England's Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) gives schools an opportunity to strengthen the inclusive approaches that make a difference before barriers become entrenched. And for schools seeking more consistent adaptive teaching, Adaptify can help teachers turn existing resources into accessible, pupil-tailored versions without preparing everything from scratch.
The important question is not simply whether a school can buy another tool. It is how an investment will remove barriers to learning, support an evidence-informed approach and improve pupils' participation.
Adaptify is more than a piece of software. We work with each school to examine its curriculum, existing teaching resources and priorities for inclusion, then identify together where Adaptify can best support adaptive teaching and inclusive practice. We do not simply provide access to the platform and leave staff to work it out alone: we deliver staff continuing professional development (CPD), help teachers embed Adaptify into their everyday planning, and provide ongoing check-in sessions to review progress, respond to questions and ensure the school is getting the most from the platform. Our aim is to support lasting improvements in inclusive classroom practice, not add another piece of technology to teachers' workloads.
What is the Inclusive Mainstream Fund?
The Department for Education announced the fund in its February 2026 schools white paper, Every child achieving and thriving, alongside the SEND reform consultation, Putting children and young people first. The government's ambition is a mainstream education system that is inclusive by design, with a strong universal offer and earlier, evidence-based targeted support for pupils who need it.
The fund provides more than £500 million annually across mainstream education settings for three years, including £400 million per year for schools. For 2026–27, eligible state-funded mainstream primary schools in England receive a school-level allocation to use alongside their existing budgets, including their notional SEN budget. It is not funding earmarked for individual pupils or dependent on a diagnosis or education, health and care plan (EHCP).
The Department for Education's 2026–27 grant conditions require expenditure to support inclusive practice and to align with its seven principles of inclusion. These include high-quality adaptive teaching, early evidence-based support, inclusive environments, effective leadership, and strong relationships with families.
Why adaptive teaching is central to inclusive mainstream practice
Good inclusive teaching does not mean lowering expectations or giving every child an entirely different lesson. It means identifying what is preventing pupils from accessing the curriculum and making thoughtful adaptations while maintaining ambitious learning goals.
The Education Endowment Foundation's 2026 Guide to Inclusive Teaching describes two complementary elements: universal approaches that benefit all pupils, and adaptations or additional support for children who need more. Scaffolding, carefully chosen resources, explicit vocabulary teaching and responsive assessment all have a place within this approach.
Consider a Year 5 history class studying the same topic. One pupil may need clearer spacing and a preferred font; another may benefit from reduced linguistic complexity and a vocabulary scaffold; another may be ready for more demanding reading. The class can still explore the same historical ideas, discuss the same key concepts and work towards the same curriculum objectives.
This is the principle behind Adaptify: one resource, personalised for every learner.
Five practical ways Adaptify can support inclusive practice in primary schools
1. Make everyday worksheets more accessible
A worksheet that looks straightforward to an adult can present unnecessary barriers: dense paragraphs, cramped spacing, unfamiliar vocabulary or a visual layout that makes it difficult to find where to begin.
With Adaptify's accessibility profiles, teachers can record appropriate reading-level and presentation preferences for pupils, including fonts, line spacing, word and letter spacing, and background colours. These preferences can then be applied when producing learning materials.
For a pupil with dyslexia or another literacy-related difficulty, this may make a resource easier to navigate. Adaptations should reflect the individual pupil's needs and feedback: no particular font or colour works for everyone, and formatting is not a substitute for effective literacy teaching.
2. Keep the curriculum ambitious while adapting reading demand
A Year 4 science lesson on habitats should not become a different lesson simply because some pupils find the reading challenging. Teachers can use Adaptify to adjust reading levels, vocabulary and sentence complexity while retaining the intended subject knowledge and key concepts.
For example, a teacher can adapt a shared text about food chains so that more pupils can access the explanation, then use common discussion questions and check that essential scientific terminology remains accurate. The adaptation opens a route into the learning; it does not remove the learning.
3. Prepare vocabulary and comprehension support earlier
Early support is particularly important when pupils begin to struggle with language-heavy curriculum content. Adaptify includes generators for vocabulary activities, reading comprehensions and cloze passages, which teachers can use to plan scaffolded whole-class work or prepare materials for a targeted group.
