July 2026
In schools, leaders are often required to make decisions using the evidence that is most readily available. Attainment data, behaviour records, attendance patterns, classroom observations and documented progress all provide important information about how pupils are functioning within the school environment. These forms of evidence are practical, visible and defensible within accountability-driven systems.
Yet they can also be incomplete.
A pupil may appear calm, compliant and academically successful while experiencing significant cognitive, emotional or sensory strain. Another may meet classroom expectations but do so through compensatory strategies that are effortful, fragile or difficult to sustain. In such cases, observable coping can conceal need rather than demonstrate that need has been met.
This creates an important leadership challenge. If school systems interpret visible performance as sufficient evidence of successful participation, pupils whose difficulties are less visible may not be recognised until coping breaks down. Leaders therefore have a crucial role in shaping the organisational conditions, professional conversations and evidential practices through which sustainable participation can be identified, supported and protected.
The central question is not simply whether a pupil is coping. It is how participation is being achieved, at what cost, under what conditions, and whether it is sustainable over time.
From visible performance to sustainable participation
Educational decision-making often begins with what can be seen. Pupils who complete work, behave appropriately and meet expected standards are commonly understood to be accessing learning successfully. Within special educational needs and disabilities provision, this can influence whether additional assessment, intervention or statutory support is considered necessary.
This is understandable. Schools operate within resource-constrained systems where leaders must make proportionate decisions, justify provision and demonstrate impact. However, the risk is that visible functioning becomes a proxy for educational access. Where a pupil appears to be managing, the conclusion may be that existing provision is sufficient.
Research on masking and camouflaging challenges this assumption. Although much of this work has focused on autism, the wider implication extends across SEND and inclusion more broadly. Pupils may consciously or unconsciously adapt their behaviour, suppress distress, imitate peers or rely on rehearsed strategies in order to meet expected norms (Mandy, 2019; Cook et al., 2022). Such strategies can support short-term participation while concealing significant effort, fatigue or anxiety (Nel et al., 2025; Scheeren et al., 2025).
For leaders, the issue is not that all apparent competence should be treated with suspicion. Rather, it is that observable performance should be interpreted within a broader understanding of participation. A pupil’s ability to meet expectations at a particular point in time does not necessarily indicate that participation is equitable, accessible or sustainable.
This distinction matters. Immediate performance tells us what a pupil can do under current conditions. Sustainable participation asks whether the pupil can continue to participate without disproportionate strain, deteriorating wellbeing or later breakdown.
Leadership for inclusion therefore requires attention not only to outcomes, but to the conditions under which those outcomes are achieved.
Coping as an organisational interpretation
The word “coping” occupies an ambiguous place in school discourse. It is often used to indicate that a pupil is managing adequately: they are attending, behaving, completing work and not presenting significant concern. However, coping can also describe a process of compensation. It may involve heightened effort, emotional suppression, sensory tolerance, social imitation or sustained self-monitoring.
This ambiguity matters because leadership decisions are shaped by how coping is interpreted within the organisation.
If coping is interpreted as evidence that needs are met, support may be delayed. If coping is understood as a possible signal of hidden effort, it can become a prompt for professional enquiry. The difference is not simply semantic; it affects how schools notice, document and respond to need.
Inclusive leadership therefore involves creating a culture in which staff are encouraged to ask more precise questions:
How is the pupil managing?
What conditions enable this participation?
Is the current pattern stable over time?
Are there discrepancies between school and home?
What does participation cost the pupil emotionally, cognitively or socially?
What happens when demands increase or routines change?
These questions move the focus from individual resilience to environmental fit. They also align with interactional understandings of disability, in which functioning is shaped by the relationship between the learner and their environment rather than by individual capacity alone (World Health Organization, 2001; Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
For leaders, this means that the task is not only to identify pupils who are visibly struggling. It is also to ensure that school systems are capable of recognising when apparent success depends on conditions that may be fragile, effortful or inequitable.
The leadership problem of evidence
Schools do not operate in neutral evidential environments. What counts as evidence is shaped by policy, accountability, workload, funding pressures and professional routines. Leaders are often required to make decisions using information that is measurable, recordable and easily communicated. Attainment data, behaviour logs and intervention records therefore carry significant weight.
These forms of evidence are necessary, but they can privilege visible difficulty. Pupils who disrupt lessons, fall behind academically or show clear barriers to access are more likely to generate evidence that triggers escalation. Pupils whose needs are internalised, masked or compensated for may generate less formal evidence, even when their participation is becoming increasingly unsustainable.
This can produce an implicit hierarchy of need recognition. Visible struggle becomes more institutionally legible than hidden effort.
The leadership challenge is to broaden the evidential lens without weakening professional rigour. Sustainable participation should not be treated as a vague concern or an alternative to evidence. Rather, leaders need to ensure that evidence systems capture the quality, conditions and stability of participation, not only its visible outcomes.
This may involve strengthening how schools gather and use:
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pupil voice about effort, belonging, anxiety, fatigue and access;
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family perspectives, particularly where home and school presentation differ;
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observations across different contexts, including transitions and unstructured times;
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information about the environmental conditions that enable participation;
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patterns over time, especially around increasing demands or key transitions;
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professional dialogue that considers whether apparent coping is stable or fragile.
