The Inclusive Mainstream Fund: what schools actually need to know for 2026/27

The DfE has published the methodology for the new Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF), and it's the clearest signal yet of where SEND funding and accountability are heading. If you're a SENCO, headteacher, or MAT SEND lead, this is worth ten minutes of your time. Here's the breakdown, without the jargon.

What it is

The IMF is a new £500m+ per year grant, with £400m per year ring-fenced for schools. It's part of the three-year spending review period and sits alongside your existing core funding, including your notional SEN budget. It is not a replacement for that budget. It's additional money, with a specific purpose: helping schools become inclusive by design.

That phrase, "inclusive by design," is doing a lot of work in this document. The intent is to fund early, universal support that doesn't require a diagnosis or a statutory process to access. Fewer children waiting for an EHCP before they get help. More support baked into everyday classroom practice.

How much, and when

Funding is based on the same factors as the schools National Funding Formula:

• A flat lump sum of £3,000 per school
• A per-pupil rate: £16 for primary, £14 for secondary (up to age 16)
• An additional per-pupil rate for pupils with low prior attainment (LPA): £79 primary, £88 secondary
• An area cost adjustment on top, to reflect regional labour costs

Allocations will be confirmed in May, calculated from the October 2025 census and 2025/26 APT data. Payment lands at the end of June for local authorities and early July for academy trusts, as a single payment covering the full 2026/27 financial year.

New and growing schools are treated differently: allocations confirmed in February 2027, payments in March 2027, based on the October 2026 census.

Worth flagging for MATs: the government has said it will "consider opportunities" to roll this into the NFF in future years, at which point academy trusts would get an additional payment covering April to August to bridge the academic-to-financial-year gap. Not this year, but plan for it.

What it can be spent on

The DfE has set out 7 recommended themes:

1. Ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion in planning
2. Evidence-based early intervention
3. High-quality teaching with curriculum designed for all learners
4. Accessible, enriching provision beyond the classroom
5. A safe, respectful culture that supports belonging and attendance
6. Strong partnerships with families and wider services, especially around transitions
7. Inclusive physical and sensory environments

Explicitly stated: this is not a personal budget for individual pupils. It's whole-cohort funding, allocated at school level based on need, not tied to individual children the way an EHCP top-up is.

The accountability piece - this is the bit to act on now

Every school must publish an inclusion strategy by 31 December 2026. This needs to be:

• A public statement on the school website, refreshed annually
• Available to Ofsted inspectors when they're evaluating inclusion
• Scrutinised by governors and trustees
• Built around your cohort's commonly occurring, predictable needs and how you're meeting them through the 7 themes

The DfE will publish a template and further guidance in due course, but the underlying expectation is already clear: schools need to be able to show what their SEND cohort's needs actually are, what they're already doing, and what they're spending this money on to close the gap. That's not a document you want to be assembling from memory in November.

Why this matters beyond the money

Read alongside the wider SEND reform proposals, the direction of travel is unmistakable: less reliance on formal diagnosis and statutory process, more expectation that mainstream schools identify and meet need directly, and a funding landscape that's moving (eventually) toward folding notional SEN and this new fund into a single, more transparent "inclusion" share of core budgets.

For schools and trusts, that means the organisations that already have good visibility of their cohort's needs, their interventions, and their outcomes are going to find this a lot easier than those still working from spreadsheets and filing cabinets. An inclusion strategy that Ofsted, governors, and parents can actually scrutinise needs an evidence base behind it - not just intentions.

This is exactly the gap Senflow is built for: one place to hold your SEND cohort data, interventions, and provision records, so the evidence behind your inclusion strategy is already there rather than assembled from scratch. If you want to talk through what the IMF means for your school or trust's SEND operations, get in touch.

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