Class sizes are too big to deliver on the government’s ambition of making mainstream schools more inclusive, teachers have warned in a major survey.

The vast majority of teachers (89 per cent) responding to a NEU teaching union poll reported that their class sizes being too large “hampers the ability of their setting to be properly inclusive”.

All schools will be required to publish an inclusion strategy by the end of the year as part of the government’s overhaul of the special educational needs and disabilities system.

However, class sizes in the UK remain some of the biggest among countries within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The NEU’s poll of 10,311 teacher members and 2,996 support staff members in English state schools reveals the major barriers to inclusion.

The survey asked members whether certain issues were barriers to their schools being inclusive and accessible for pupils with SEND.

Shortage of support staff and high workload

The most significant barriers to inclusion identified by teachers were a lack of support staff (cited by 83 per cent of teachers), high workload (74 per cent) and a shortage of support services (69 per cent).

Only 2 per cent of teachers said they had no issue with the number of support staff working in their school.

Class sizes were reported as more of an issue in secondary schools than primaries (cited by 71 per cent compared with 57 per cent).

Some 62 per cent of survey respondents considered class size to be a significant barrier to ensuring inclusion, and another 27 per cent considered it to be a minor barrier.

The government has announced that £1.8 billion will be spent on ensuring that schools can access external support through its “experts at hand” programme.

Lack of SEND training

Access to training on SEND and inclusion was also an issue for respondents to the NEU poll.

The government has pledged £200 million across three years to train all teachers and support staff in schools, early years and further education in SEND and inclusion.

In the NEU’s survey, the number of teachers who identified a lack of SEND training as a significant barrier to inclusion rose according to the level of deprivation in their geographical location.

A quarter of teachers (26 per cent) in areas of the lowest deprivation reported this, rising to a third (33 per cent) in areas with the highest deprivation.

Support staff were more likely than teachers to point to a lack of training as a significant barrier. The Department for Education is yet to confirm specifically how much funding will be given to support staff training.

Increase inclusion fund, NEU says

The Department for Education has said that an average-sized primary school will receive around £14,000 next year through a new fund aimed at making mainstream education more inclusive for pupils with SEND. The average secondary school will receive around £48,000.

Eight in 10 of the NEU members polled suggested that funding for facilities like sensory rooms would have an impact on inclusion.

Commenting on the findings of the survey, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, called for the inclusion funding to be increased.

“All children must have ready access to special needs support from their school without a long bureaucratic process. The inclusion grant will not fund inclusion - it will merely soften the blow of underfunding from the Treasury,” he said.

“Schools need significantly more resources to allow the government’s ambitions, as set out in the White Paper, to be achievable.”