Such evidence does not replace attainment or behaviour data. It contextualises it.
A pupil meeting expected standards may still require support if those standards are achieved through disproportionate effort. A pupil who is calm in class may still be experiencing significant distress if that calmness depends on suppression. A pupil who appears independent may still be relying on hidden routines, avoidance or exhaustion to maintain that independence.
Leadership decisions become more inclusive when such patterns are made visible within the organisation’s evidence culture.
Creating conditions for sustainable participation
If sustainable participation is understood as a leadership concern, then the focus shifts from asking whether individual pupils can cope to asking whether the school environment enables participation in ways that are accessible, proportionate and stable.
This has practical implications for school improvement.
First, leaders can make sustainable participation part of the language of inclusion. Staff need shared terminology for distinguishing between performance and participation, independence and unsupported coping, compliance and wellbeing. Without this language, important concerns may remain informal, anecdotal or difficult to escalate.
Second, leaders can build professional routines that invite curiosity about hidden effort. Pupil progress meetings, SEND reviews, pastoral discussions and transition planning can include questions about sustainability, not only outcomes. For example, when a pupil is described as “fine” or “coping”, leaders can ask what evidence supports that judgement and whether there are any indications of fatigue, anxiety, rigidity, avoidance or cross-context discrepancy.
Third, leaders can ensure that family knowledge is treated as evidence rather than as supplementary comment. Parents and carers often see the cost of participation after the school day has ended. Where a child appears settled in school but distressed at home, the discrepancy should not be dismissed as inconsistency. It may reveal that the school environment is being navigated through significant effort.
Fourth, leaders can protect time for collaborative interpretation. Hidden need is rarely recognised through a single observation. It is more often identified through the careful integration of perspectives from teachers, support staff, families, pupils and external professionals. This requires organisational structures that allow information to be shared, questioned and connected.
Finally, leaders can frame support as preventative rather than reactive. If schools wait until pupils visibly fail, withdraw, disengage or reach crisis, opportunities for earlier adjustment may already have been missed. Recognising fragile participation before breakdown occurs allows leaders to intervene in ways that are more proportionate, humane and educationally effective.
Sustainable participation and inclusive school improvement
The concept of sustainable participation has significance beyond individual SEND decisions. It challenges schools to reconsider what counts as success.
In standards-driven systems, successful schooling is often represented through measurable attainment, progress, attendance and behaviour. These indicators matter, but they do not fully capture whether pupils experience education as accessible, meaningful and sustainable. A school may produce positive visible outcomes while some pupils are participating at considerable personal cost.
Inclusive school improvement therefore requires leaders to hold two questions together.
What are pupils achieving?
And what does it take for them to achieve it?
This second question is essential. It directs attention to the environments, relationships, routines and expectations that shape participation. It also prevents schools from locating difficulty solely within the pupil. If a child can participate only by masking distress, suppressing needs or recovering extensively outside school, then the issue is not simply individual coping. It is the fit between the pupil and the educational environment.
This does not mean lowering expectations. On the contrary, sustainable participation supports ambitious education by ensuring that pupils are not required to sacrifice wellbeing, identity or long-term engagement in order to meet those expectations. Inclusive leadership is not about accepting less. It is about creating the conditions in which more pupils can participate well, and continue to do so over time.
Implications for leaders
For school leaders, several implications follow.
The first is conceptual. Leaders need to challenge the assumption that visible coping is always evidence that needs are met. Coping may indicate resilience, but it may also indicate compensation. Professional judgement should remain open to both possibilities.
The second is organisational. Schools need systems that capture more than immediate performance. Evidence of effort, context, wellbeing and sustainability should have a legitimate place in SEND decision-making, pastoral review and school improvement processes.
The third is cultural. Staff need permission to raise concerns about pupils who are doing well on paper but appear to be participating at significant cost. Without this permission, hidden effort may remain unspoken until it becomes visible breakdown.
The fourth is relational. Families and pupils should be treated as essential partners in understanding participation. Their accounts may reveal dimensions of access that classroom evidence alone cannot capture.
The fifth is strategic. Sustainable participation should be understood as part of inclusive school improvement, not as an additional concern separate from standards, curriculum or leadership. A school that supports sustainable participation is better placed to recognise need early, allocate support proportionately and build environments in which pupils can flourish.
Conclusion
When pupils appear to cope, it is tempting to conclude that their needs are being met. Sometimes this will be true. But for some pupils, coping conceals the effort required to participate in environments that are not yet sufficiently accessible.
Leadership matters because leaders shape what schools notice, what they record, what they value and what they respond to. If evidence systems privilege visible difficulty, hidden need may remain unrecognised until participation becomes unsustainable. If leaders broaden the evidential lens, schools can become better at identifying fragile participation earlier and responding before crisis occurs.
The task is not to disregard observable performance. It is to interpret performance more carefully.
Educational decisions should consider not only what pupils can do, but what it takes for them to do it. For leaders committed to inclusive practice, this is a crucial distinction. Sustainable participation is not simply an individual outcome. It is a leadership responsibility.
References
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