Whether you’re a class teacher, a SENCO, or the person who holds the budget, you’ve probably heard the term Inclusive Mainstream Fund somewhere over the last few weeks.
Every mainstream primary and secondary school in England received one this summer, and it comes with a new duty attached: publishing an inclusion strategy by the end of the year.
This guide explains what the Inclusive Mainstream Fund actually is, what it’s likely to mean for your classroom as well as your school’s budget, and the key date every member of staff should know about before the end of 2026.
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) is a new Department for Education grant worth over £400 million a year, paid directly to mainstream primary and secondary schools in England. It’s designed to help schools become more inclusive by design, so pupils get support for common and predictable needs earlier, without always needing a formal diagnosis or statutory process.
It’s often described as ring-fenced. That’s not a term the Department for Education uses word for word, but it’s a fair summary of how it works in practice: the fund can’t be swallowed up into general running costs, and the conditions attached mean it has to be spent on activity that supports inclusion, according to the Department for Education’s conditions of grant.
The fund runs for three years as part of the government’s wider SEND reform programme, set out in Putting Children and Young People First, with 2026 to 2027 as the first year, as set out in the Department for Education’s funding methodology. It sits alongside your school’s existing core budget and notional SEN funding, rather than replacing either.
It’s easy to read funding announcements like this and assume they only matter to whoever manages the school’s accounts. In practice, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund is meant to show up in classrooms, not just spreadsheets.
The Department for Education has set out seven principles that IMF spending should support, and several of them describe things teachers are already doing or asking for: adaptive teaching strategies that work for a wider range of learners, earlier support for pupils who are starting to struggle, and classrooms that are easier for every pupil to learn in. If your school puts some of this funding towards CPD time, extra teaching assistant support, or changes to a specific classroom or workshop, that’s the fund doing what it’s designed to do.
You don’t need to manage any of the funding yourself to be affected by it. But it’s worth knowing what the seven themes are, because your school’s inclusion strategy, and any changes you notice this year, will likely map back to one of them.
Your school’s exact allocation is worked out using a formula, but the headline figures are straightforward. For the 2026 to 2027 financial year, every school gets:
These figures are then adjusted slightly to reflect regional labour costs, using pupil numbers from the October 2025 census, as set out in the Department for Education’s funding methodology. In practice, this adds up to a lot more than the lump sum alone. Tes reported that the average primary school is set to receive around £14,000 in 2026 to 2027, and the average-sized secondary school around £48,000.
If you want to know your school’s precise figure rather than the national average, your school business manager or SENCO will be able to work it out from your pupil numbers and LPA data.
Rather than a specific shopping list, the fund has to be spent on activity that falls under seven principles of inclusion:
Schools don’t have to spread the money evenly across all seven. The guidance is clear that they should focus on whichever areas will make the biggest difference to their own pupils, based on needs they’ve already identified.
It’s just as important to know what the fund can’t cover. The conditions of grant rule out general school running costs, subsidising activity that was already funded, staff time on anything unrelated to inclusion, and capital works. So while there’s real flexibility here, any bigger purchase still needs to sit clearly under one of the seven themes above, typically inclusive environments, rather than being treated as a building project.
Schools also don’t have to spend it all this year. Unspent funding can be carried forward to future years, as long as it’s used by 31 March 2028 and accounted for in the year it’s actually spent.
Of the seven themes, “inclusive environments” is the one most directly about the space you teach in. The Department for Education’s own best practice guidance for schools says classrooms should be designed to support learning, minimise distraction, and meet a range of sensory and regulatory needs, and that all spaces in school should be accessible enough to support common and predictable needs.
Its suggested examples include creating visual supports such as timetables and communication aids, improving acoustics, lighting and temperature in classrooms and busy corridors, removing visual clutter, and setting up quiet spaces for pupils who need them at lunchtimes or breaktimes.
If you’ve ever wished for a calmer corner for a pupil who needs to self-regulate, seating that suits a fidgety or restless learner, or a workstation that actually works for a wheelchair user in your class, this is the theme that covers it. We’ve put together a separate guide to special needs classroom furniture that maps directly onto this theme, if that’s useful when your school starts planning.
Payments for 2026 to 2027 have already gone out, to local authorities at the end of June, and directly to academy trusts in early July. The next date that matters to everyone in school, not just the budget holders, is 31 December 2026, when every mainstream school must publish an inclusion strategy.
The strategy has to set out the predictable needs within the school’s cohort, how funding is already being spent on inclusion, planned activities and their costs, and how all of this maps to the seven themes above. It’s published on the school website, made available to Ofsted inspectors, and reviewed by governors or trustees. If you’re asked to contribute examples of adaptive teaching, classroom changes, or early intervention work for this document later in the year, this is why.
It might, depending on what your school chooses to prioritise. Some of the fund may go towards things you’ll notice directly, like extra TA time, CPD on adaptive teaching, or changes to a specific classroom or workshop. Other spending, like leadership training or family engagement work, may be less visible in your day to day teaching but still counts towards the same goal.
Not necessarily, but it’s worth knowing the seven themes, since your school’s inclusion strategy will likely draw on examples from everyday teaching, including things you’re probably already doing. If you’re asked for input, that’s usually why.
All mainstream primary, secondary, middle and all-through schools in England receive it, whether maintained or academies, including free schools and city technology colleges, for pupils aged 5 to 16. There are separate funds for 16 to 19 providers and early years settings, and the IMF doesn’t cover special schools.
No. It’s explicitly not a personal budget for individual pupils. It’s meant to strengthen the whole-school “universal offer”, though schools can also use it to develop targeted, evidence-based support for pupils whose needs aren’t met through that universal offer alone.
It can be, provided the purchase clearly supports one of the seven themes, most obviously inclusive environments. The Department for Education’s own guidance names sensory and regulatory needs and classroom accessibility as part of this theme. What the fund can’t cover is capital works, so it’s worth your finance team checking how a larger purchase should be classified for your own accounts.
The Department for Education reviews a sample of published strategies, and inclusion strategies are available to Ofsted inspectors when they evaluate inclusion. Funding can be recovered where it hasn’t been spent in line with the conditions of grant.
If your school is starting to think about what an inclusive classroom or workshop could look like as part of your inclusion strategy, we’re happy to talk it through, no pressure, no obligation. Get in touch with our team.
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