A few years ago, Beth Tanton and Joshua Garrett-Smith from the Compass Eko Trust started exploring a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it: what does a genuinely rich curriculum look like for children with the most complex needs?
Compass Eko is made up of twenty-eight schools across London, Essex, Suffolk, and Brighton and Hove, spanning infant, junior and primary schools alongside specialist provision, including all-through special and SEMH schools.
At the centre of the trust's ambition is a commitment to genuine inclusion as the anchor for all teaching.
Crucially, that breadth allows the expertise developed in their special schools, such as Willow Dene, to work directly with mainstream classrooms, sharing knowledge rather than keeping it in separate silos.
The pupils at the centre of this work almost always have Education, Health and Care Plans, with many working well below age-related expectations. Their individual timetables were carefully constructed, packed with specialist support, speech therapy and targeted interventions alongside individualised English and maths.
Each component had good intentions behind it. Yet when leaders stepped back to look at the week as a whole, the reality was uncomfortable. In trying to meet every specific need, these pupils had been handed a drastically reduced curriculum. The question was never whether they needed specialist support. They clearly did. The question was whether that support had to come at the expense of encountering the wider world.
The answer began to take shape when Beth, an experienced SENCO, started working alongside Josh and colleagues in one of the trust’s special schools. What she saw there challenged mainstream assumptions. Learning was not organised around generic sensory exercises; it was anchored in subjects. Science, history, geography, art and music provided the context for communication, shared attention and curiosity. For a pupil at an early developmental stage, noticing a sound or tracking an object can feel dry when practiced in isolation. Situated inside a science lesson exploring materials, or a music lesson exploring rhythm, that same goal becomes part of a rich human experience.
The subject is not an extra hurdle. It is the vehicle through which development happens.
The real challenge was making this workable across the trust’s mainstream schools, where teachers work with thirty children, juggle crowded timetables and limited specialist time. Transplanting a special school model wholesale was never going to work, nor was simply diluting standard lessons. Instead, the trust paired special school practitioners with mainstream subject leaders and SENCOs to build something practical. They mapped the National Curriculum from Years 1 to 6 across three developmental profiles: early exploration, developing concepts through repeated experiences, and applying ideas with growing independence.
They began with science, keeping the rollout deliberately bounded. Mainstream teachers came together for a single planning day with a clear brief: leave the room with a workable subject plan for one pupil, or a small group, for the coming term. They looked at topics like materials, sound or living things, adapting the core concepts through touch, temperature, scent and movement.
That bounded task was important because when teachers feel hesitant about teaching pupils with complex needs, it is rarely due to a lack of care. They are simply worried about getting it wrong. Giving colleagues concrete examples, a single term’s plan to test, and specialist colleagues working alongside them in classrooms dissolved that anxiety.
Before long, mainstream teachers were using the same thinking in history and geography before the central trust team had even produced the guidance.
The project has also prompted honest conversations about what inclusion actually means. Sitting in the same physical room as twenty-nine other children does not mean a pupil is included. A child can sit at the back with a teaching assistant and still be completely cut off from the subject. Real inclusion means meaningful participation in worthwhile knowledge. As families in the trust’s parent-carer forum pointed out, they want their children to be challenged and recognized as learners, not just minded.
In the end, it comes down to changing our starting question. We stop asking whether a child can manage the standard worksheet. We ask what the subject itself makes possible for them, and how we can open the door.
Until next time
Mary