A Year 3 teacher, for example, might pre-teach words such as evaporation, condensation and precipitation before a science reading task. This can also be helpful for pupils learning English as an additional language (EAL), although EAL is not itself a special educational need.
Adaptify can help prepare resources for an evidence-informed intervention; it does not replace an evaluated intervention programme or a specialist's assessment and advice.
4. Make adaptations consistent across a whole school
Inclusive provision is harder to sustain when adaptations depend on which teacher has time to remake a resource. Adaptify's Learning Packs allow teachers to generate print-ready, pupil-tailored materials in batches, using profiles and selected lessons.
Its school offering also includes shared pupil profiles, staff onboarding and an administration dashboard with usage reporting. This means leaders can support a consistent approach from class to class and monitor whether staff are adopting the tool. Usage data is useful implementation evidence, but it is not, on its own, proof of improved pupil outcomes.
5. Adapt the resources teachers already rely on
Schools do not need to abandon their existing curriculum materials to work more inclusively. Adaptify can import supported PDF and Word files, connect with Google Drive or OneDrive, or capture a photographed worksheet so that staff can review and adapt its content.
That makes it possible to improve the accessibility of resources already used in reading, writing, history, geography and science, rather than creating an entirely parallel curriculum. Teachers remain responsible for checking the educational accuracy, appropriateness and accessibility of everything they use.
Can primary schools use the Inclusive Mainstream Fund to pay for Adaptify?
Potentially, where a school can justify it as part of a new, evidence-informed plan to strengthen inclusion. The Department for Education's best-practice guidance explicitly includes training in adaptive teaching and the appropriate use or adaptation of technology among examples of activities schools may consider.
However, Adaptify is not a DfE-approved IMF purchase, and the guidance does not give blanket permission to pay for any software subscription. Schools must connect each expense to identified barriers and at least one of the seven principles of inclusion. The grant cannot be used for general running costs, capital works or simply to subsidise pre-existing activity.
A school might, for example, choose to introduce a new whole-school approach to accessible curriculum materials, with staff training, consistent learner profiles, Adaptify resources and planned evaluation. Leaders would need to decide whether the proposed expenditure genuinely supports their strategy, provides value for money and meets the grant conditions.
How could Adaptify feature in a school's inclusion strategy?
Schools must publish an inclusion strategy by 31 December 2026 setting out the barriers they have identified, the activities they are funding, the intended outcomes and budgeted costs. The DfE encourages schools to focus initially on a small number of well-implemented priorities.
Here is an illustrative example, to adapt rather than copy unchanged:
Identified barrier: Some pupils across Key Stage 2 struggle to access reading-heavy curriculum materials independently because of differences in reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge and visual presentation needs.
Planned inclusive activity: Train teachers to use evidence-informed scaffolding and adaptive teaching strategies. Introduce a consistent process for reviewing and adapting curriculum resources, supported by Adaptify's reading-level adjustments, accessibility profiles and whole-class Learning Packs.
Intended outcomes: More pupils begin independent tasks successfully, can engage with age-appropriate curriculum content and demonstrate understanding with appropriate scaffolds.
How we will evaluate: Review pupil work, formative assessment, pupil and staff feedback, samples of adapted resources and classroom observations. Use Adaptify's usage reports to understand implementation, not as a substitute for impact measures.
Budget: Record the actual quoted subscription, training and implementation costs, separating any existing expenditure from genuine additional inclusion activity.
The school should also complete its usual procurement and data protection checks before adopting any platform that processes pupil information.
Investing in inclusion, not just software
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is an opportunity to make inclusive mainstream practice more consistent and sustainable. Technology is most valuable when it gives teachers practical ways to act on what they know about pupils, rather than promising to solve SEND on its own.
Adaptify supports that goal by helping teachers make thoughtful, repeatable adaptations to the resources pupils encounter every day. Combined with effective teaching, professional development, targeted support where needed and a clear school inclusion strategy, it can form part of a stronger universal offer.
Want to explore how Adaptify could fit your school's inclusion priorities? See Adaptify for schools or explore its features, and discuss your intended approach with your SENCO, senior leadership team and school business manager.