SEND strategy guide for schools in England
As the most significant and radical overhaul of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system in a decade gathers pace, we take a look at what changes are needed to strengthen your school’s SEND strategy; whether you’re a SENCO, a headteacher, or a teaching assistant, this article explores what the reforms mean for you.
What do these reforms mean for schools?
The Government White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving, promises a £4 billion cash injection to be spent on targeted support, with new national expectations of how mainstream schools need to become wholly inclusive.
The sweeping plans, to be rolled out over the next three years, focus on establishing a clearer tiered model of support with Individual Support Plans for any child identified as needing extra support — regardless of whether they have a formal diagnosis of SEND — changes to EHCPs, and improved access to specialist professionals.
Around 1.7 million children in England (or 1 in 5 children) currently receive support for SEND. About 5% of all pupils (483,000) or just under a third of those with SEND currently have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), the highest level of support. The new SEND law is expected to come into force in September 2029 alongside the new SEND framework, including Individual Support Plans, with specific changes and transitions regarding EHCPs expected to be rolled out in September 2030.
Schools will receive funding through a new Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) worth £400 million per year, plus a £1.8 billion ‘Experts at Hand’ service to provide schools with access to specialists, including SEND teachers, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists (OTs), improving early access to support without the need for an EHCP.
Here we look at how the reforms affect school staff, and how the new funding needs to be used to meet the Department for Education’s (DfE) seven principles of inclusion:
How to deliver the seven principles of inclusion
1. Ambitious leadership and governance that embeds inclusion
Leaders and governors should prioritise inclusion in school planning and policies by:
Enhancing data collection and analysis systems to understand student needs better.
Obtaining expert advice to improve school policies, and planning with a focus on children's needs. This can include liaising with local professional networks to share resources and access relevant expertise.
Liaising with similar schools to identify areas for improving inclusive practices, such as the introduction of a sensory intervention to enable early identification before needs escalate into exclusion or referrals.
Reviewing and enhancing planning and policies to ensure high expectations for all students, particularly those with SEND.
2. Evidence-based support prioritising early intervention
Early interventions can significantly help children with SEND achieve better results and lessen the achievement gap with their peers. This may involve:
Effective small-group interventions to eliminate persistent learning barriers, carried out consistently and assessed for effectiveness. Flexible grouping of students to support learning, enhance understanding, or pre-teach concepts (like vocabulary).
Utilising teaching assistants according to best practices to aid students with additional needs in developing independent learning skills.
Sensory interventions: designed to help users develop, regulate, and process their senses.
Cubbie, a sensory regulation platform, can be integrated into an existing classroom and offers built-in OT expertise and measurable outcomes. Users can be regulated and back to learning within 10 minutes.
3. High-quality adaptive teaching with curriculum designed for all learners
Effective teaching is crucial for enhancing outcomes, especially for those with SEND. Training can be funded via the Inclusive Mainstream Fund:
Training to enhance adaptable teaching methods such as flexible grouping, strategies, scaffolding, and technology to assist pupils with SEND.
Training costs to implement evidence-based interventions and professional development aimed specifically at enhancing classroom instruction.
Modifying the curriculum to cater to children's needs.
4. Enriching provision beyond the classroom that all children can access
To allow all children to participate and enjoy school life, schools should continually seek to remove barriers by:
Delivering activities and wider opportunities for pupils to build life skills and independence and participate in school life.
Funding for subject teachers to extend the enrichment offer around the core curriculum.
Funding for staffing, equipment or other accommodations that address practical barriers to participation, such as a sensory platform which would provide structured sensory regulation to assist in transition periods.
5. A safe and respectful culture fostering belonging, attendance, and participation in learning
Schools must establish consistent methods to identify and support the wellbeing needs of all students by:
Creating a unified whole-school strategy for managing behaviour and communicating the reasons behind expectations and procedures to all staff, students, and families.
Introducing attendance interventions that consider the needs of students with SEND.
6. Strong partnerships with families and wider services
Schools should aim to build stronger connections with families by creating a SEND parent-carer forum or working with local schools as a collective to understand family views on inclusive practices and hosting informal sessions for parents of children with additional needs.
7. Inclusive environments with continuous improvements to accessibility
Classrooms should be structured to support learning, reduce distractions, and accommodate various sensory and regulatory requirements. Every area in the school must be made accessible to support learning, growth, and regulation, addressing a variety of common and expected needs. This may involve:
Establishing visual aids, like schedules and communication tools and adapting technology to help with diverse needs.
