.
What happens when teaching is clear
When classrooms adopt these habits consistently, the shift is tangible:
- Behaviour calms
- Anxiety drops
- Engagement rises
- Attendance improves
- Attainment increases
This isn’t because expectations are lowered, but because barriers are removed. Schools sometimes spend huge amounts of time and energy managing behaviour. Behaviour frequently settles when understanding improves. What looks like defiance is often prolonged uncertainty and anxiety. While we must also recognise the support required to help students facing complex social, emotional, and external factors, the things we do to support pupils facing challenges help them all. The IKEA wardrobe showed us how visible steps make a task manageable. Now imagine facing that same uncertainty every day. Over time, even the most resilient pupil starts to protect themselves from failure.
Children who feel unsuccessful for long enough protect themselves from learning, or rather failure. That protection can look like disruption, avoidance, withdrawal, or refusal. Without change, school becomes somewhere they try to survive, not belong. Needs may be masked, undiagnosed, unknown, or sometimes clearly understood.
Practices that support pupils facing challenges support learning for everyone in the classroom.
Why this is an inclusion issue
We sometimes look for complex solutions to a simple problem. Too many pupils are often expected to learn without being shown how in ways which are accessible.
Systems can reinforce this unintentionally. Under pressure, schools tighten control, increase sanctions, and demand compliance. Compliance does not equal learning. Silence does not guarantee understanding.
There is growing national concern about the rising number of pupils being assessed for additional needs, and it is right to acknowledge that the system is under severe strain. Many children do require specialist support, and that provision must remain protected. There are significant number of pupils are being directed towards assessment not because they cannot learn, but because everyday classroom structures can make learning harder than it needs to be.
When teaching is clear, structured and visible, many of these pupils can succeed without escalation. The issue is not a lack of care or commitment in schools, but limited support and consistency of accepted strategies, in a climate of relentless pressure from all sides, perpetuating a belief that this level of clarity is unrealistic. In reality, it is both achievable and transformative.
None of this removes the importance of clear, structured and consistent behaviour systems. Predictability and safety matter, but behaviour systems cannot compensate for unclear learning experiences. When expectations are visible and teaching is deliberate, behaviour and learning strengthen together.
True inclusion is not about exception or tolerance. It is teaching that works the first time for the widest range of learners, while specialist support remains vital for students with the most complex needs. When this happens, classrooms and routines become calm. Pupils experience success instead of a struggle for survival.
What this looks like in practice
Across many schools, these approaches appear through consistent, structured teaching.
Lessons are broken into manageable steps. Thinking is explained out loud. Key ideas are supported visually. Routines are predictable. Learning builds on what pupils can already do, and effort is noticed early.
You start to see the same shifts again and again:
- Pupils who struggled to write produce longer, clearer work
- Quiet pupils begin contributing without prompting
- Pupils attempt harder tasks instead of avoiding them
- Behaviour incidents reduce because pupils understand what to do
- Independence grows and adults step back more often
- Classrooms run more calmly and consistently
Many of the simplest changes are often overlooked. Schools can spend time creating complex solutions, yet small deliberate adjustments, clear steps, visible thinking, consistent routines, and starting from strengths, often unlock the biggest breakthroughs. Inclusion becomes easier when learning becomes clearer.
Making it work in schools
Schools are working within real constraints. Time is tight. Staffing is stretched. Training can be fragmented. Inclusive teaching does not depend on extra resources or expensive systems, but it does require shared understanding and a significant, protected investment in deliberate, consistent practice. Staff need time to see it, try it, refine it, and make it consistent across classrooms. Without that, even strong ideas stay isolated and pupils experience a different school in every room.
When schools are able to invest in developing everyday teaching, inclusion stops depending on individual teachers and starts becoming a reliable and trusted experience for pupils.
Aiming high for all
Every child deserves to enter a classroom believing success is possible. Inclusive teaching is not about lowering expectations or adding interventions. It is about designing learning so understanding comes before judgement. When we get it right, pupils feel capable, teachers feel trusted and effective and classrooms become places of participation, belonging and success.
Every child can succeed. Every lesson can be clear. Inclusion is a choice. A direction. A commitment to classrooms where no one is left guessing.
Chris Williams is founder of Chatta, an innovative, award-winning whole-class inclusive teaching approach designed to remove barriers to learning. See chattalearning.com