Computing is a national curriculum subject. That simple statement does a surprising amount of work, because it reminds us that computing is an entitlement. Not for the self-selecting few who arrive with a passion for algorithms, not for those already writing games in Year 6, but for every child who walks through the door. That little word every includes pupils with special educational needs, pupils who struggle with reading, pupils who find social interaction draining, pupils with no English yet, and pupils who come with educational journeys far more complicated than the neat trajectory our schemes of work imply. They are all computing pupils. They deserve the subject taught well.

The trouble is that the formal definition of SEND leads us to treat difficulty as something inside the child: a deficit to locate, name, and remediate. Practical teaching looks different. You meet children, not categories. You discover barriers long before you discover acronyms. One child cannot process change sprung on them at the last minute. Another needs concrete language rather than metaphor. Another freezes when group work is unstructured. Another has the reading age of a six-year-old and still manages to grasp loops more comfortably than half the class. Labels do not help here. Functioning profiles do: what helps, what hinders, what they can do today, and what might open the next step tomorrow.

We are now close to one child in five receiving some form of SEND support, and EHCP numbers keep climbing. The distribution is patchy. This reflects genuine need, much is better recognition, and some speaks to the unequal ability of families to navigate a complex system. In affluent areas, children are likelier to secure an EHCP. In poorer areas they are likelier to be identified as needing support but less able to secure it. That should trouble us. It should also remind us that SEND is not marginal. It is woven through every classroom.

Autism is a particular are of focus in computing. Schools often talk about “autistic pupils” as if they were a single category. Certain patterns appear often enough to guide teaching. Predictability matters. Advance notice of change matters. Clear written steps matter. Concrete language helps. Structured group work helps. A quiet or less bustling space for part of a lesson helps many more pupils than the ones with formal diagnoses. These are not bolt-ons; they are elements of high-quality teaching. Most of what helps autistic pupils helps the whole class.

Computing as a discipline does offer something distinctive here. Predictable systems can be a source of comfort and confidence. A program behaves the same way today as it did yesterday, provided the input is the same. That stability, that sense of a world that “makes sense”, can be precious. It also means the range of future pathways for autistic pupils is wider than many assume. Software testing, game testing, data validation, cybersecurity: systematic domains with structure, clarity, and deep focus. Companies already recruit autistic employees deliberately, not out of charity but because they recognise the value of sustained attention, precision, and pattern sensitivity. When you tell trainee teachers this, you see something shift. These pupils are not problems to solve. They are potential colleagues.

None of that removes the need for tact. One of the strongest moments in the session came from the student who described what it feels like when teachers say, “I need to see you after class.” The instant assumption of catastrophe. The fear of unspoken meaning. The memory of years in which behaviour was attributed to autism rather than naughtiness. It is a reminder that clarity is kindness. “There’s nothing to worry about; I just want to talk through X” is a small sentence, but it changes the emotional weather of a classroom.

EAL brings its own myths. The first is that pupils with no English cannot learn computing. Our Portuguese and Kurdish live-coding experiments demolished that neatly. Pupils who cannot follow a word of the teacher’s speech can still follow the code on the screen. Syntax is multilingual. The logic of print statements, variables, and operators travels far more easily than “open your books at page twelve”. Scratch goes further with its remarkable block-level translation support. Even Python’s English-based keywords become accessible once you show pupils where meaning sits in the structure of the language rather than the surrounding commentary. Put something visual, concrete, and patterned on the screen, and inclusion becomes far less mysterious.

A second myth is that EAL pupils always struggle in English-medium schooling. The data says otherwise. EAL pupils make more progress than their native-English peers in about ninety-five percent of schools. By the time they reach GCSE, they often outperform them outright. It is not magic. It is years of immersion, plus the cognitive benefits of navigating two languages, plus homes where education is often prized as one reason for the family’s move. For computing teachers, the implication is simple. Do not lower expectations. Support language. Teach vocabulary explicitly. Use visuals. Give written steps. But assume success, because EAL pupils have a long record of delivering it.

The relationship between language and computing is richer than we admit. When pupils learn another language, they learn how language works, not just the words. They learn structure, metaphor, tense, phrase, idiom. They learn how to decode meaning from limited cues. All of this helps with code. All of this helps with debugging. All of this helps with thinking logically while reading and writing precisely. Many of the world’s best computing graduates come from countries where multilingualism is normal. That is not coincidence.

Inclusion, then, is neither heroic nor exotic. It is not a separate art. It is teaching well, with humility, curiosity, high expectations, and a willingness to adapt the environment rather than the pupil. It is recognising that computing belongs to every child in the room. And it is remembering that for some of them, the moment the screen begins to behave predictably, they feel something many of us take for granted: the sense of a world that at last makes sense.

Notes for mentors, based on the 9th Roehampton PGCE Computing lecture