Upgrading classrooms, hallways, and other busy areas to cater to different sensory needs, such as enhancing sound quality, lighting, temperature, and eliminating visual clutter.
Organising improved onboarding for new students and transitions between year groups, including phased transitions for those who need them.
Cubbie can be integrated into an existing classroom and offers built-in OT expertise and measurable outcomes, resulting in increased classroom participation and more learning time recovered.
How must school staff adapt to the new reforms?
What headteachers need to do:
Undertake an audit of current SEND provision to create a strategic plan of what is working well and what may need to be further developed. Curriculum design, adaptive teaching, staff development, and the use of support staff all need to be aligned with a more ambitious vision for inclusion. Adapt timetables to give the SENCO more time to lead strategically, instead of being tied up with paperwork.
What SENCOs need to do:
Adapt from the role of individual caseworker to one of a strategic inclusion leader. Key actions include implementing digital Individual Support Plans (ISPs), engaging with the Experts at Hand specialist tier, and preparing staff for national inclusive training. Focus on earlier intervention by collaborating closely with local early years services to instil improved transition processes. Ensure each child has a pupil profile that details their Individual Education Plan (IEP) to include specific, measurable goals tailored to their needs. Evidence-based interventions need to be provided in small groups or through one-on-one support, with clearly defined start and end dates.
What Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) need to do:
The SLT must prioritise SEND, supported by effective leadership that includes the SENCO in the team. This approach will allow the SENCO to have a meaningful impact on essential aspects such as budget decisions, curriculum development, and overall school policies. Schools will be required to publish an Inclusion Strategy by 31st December 2026, setting out how they are meeting national expectations for inclusive practice.
What Board of Governors need to do:
The Board of Governors must ensure there is a dedicated SEND Governor to consistently review provision mapping and progress metrics, ensuring that school leaders are held accountable.
What teachers and teaching assistants need to do:
High-level daily classroom instruction is essential for all pupils, reducing the over-reliance on withdrawal interventions. Teaching needs to be more adaptive to move away from rigid, pre-planned tasks for separate groups. All educators must recognise their role in supporting SEND. Lessons need to be inclusive using scaffolding, visual aids, and flexible grouping to provide access for all.
Focus should be on visual timetables, predictable routines, and reduced sensory clutter to meet the four primary areas of need: communication and interaction; cognition and learning; social, emotional, and mental health; sensory and/or physical.
Teaching assistants should promote student independence, while teachers must set aside specific time to discuss lesson plans with them. Parent-teacher meetings need to focus on long-term goals for each student and their overall development. By discussing learning preferences, strengths and anxieties, these insights can be incorporated into student profiles through an authentic pupil voice.
How Cubbie is helping schools meet their inclusion strategies
Cubbie is the only sensory-regulation platform designed to work across universal, targeted, targeted plus, and specialist provision, giving schools a practical, measurable way to support regulation, inclusion, and access to learning across the full continuum of need.
It can be integrated into an existing classroom, and offers built-in OT expertise and measurable outcomes, resulting in increased classroom participation and more learning time recovered.
It gives staff, teachers, SENCOs, pastoral teams, and therapists one consistent, evidence-informed way to support pupils before, during, and after dysregulation.
Cubbie helps meet pupils’ needs before they reach crisis and supports recovery and reintegration after incidents.
It provides a safe, structured regulation tool that works from whole-school wellbeing through to complex SEND need.
Cubbie builds the evidence base that inspectors and review panels increasingly expect.
Cubbie is working with schools and local authorities across the country to meet their inclusion needs — delivering remarkable results, reintegrating students into full-time education, and recovering hundreds of hours of lost learning.
Schools are already feeling the impact. Claire Ingrams, Headteacher at Lime Wood Primary School in Erith, Kent, said: "Since introducing Cubbie, we have seen improvements in participation, emotional regulation, and overall wellbeing across the school. Staff have also benefited from having a consistent and effective early intervention solution that helps reduce disruption and supports inclusion in a meaningful way."
"The installation of a Cubbie at Redwood Primary School in Derby has had an immediate positive impact," said Lucy Clark, deputy headteacher and SENCO. "The programmes ensure key targeted children are receiving tailored, timely support. For children with additional needs, periods of dysregulation have significantly decreased and the Cubbie means we are better able to meet their needs proactively rather than reactively.”
To learn more about how Cubbie’s partnership with a local authority resulted in hundreds of additional learning hours recovered, improved attendance and reduced pressure on staff, get in touch with our team.
