Case Studies

Explore how AI can be used to create inclusive learning environments and improve outcomes for all learners. This session will examine the key benefits of AI, practical considerations for implementation, and how to confidently introduce it in your setting. Gain insights into how AI can enhance accessibility, personalise learning, and support SEND pupils in meaningful ways.

By the end of this session you should be able to:
•    Recognise the Potential of AI in Supporting SEND Pupils – Delegates will understand how AI can enhance accessibility, personalise learning experiences, and provide targeted support for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
•    Explore AI Tools for Different SEND Needs – Delegates will become familiar with a range of AI-driven tools and how these can support pupils with diverse needs.
•    Develop Strategies for Effective AI Integration – Delegates will learn how to introduce AI tools into their teaching practice, ensuring they complement existing support strategies and are used effectively to benefit SEND pupils.

Inclusion is often framed through visible need, yet many children sit in the “invisible middle” appearing to cope but quietly experiencing anxiety, pressure, and a growing disconnect from school. This session explores how hidden anxiety shapes engagement, including for boys who may be more likely to externalise or mask their struggles, while recognising that many girls also go unseen in different ways.

Drawing on personal and professional experience, James challenges the limitations of zero-tolerance behaviour policies and high-stakes testing and instead focuses on practical, values-driven approaches that place inclusion at the heart of school culture. Attendees will gain tangible strategies to better recognise and respond to less visible needs, creating environments where mental health, neurodivergence, and identity are understood as central to belonging and success, not an add-on.

In this session, Marc Rowland will explore approaches to supporting disadvantaged pupils so they can thrive across all areas of school life. He will draw on insights from his extensive work with schools, trusts, and national partners, as well as reflections from his most recent book, ‘A–Z of Addressing Disadvantage’ (May 2025).

Join Amjad for an insightful look at low effort, high impact ideas on how to truly become an adaptive teacher!

At Inspiring Foundations, inclusion is a living practice interwoven into everything we do.

In this 40 minute session, Sarah, Vicky and Kathryn will explore the many layers that shape their approach to meeting the diverse needs of every child and their family.

They will demonstrate how their pedagogy, curriculum, and environment are intentionally designed to place inclusion at the heart of everyday practice. You’ll see how inclusion is reflected in the smallest details through their daily routines, rich environments, and the relationships they build and how staff act as the golden thread, ensuring that every child is seen, understood, and valued.

The session will highlight:

• How their curriculum design and progression documents reflect children’s individual pathways.
• The role of observations in understanding each child’s story and shaping responsive practice.
• The influence of the 100 Languages of Children in celebrating multiple ways of learning and expression.
• How inclusive environments and routines foster confidence, independence, and empathy.
• The importance of reflective practice in sustaining truly inclusive provision.

Through practical examples, reflective discussion, and real life illustrations from their nurseries, Sarah, Vicky and Kathryn will consider how inclusion looks, feels, and evolves when it is authentically embedded in every layer of practice.

School can be a really difficult place for autistic learners – there’s so much to contend with beyond academic learning. Schools are busy, noisy, unpredictable places, where schedules and expectations change frequently. For autistic learners, with needs relating to attention, sensory arousal and anxiety, these demands make school really challenging.

In this talk, we will present a programme of research on why mainstream school environments give rise to fundamental challenges for autistic learners, and why we need to reframe our understanding of difficulties at school in terms of the environment in order to support inclusion. With evidence from our Triple-A training for education professionals (www.tripleadurham.co.uk ), we will discuss how research on attention, sensory arousal and anxiety can change understanding of these needs and practice of support, leading to positive impacts for school staff and the autistic (and neurodivergent) learners they support.

From behaviour and attendance to feeding, toileting and even brushing teeth, schools are increasingly stepping into areas once considered the responsibility of families. Is the social contract broken and what should the roles of school and parents be?

Whitley Bay High School is the lead school involved in a Laurel Trust-funded initiative focused on use of AI to support severely absent students. This collaborative project brings together schools to enable shared learning and scalable innovation, and looks at research and development into how AI can improve engagement for students with low attendance.

