Inclusion under pressure: teachers’ perceptions of student diversity, support needs and institutional capacity in early childhood and primary education

This article examines teachers’ perceptions in early childhood and primary education of student diversity, support needs and the institutional conditions that enable or constrain inclusive responses. Drawing on a questionnaire combining closed- and open-ended items administered to teachers in the province of Valencia during the 2025–2026 academic year (N = 228), it analyses the relationship between perceived changes in students, the reconfiguration of teaching practice and schools’ institutional capacity. Overall, 88.0% rated their relationship with students positively; 92.2% identified moderate or greater changes in students’ profiles, needs or behaviours; and 91.2% reported that they had made major or moderate changes to classroom planning and management. Qualitative findings link these changes to class size, staffing, specialist support, coordination time and responsibility for inclusion being shifted onto individual teachers, while also highlighting co-teaching and pedagogical innovation. The article proposes the concept of inclusion under pressure to describe a configuration in which a strong policy commitment to inclusion coexists with insufficient or uneven institutional capacity, so that the everyday work of sustaining inclusion is displaced towards individual teachers. The concept shifts attention from individual attitudes towards the distribution of resources, responsibilities and organisational support.