Making Inclusive Spaces and Practices with Disabled Children and Young People in Mainstream Education

© 2025 Crown copyright and The Author(s). Children & Society published by National Children's Bureau and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the King's Printer for Scotland.In England, legislation outlines that disabled children and young people should primarily be educated within mainstream provision. Nevertheless, limitations remain in how disabled children and young people experience mainstream educational spaces, particularly those with socio-emotional and behavioural differences. Situated in disabled children's childhood studies, we explore disabled children's and young people's relational agency as an important element in the production of inclusive spaces and practices. We draw from a qualitative ONS (Office for National Statistics) study of disabled children's and young people's (aged 11 to 16) accounts of their education, and that of their parents/carers. We argue that networks of care-less or care-full practices (a distinction we draw from Lithari and Rogers) emerge in the interactions between disabled children's and young people's identity self-management, school practices, the attitudes of different actors and the material spaces of their schools.