Councils' SEND plans depend on staff who do not exist yet (12 September 2026)
Schools Week published 40 councils' draft SEND reform plans this week and then read them against the workforce that would have to deliver them. The gap is large, and it is the same gap in almost every plan.
28 of 40 councils say specialist shortages threaten their plans
The government has put £1.8 billion over three years behind an "experts at hand" service, the model that is supposed to get specialist advice into mainstream schools without an education, health and care plan first. Of 40 council draft plans analysed by Schools Week and published on 10 September, 28 said shortages of specialist staff could undermine delivery and 36 raised staffing concerns of some kind.
The bottleneck has a number. Last year 1,766 people applied for 204 educational psychologist training places. Donna Wiggett of the Association of Educational Psychologists said the proposals were helpful but unlikely to enable enough recruitment unless backed by a funded national workforce strategy.
Source: Schools Week, 10 September 2026.
What the plans actually commit councils to
The individual targets are worth reading if your area is in the list, because they are specific and they are steep. Staffordshire proposes going from 24 inclusion base places to 424 by 2029, an increase of 1,667%. Cambridgeshire is aiming at 1,507 inclusion base places by the same date. Solihull targets a 20% reduction in EHCP requests by 2029, Barnsley wants annual EHCP growth down from around 9% to 2 or 3%, and Wigan proposes cutting its EHC assessment conversion rate from 97% to 85%.
Those last three are demand reduction targets. They only work if the "experts at hand" support arrives first, which is exactly what the workforce analysis casts doubt on. Parents in those areas should expect assessment decisions to get harder to obtain before mainstream support gets better.
Source: Schools Week, 10 September 2026.
Hackney says its £19m SEND deficit could double
Hackney has warned that its high needs deficit, £19.1 million in April, could double if it is required to fund special educational provision for pupils in the borough's independent Jewish schools. Section 63 of the Children and Families Act 2014 obliges a council to arrange provision where there is no EHC plan and the authority is satisfied the child needs it.
The scale is local but not small: there are 25 independent Jewish schools in the borough, around a fifth of their pupils have SEND, 4% hold an EHCP and 16% are recorded as SEN without a plan. The Charedi community accounts for roughly 30% of Hackney's school age children.
Source: Schools Week, 10 September 2026.
Almost 1,000 leaders put forward as Ofsted peer inspectors
More than 180 trusts and school groups have nominated close to 1,000 leaders for the Ofsted Peer Inspector pilot, the scheme Sir Martyn Oliver announced in March. Leaders inspect while Ofsted contributes towards their employer's costs, which frames inspection work as professional development rather than a second job.
Response at that scale is the useful signal. It suggests trusts see value in having their own people inside the framework, particularly in the first year of the refreshed inspection arrangements.
Source: Schools Week, 10 September 2026.