What you will learn:

• Supporting Transition After Periods of Absence: Hear how schools have attempted to use AI study bots to improve attendance and engagement for students returning from severe absence, internal suspension, lesson removal, or part-time timetables. Each school shaped the project to fit its context, with varying levels of success
• The Potential for Scale: Listen to how the schools involved in the research are considering how they will evolve the use of study bots. This includes incorporating them into homework and independent learning policies, revision routines, and personalised learning. The project has enabled schools to consider how AI use could grow far beyond the initial pilot, offering benefits across phases and contexts
• Student and Parent Perspectives: Listen to parent and student views on why AI has – and has not – worked for them. Their insights reveal why some were enthusiastic about interacting with the AI, while others were hesitant, with reasons ranging from digital confidence to clarity of purpose. Understanding these perspectives will be crucial for designing more inclusive, accessible tools moving forward

One trust’s approach to ensuring that there is effective leadership of SEND, today and in the future, in each one of its schools so that pupils with SEND thrive and are well prepared for their future education and work.

The presentation will cover:

• The role of our Trust SENDCOs
• The support provided for school SENCOs including their well-being
• Support for aspiring SENCOs
• Deployment of Teaching Assistants
• Working together to further develop each school’s inclusion culture
• Effective working with other agencies and LAs
• Effective working with parents including handling complaints
• Monitoring the quality of pupil experience
• Before, during and after OFSTED
• Contribution to the wider SEND system

There will be time for focused discussion in response to issues raised in the presentation to enable the sharing of effective practice.

This session will cover:

• Attendance & Behaviour Hub Update
• Why Belonging Matters
• Belonging as a Cultural Driver
• Barriers to Belonging
• Belonging in Action
• Mapping the Belonging Journey
• A Call to Action

How well do we really understand the learners in our settings — and how confidently
can we use that understanding to design the right provision?

In this workshop, participants will explore how moving beyond labels such as SLD, Autism and MLD, and towards a shared language of learner characteristics, enables more precise, ambitious and purposeful SEND provision. Drawing on successful practice, the session focuses on how understanding how a child learns should drive decisions about provision packages in terms of curriculum models, pedagogy, environments, resources and assessment.

The workshop will examine key characteristics related to social, emotional, sensory and executive functioning presentation that schools and settings can meaningfully assess and consider to support both individual planning and the design of coherent specialist provision and curriculum pathways within specialist settings, specialist bases, resourced provisions and enhanced SEND offer models.

The session highlights a common challenge: that identifying who bespoke or specialist provision is for — and why — is often the least well understood aspect of provision design. Through practical examples and reflective discussion, the workshop will explore how clearer understanding of learner characteristics support more accurate and purposeful use of environments, staffing models, curricular approaches and assessment frameworks, reducing mismatch and increasing impact for children and young people with SEND.

Hollie and Corrin’s session will focus on the theory behind and importance of cultivating calm in the classroom. Practical strategies will be provided and discussed.

Delegates can expect to learn:

• How can you progress in this area and what benefit will that have on your well-being.
• Why is it important that children and the adults that work with them are able to regulate their nervous system.
• What strategies can be used to support the children in your class to do this.

This session aims to discuss the core priorities for SENCOs and strategies to further support workload for teachers in this role. Areas of exploration included are: strategic planning and school procedures to support; empowering staff; and support systems. 

In this session, Sally Newton explores what it really means to design an inclusive system that works for children with SEND within mainstream education. Drawing on personal experience, trust-wide strategy and the development of the Skylight Centres, Sally will argue that inclusion fails not through lack of ambition, but through flawed system design.

The session will challenge the growing assumption that creating more inclusion bases automatically leads to better inclusion, warning instead of the risk of embedding new forms of internal exclusion within mainstream schools. Using Skylight as a proof point rather than a solution in itself, Sally will set out a broader model for inclusive SEND provision built around early identification, expertise within schools, curriculum access, partnership with families and purposeful reintegration.

This session is aimed at leaders who want to move beyond place-based solutions and think differently about how systems can be redesigned so that more children can access learning, belong in their communities and succeed in mainstream education.