29 April 2025

One of our regular themes at IPSEA is the need for better accountability in the system for supporting children and young people with SEND. By this we mean there is an absence of checks on local decision-making about children and young people with SEND, to ensure that children and young people’s legal rights and entitlements are upheld. 

A new approach to school inspection 

One of the things we rely on is Ofsted’s judgements about the quality of education provided by individual schools, as well as the overall picture of SEND provision in specific parts of the country by local area partnerships. The spotlight has recently been on Ofsted’s approach to inspecting individual schools, following widespread criticism of the way this has been done up to now. Ofsted has been consulting on a whole new approach to school inspection. 

We have responded to this consultation, focusing particularly on how Ofsted will in future inspect how inclusive schools are for children with SEND. ‘Inclusion’ is one of the new evaluation areas Ofsted is proposing to introduce – the aspects of a school’s work that will be evaluated by inspectors and reported on in new school report cards that will replace the single-word judgements that have been used up to now. 

While we agree that inclusion is a crucial evaluation area in its own right, it should also underpin all the other new evaluation areas – things like curriculum, attendance, behaviour and attitudes, personal development and wellbeing. 

What’s most important is that the right things are inspected in the right way. Inclusion must be properly defined, and inspectors must be clear about what they are looking for. 

It's essential to pin this down as far as possible. Key factors include training and supporting all school staff in inclusive practices, expecting school leaders to implement inclusive policies, having strong systems for collecting and analysing data and providing flexibility in the curriculum. 

Schools’ legal duty to be inclusive for pupils with SEND 

The introduction of ‘inclusion’ as an evaluation area is an opportunity to assess how effectively mainstream settings are complying with their duties – set out in the Children and Families Act 2014 and the Equality Act 2010 – to be inclusive. The descriptors in the School Inspection Toolkit should include the extent to which schools comply with their clearly defined legal duties to be fully inclusive for pupils with SEND. 

One of the duties that, in our experience, is too often overlooked by schools is the duty set out in section 35(2) of the Children and Families Act 2014: “Those concerned with making special educational provision for the child must secure that the child engages in the activities of the school together with children who do not have special educational needs, subject to subsection (3).” 

We know from calls to our advice service that children with SEND are routinely excluded from activities such as school trips for reasons that are not covered by subsection (3) but which appear to relate to the school’s convenience or an excessively cautious approach to risk.  

An important measure of inclusion is a school’s familiarity with the Equality Act 2010 and willingness to make reasonable adjustments for disabled children. 

Inspectors should look at how effectively a school is fulfilling this anticipatory duty, and examine data on any ongoing disability discrimination claims against the school, and any previous disability discrimination claims that have been upheld. 

If we look at the evaluation area of ‘attendance’: A key measure of inclusivity here should be how many, and which, children are missing from education or have been excluded from school. We told Ofsted that data should be published alongside school report cards setting out, by school, things like the number of children with SEND who are missing education, who are on part-time timetables, or who have been excluded either permanently or for a fixed period. The description of what should be seen as ‘causing concern’ should make explicit reference to whether pupils with SEND are routinely absent and whether their needs are being met, and to whether pupils who are often absent have had an assessment of any possible special educational needs. 

The section of the inspection toolkit on ‘Identifying and meeting needs and removing barriers’ should, we believe, make explicit reference to the duty on schools to use their ‘best endeavours’ to secure special educational provision for all children and young people for whom they are responsible, as per section 66 of the Children and Families Act 2014. 

The section on ‘Inclusive attendance culture and practices’ should include more detail on how schools are expected to fulfil their duty to identify and meet pupils’ special educational needs. This should include working with families to request an Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment where a school is unable to meet a pupil’s needs from existing resources. 

Now that the consultation stage is over, we will wait to see what the new finalised Ofsted inspection toolkit looks like, and whether references to specific aspects of the SEND legal framework have been added. We will continue the dialogue with Ofsted through our role as a member of the Special Educational Consortium.

 

About the author

Catriona is responsible for IPSEA’s work in bringing about change by influencing the development of SEND policy nationally. Her background is in public policy and communications, and she has worked for a number of charities and public sector organisations, as well as in Parliament. In the past she has served as an elected councillor in a London borough, a special school governor and a charity trustee. She has personal experience of having a disabled child. In her spare time, she enjoys walking, reading, going to the theatre and being by the sea.

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