Design your school's collaborative inclusion-UDL model for the school year

Context

A primary or secondary school principal who needs to structure the collaborative working model between their school's inclusion support team and mainstream classroom teachers for the school year: how the team will operate, how co-teaching will be distributed, how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) professional development will be planned, and how to report inclusion outcomes to your education authority and your school's governing body or district.

Paste first

Before opening the model, gather:

• The staffing hours of your inclusion support team: how many weekly hours each professional has assigned (inclusion specialists / learning support teachers, psychologist, speech-language therapist, classroom support assistant, or others)
• The total number of students with temporary and permanent special educational needs by year level, without names or IDs
• The hours available for co-teaching in the school timetable
• The school calendar with key dates: start of year, standardized assessments, School Council, parent meetings, staff meetings
• The two or three most critical problems from last year's inclusion support work, described in aggregate terms without individual case data

Critical privacy rule: Do not paste student rosters, national IDs, individual clinical diagnoses, psychoeducational reports, or case records. The model needs only the structural and aggregate data about your school — not the identity or history of individual students. Using personal data about minors in external systems may violate your local student data protection law and education data privacy regulations.

Act as an inclusion education specialist with experience in special education regulations, curriculum accommodation frameworks, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) applied to schools.

I need to design the collaborative inclusion-UDL working model for the school year at {{your school's name or "our school"}}.

**School context:**
- School type: {{public / state-funded private / independent private}}
- Year levels with the highest concentration of students in the inclusion support program: {{e.g., "Years 1–4 of primary" or "Years 7–10"}}
- Total students with special educational needs (no names or IDs): {{total number}}
- Distribution: {{number with temporary SEN}} temporary / {{number with permanent SEN}} permanent

**Inclusion support team staffing:**
{{describe how many weekly hours each professional has, e.g.: "2 inclusion specialists, 44 hours each; 1 psychologist, 22 hours; 1 speech-language therapist, 22 hours"}}

**Hours available for co-teaching in the timetable:**
{{number of weekly hours available for joint classroom work between subject teachers and inclusion specialists}}

**Critical problems from last year:**
{{describe the 2 or 3 main problems from last year's inclusion support work, e.g.: "coordination between teachers and inclusion specialists was informal and depended on individual goodwill", "there was no agreed framework for co-teaching roles", "UDL professional development did not reach subject teachers"}}

With this information, produce:

1. A collaborative inclusion-UDL working model with clearly defined roles for inclusion specialists, mainstream classroom teachers, and the school leadership team, distinguishing the three support modalities: co-teaching in the classroom, collaborative planning outside the classroom, and individual or small-group support outside the classroom.

2. A proposed weekly timetable distribution for the inclusion support team by function (co-teaching, collaborative planning, direct support, coordination meetings, record-keeping and documentation), adjusted to the staffing I provided.

3. A UDL professional development plan for the school year, with at least four sessions distributed across the year, indicating format (workshop, classroom modelling, paired planning review, staff meeting), estimated duration, and person responsible for each.

4. A quarterly monitoring table with the process and outcome indicators that leadership should track and that could be requested by your education authority or your school's governing body or district, with the internal person responsible for each indicator.

5. Two or three alerts about the most common risks in implementing this type of model, with a concrete preventive recommendation for each.

Work within your jurisdiction's special education regulations and curriculum accommodation framework at all times. Do not propose staffing structures or roles that contradict applicable inclusion support regulations in your context.

Expected output

Real example (abridged):

Guiding principle: The model is organized around the premise of shared responsibility: the success of students with special educational needs does not rest with the inclusion support team alone — it rests with the whole school. Inclusion specialists are co-responsible for teaching, not providers of a parallel service.

Modality A — Co-teaching in the classroom: The inclusion specialist takes an active teaching role, not a silent support role. They record observations in the co-teaching log.

Model When to use it One teaches / one supports with focus Introducing new content Station teaching Practice and consolidation Team teaching Units with a strong UDL component

Weekly distribution (inclusion specialist, 44 hrs): co-teaching 5 hrs · collaborative planning 4 hrs · direct support 28 hrs · inclusion coordination 2 hrs · record-keeping and documentation 5 hrs.

Watch out for

• The model may propose a staffing distribution that exceeds the actual hours available. Verify that the sum of assigned functions for each professional does not exceed their contracted hours before presenting the plan to your school's governing body or district.
• It may focus on individual support for students in the inclusion program and lose sight of the UDL approach for the mainstream classroom. If this happens, ask for the plan to explicitly include strategies and professional development that benefit all students in the class, not only those with a diagnosis.
• It may cite articles or provisions from special education regulations inaccurately or in an outdated form. Cross-check any regulatory reference with the official text before including it in documents you will send to your education authority or your school's governing body or district.

Suggested iteration

If the proposed timetable distribution does not fit your actual staffing, ask: "The distribution uses more hours than are available. Adjust it by prioritizing co-teaching in the year levels with the highest inclusion support concentration first, then collaborative planning. Show the corrected table." If you need to present the model to the School Council or a staff meeting, ask: "Convert the working model into a one-page executive summary, in accessible language for teachers and parents, explaining what the inclusion support program is, how it operates in our school this year, and how it supports the learning of all students."

Originally written for Chilean classrooms. References to PIE (Programa de Integración Escolar), Decreto 170/2010, Decreto 83/2015, MINEDUC, and the sostenedor apply specifically to the Chilean system. Adapt all regulatory and institutional references to your local context.