Margaret Mulholland: Our children, our responsibility: new leadership practices for inclusion

‘Our children, our responsibility’ is the introduction to a new report by the University of Oxford on their research findings into school exclusions.

All leaders want to establish effective shared responsibility for children on the margins however, ensuring our intentions match our actions is tricky. This session will explore examples used by primary and secondary settings to ensure all staff are equipped with the knowledge and the confidence needed to provide effective support. Adaptive teaching is a hot focus for many schools yet time and again wider systems mean the reality of that shared knowledge of each child that is key their progress is stuck in other parts of the school with staff who can’t be present in every lesson. How can we change this? This session will help leaders exploit the opportunities afforded by adopting a distributed leadership model for effective inclusion.

About the speaker:

Margaret Mulholland is an inclusion consultant, policy specialist and regular commentator in the education press on leadership and inclusion. Margaret is an Honorary Norham Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, SEND policy lead for the Association of School & College Leaders and sits on several boards including OCR’s Inclusion Board, Garrison Schools Project Board and Whole Education’s SEND Advisory Board. She is External Adviser on SEND for States of Jersey and writes a monthly column for TES. Margaret works with schools and trusts across the UK to support inclusive school improvement.