This week I report on new details published by the DfE on the Inclusion Strategy all schools will have to produce by the end of this calendar year; new DfE screen time guidance for young children and Public First research on parents views on attendance, SEND and behaviour.

New information on the requirement for schools to produce an Inclusion Strategy
On Wednesday the DfE published new details on the Inclusion Strategy that all schools will have to produce by 31 December 2026, with £400 million per year in inclusive mainstream funding to help develop and implement them. The funding will provide the average secondary school with around £48k per year and the average primary school with around £14k per year. This will help schools implement new expectations for inclusion, which involves developing an inclusion strategy and creating inclusion bases for pupils with additional needs.

New DfE screen time guidance
DfE guidance published this week aims to give parents clear, evidence-backed advice on screen time for children under five. It recommends:

• For under-twos, screen time should be avoided except for shared activities.
• For children aged two to five, it should be limited to around one hour a day and avoided at mealtimes and before bed.

Research on parents views on attendance, SEND and behaviour published
The second research report from the Public First run Parent Voice Project, shines a light on parents’ views on various key policy topics including attendance, SEND provision and behaviour. Based on a survey of more than 6,000 parents of children aged four to 19 in England, across both state and private schools key findings included:

• Parents don’t see attendance as a major challenge – attendance might be a key focus of national policy discussions, but polling showed parents don’t generally see it as a pressing issue. Just 8% selected poor attendance rates as one of the top challenges affecting children, far behind issues like underfunding, behaviour, problematic mobile phone and social media use and mental ill health.
• High rates of term-time holidays – 37% of parents reported taking their child out of school at least once in the last year for a holiday or family event. This was most prevalent among parents of young children, with 44% of four-year-olds reporting doing so, compared to 29% of parents of 16 year olds. Rising holiday costs coupled with “relatively modest” fines were among reasons given by parents, while others framed time away from school as educational.
• Missing school normalised in some areas – the report also revealed wide regional variation in views about attendance enforcement. Nearly 60% of parents polled in the north east believed they should be able to take children out of school whenever they wanted, compared to 37% in London.
• Positive views on behaviour – though parents ranked poor behaviour as one of the top school issues affecting children, this did not translate into dissatisfaction with behaviour at their child’s school.
• Parents doubt teachers over SEND – although 50% of parents said it was important for children with SEND to be educated in mainstream schools, only 52% believed teachers were currently well equipped to deal with SEND.
• Less satisfaction among parents of children with SEND – parents of children with SEND but no EHCP had the lowest levels of satisfaction with their child’s education, the report found.
• Regional differences in navigating the SEND process – 54% of parents of children with SEND said they found the assessment process difficult or very difficult. But just 40% of parents of children with SEND in London found the process difficult, compared to 62% of parents in the south east.