Designing an inclusion base: turning a room into a base that works

Before you choose a room: know the cohort

Do this before anything is ordered or moved. Speak to your local authority about the pupils the base is likely to serve over the next five years: their needs, their ages, how many, and what matters most for them. Where you can, get specialist input such as sensory assessments from an occupational therapist. A base for pupils with autism who find noise hard looks different from one for pupils whose SEMH needs show up as conflict.

The aim of the design is to reduce the need for staff to intervene physically. That means the base needs a way to separate from the rest of the school when a pupil is dysregulated, without drawing negative attention to the pupils who use it, while still feeling part of the school with traffic both ways. Even the name matters: pupils will rename anything that sounds like a label, often unkindly.

Decide how it will run, then design for it

Every running decision has a consequence for the space. How will new pupils start, and where will they be received? How will pupils arrive, leave and dip into mainstream lessons? How will staff call for help, and where would a hold happen if one were needed? Where will staff brief, debrief and record each day? Where will break and lunch happen, if not on the main playground? Answer these first, then walk through a whole day on paper, from the first pupil arriving to the last member of staff leaving. Most of the gaps in a design show up this way, while they are still cheap to fix.

Ten things schools most often get wrong

1. Choosing the room before knowing the cohort. It is the most common mistake and the most expensive to undo.

2. Only one room. When one pupil is dysregulated, everyone else's learning stops. Smaller spaces within the base let a pupil separate while the group carries on.

3. Glass that is likely to be kicked. Fire doors usually have vision panels. Once the glass breaks, the door may no longer meet its fire rating.

4. Ceilings within reach. Suspended tiles come down, and a smoke detector pulled off its base puts a fault on the fire alarm.

5. Fire alarm call points that are easy to press. Easy to press call points can mean frequent evacuations. Ask your fire safety adviser about covered or key operated call points.

6. Locks at the wrong height. It sounds small, but staff often need to unlock a door quickly, and a member of staff bent over a low lock is slow and vulnerable. Decide door by door what each has to do and how quickly staff must open it, and ask your fire safety adviser what hardware achieves that.

7. Storage around the room. Units can be pulled over and forced open, and an incident in a room full of resources makes a mess that is also a risk. A separate store behind a strong door works better.

8. A fixed sensory room. I have seen schools spend tens of thousands of pounds on rooms that cannot be adapted or moved. Teaching pupils to regulate, with affordable equipment they could also use at home, usually works better.

9. Nowhere private to read. Many pupils in a base are reluctant readers, and they will not read aloud where other pupils can see or hear them. Plan small spaces where a pupil can work with an adult, and staff can still see in.

10. A base that drifts into a sanction room. If the design makes the base easy to send pupils to and hard to leave for lessons, it will fill up and stay full. See the inclusion bases guide for what the June 2026 guidance expects.

Doors and locks: it depends on your layout

Most designs go wrong at the doors, because the right answer depends on the layout. A base in the middle of the school, one at the front with its own entrance, a separate building on the site and a base off site each need a different plan. Some bases put magnetic locks on the internal doors into the rest of the school, so an incident does not spill into corridors. Where a door is locked mainly to stop other pupils coming in and unsettling the base, a push to exit button on the inside can keep it secure from outside while still letting pupils out.

Two things do not change with the layout. Escape doors must always open from inside without a key, and any lock on an escape route should release when the fire alarm sounds or the power fails; your fire safety adviser will confirm what your building needs. And keeping a pupil somewhere they cannot leave is seclusion: only for keeping others safe, never a punishment, with the pupil supervised throughout, recorded, and parents told. See the seclusion guide.

What an educational brief adds

This guide gives you the questions. An educational brief answers them for your building: who the base is for, how it will run, and what each space and door needs to do, worked through with your leaders and your architect before anything is ordered. It comes with an avoid list for your building. Your architect, fire safety adviser and estates team then decide how to meet it. If you already have plans or have chosen a room, a remote plan review checks them against these questions.