Teachers want every learner – not just some – to succeed. But learners don’t all experience the same lesson in the same way. An explanation that is clear to one student may leave another unsure; a routine that feels predictable to most may be difficult for some to navigate; a question intended to make students think hard may inadvertently prevent some from participating at all.

This is why framing inclusive teaching as great teaching matters. It is a direct response to the view that sees inclusion as a separate set of strategies, something additional to everyday teaching, something only used for particular pupils with additional identified needs.

This separation is unhelpful, and we don’t need a new category. Inclusive teaching is great teaching.

What do we mean by inclusive teaching?

In the Great Teaching Toolkit, we describe inclusion with the phrase same ambition, better access. It means maintaining ambitious goals for every learner, while noticing, reducing and removing barriers that can make learning undesirably difficult for reasons in the control of teachers, teaching assistants and leaders.

Let’s be really clear though – this does not mean creating an entirely different lesson for every student. Nor does it mean making work easier, or lowering expectations. It means making thoughtful, evidence-informed decisions in response to the learners in front of us. It means sometimes changing the gradient or the route, but not the destination.

The value of a diagnosis.

A diagnosis may provide valuable information and access to necessary support, but it cannot tell a teacher exactly how to teach an individual learner. Two students with the same identified need may experience different barriers. Equally, two students without a diagnosis may encounter the very same barriers.

So our starting point should never be to ask “What is wrong with this learner?” Rather, we could start by asking “What might be making learning undesirably hard for this learner?”

Signs there may be a barrier to learning

Most teachers will recognise moments such as these:

– A student regularly asks for instructions to be repeated

– A learner can explain an idea verbally but struggles to record it

– Some students rarely contribute, even when they appear to be thinking

– A learner starts confidently but cannot sustain attention through the task

– Students can complete familiar examples but struggle when the context changes

– A scaffold helps a learner begin but gradually starts to limit their independence

These signs do not provide a diagnosis, of course. They are prompts for us to notice more carefully, be a little more curious, and to ask what may be getting in the way.

The four Dimensions of the Model for Great Teaching give us a useful way to interpret what we notice and consider what we might try next.

Dimension 1: Understanding the content

Great teachers understand the content they teach and how it’s learned: the important ideas, how they connect, the prerequisites learners need and the misconceptions they may develop.

This is fundamental to inclusion. A learner may be finding an idea difficult because important prior knowledge is not secure. An explanation may rely on an analogy that they cannot comprehend. A task may contain distracting complexity, or ask students to manage too many new ideas at once.

Understanding the content allows a teacher to revisit a prerequisite, choose a more revealing example, make a connection explicit or represent an idea differently, without changing the ambitious goal.

Dimension 2: Creating a supportive environment

Learning involves uncertainty. Students must be willing to contribute ideas, attempt difficult work, reveal what they do not understand and respond to feedback.

They are less likely to do this if the classroom feels unpredictable or if difficulty is treated as evidence of ‘low ability’ (a term that, were I in charge, would be banned). A supportive environment communicates that mistakes are useful, improvement is possible, expectations are high, and help is available.

Support does not mean protecting learners from challenge. It means creating the conditions in which they can engage with challenge successfully, and ensuring that difficulty does not change what their teacher believes they can achieve.

Dimension 3: Maximising opportunity to learn

Time and attention are finite. When learners cannot access instructions, enter a task, sustain attention or participate in classroom activity, they lose opportunities to learn.

Some barriers are easy to misinterpret. A learner who has not started may not be refusing – they may be unable to identify the first step. A learner who repeatedly asks what to do may not have processed a long sequence of verbal instructions.

Clear routines, accessible instructions, well-managed transitions and deliberately designed opportunities to participate can benefit everyone. For some learners, they are essential.

Dimension 4: Activating hard thinking

Great teaching gets learners thinking hard about the material we want them to learn. But challenge is productive only when students can access and participate in the thinking.

A task may be demanding for the wrong reason – learners might be wrestling with unclear wording, unnecessary information, or deep uncertainty about what they are being asked to do (rather than thinking about the intended content). Equally, our well-intentioned support can become a barrier if it removes the thinking altogether.

Teachers might adapt how an idea they’re teaching is represented, break a complex task into manageable stages, provide a temporary scaffold or offer different routes into a question while preserving its intellectual purpose. The aim is not less thinking. It is better access to the thinking that matters.

Notice. Ask. Support. Reflect.

Inclusive teaching is not a checklist. The same response will not work for every learner, in every lesson. Instead, it requires a disciplined cycle:

– Notice signs that something may be getting in the way of experience, participation or learning

– Ask what might be making learning undesirably difficult

– Support by trying a specific, plausible response while maintaining ambition

– Reflect on the evidence and decide whether to retain, refine or stop that response

This is the work of great teaching: understanding what learners need to learn, creating the conditions in which they can learn it, maximising their opportunity to participate and activating the thinking that learning requires.

Inclusive teaching is not an additional job to do after or alongside great teaching. It is what great teaching looks like when we attend carefully to every learner: the same ambition, better access. Great teaching benefits all, harms none, and is absolutely vital for those whose learning is most vulnerable and fragile.

You can explore this approach in more depth in the brand new Inclusive Education: Same Ambition, Better Access course in the Great Teaching Toolkit.

You can also join the thousands of teachers who have sought feedback from the voices of their students, their colleagues and through self-reflection, to notice where barriers may exist and evaluate whether changes to practice are helping.