English councils need to hire 1,400 more educational psychologists, says report Rising demand from children with special needs means the £140m required could come from government grants

Critical shortage of Ed Pychologists and lack of plan to expand training numbers puts #SEND reforms (Experts At Hand) at risk of being undeliverable.

You might be going mad 😀 there’s a link to the pdf report on the page (no html or EasyRead version yet), this should get you to it assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69cbdb...

Leadership The government has appointed Professor Peter Fonagy to chair this review, supported by Professor Sir Simon Wessely and Professor Gillian Baird as vice-chairs and an advisory working group of cross-system leadership and experience. The chair has overall responsibility for the review and its outputs.

The terms of reference show who led the study and is responsible for its output, but not who authored it or otherwise contributed to it - www.gov.uk/government/p...

Here you go assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69cbdb...

“Slowly but surely, the state is retreating from individual entitlement-based support for disabled people across both employment and education, reframing it as a provider responsibility, without increasing provider funding, hoping we don’t notice”

DfE leverages capital cash to force council mainstream focus Town halls will be required to sign deal on how to spend £860m of high needs capital cash

Whitehall is continuing to tighten its grip on councils’ SEND functions by forcing them to agree to prioritise mainstream specialist places or face having capital cash withheld

schoolsweek.co.uk/send-whitehall-to-levera...

image shows a scary large man-carrot holding a cudgel, standing by a steamroller driven by a bureaucrat that is forging ahead crushing papers with "evidence" and "data" written on them

NEW POST: @captaink77.bsky.social explains the Government's carrot and stick funding strategy as it steamrollers over dissent to its SEND reforms, without waiting for evidence or consultation www.specialneedsjungle.com/c...

Screenshot of text from the linked blog post.

New from me
Things Can Get Worse.
Why I'm so worried about the SEND reform direction of travel.
bennewmark.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/t...

extract from SEND reform : braille and large print available by emailing SENDreform.CONSULTATION@education.gov.uk. This is Case Study 8 - Experts at Hand

Extract from SEN Reform - Case Study 8. Braille/large print available. Link in first photo.

Thread #SEN : I’ve been contemplating the SEN reforms. With a limited budget, how will government ensure all schools have equal & fair access to Experts at Hand? The single Case Study cited as an example of EaH in practice has given me cause to think. It’s screenshotted below with link in ALT text /

There are more than 700 special schools over capacity. Nearly 200 of those are at 120% PAN or higher. But DfE wants LAs to curb future supply increases now. Not in three years, when reforms will kick in. Now

Extract from a Department for Education benchmarking tool sent to local authorities in early 2026 8. Other Funding. B) Capital Strategy includes little to no plans to increase special school or AP capacity; any minimal plans are accompanied by a compelling rationale as to why need cannot be met in specialist bases

And at the same time, it looks like supply suppression is the policy lever of choice

The DfE says (privately) that they will rate this as exemplary practice for the SEND reform plans that each LA has to submit in order to get deficit relief this autumn

h/t schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-dfe...

Two-thirds of special schools (inc NMSS) over capacity

~11,000 pupils over capacity, special school places in the capital pipeline won't be enough

Median number of spare places per school, in special schools that aren't over capacity = 4

Revealed: Private special school costs soar as curbs planned Findings come as the government gears up to rein in spending on private special schools

💸 Investigation: Councils are spending up to four times as much per pupil on private special schools as state special schools, with private placement costs growing twice as fast over four years
schoolsweek.co.uk/soaring-cost-of-private-...

The DfE’s tortuous SEND reform process has created a market for yes-and-ho consultants worth tens of millions. Their change programme has 9 more years to run. The EAH programme will be a goldmine for recruitment agencies

Who’s exploiting whom here, exactly?

Excerpt from a press release from legal firm Browne Jacobson Given that more than 60% of SEND appeals last year at least partly related to placement, this is a significant change to the existing legal rights that parents have. As a result, they may seek to make further complaints and claims to schools, in relation to their SEND provision, under the Equality Act 2010 instead. “The eye of the storm on SEND disputes therefore looks set to move from local authorities to schools.”

This firm does a lot of SEND business for local authorities: the introduction of ISPs and the proposal to make settings legally responsible for delivering EHCPs will effectively quadruple their SEND market

But they work for the gatekeepers, so they can’t be exploitative, can they?

It’s also incorrect to paint all lawyers as profit-making: the most implacable opposition comes from legal charities

It’s also inaccurate to imply that lawyers are opposed to these reforms en masse: firms who represent LAs and schools are positively moist with anticipation

‘often by exploiting parents’ would be true if 99% of cases that reach a SENDIST tribunal hearing were meritless…

…but 99% of these cases are successful, & there’s no meaningful data on what difference paid legal help makes to those outcomes: most parents are unrepresented

This definitely tracks with the way that SEND capital grants are being spent: lots on temporary / modular buildings, sometimes not even on the main school site because space is so tight

www.specialneedsjungle.com/exclusive-la...

Over half of specialist free school projects to go ahead Councils faced a choice between a new school and accepting alternative funding for SEND expansion

Exclusive: More than half of free specialist school projects put on hold by the government are set to go ahead, as councils turn down alternative funding offers
schoolsweek.co.uk/more-than-half-of-specia...

image shows long steps upwards with the consultation at the top colourised in mauve

NEW POST: @captaink77.bsky.social & @tanialt.bsky.social have some words about answering the Government’s 39 Step White Paper SEND consultation, including their—and your—use of AI www.specialneedsjungle.com/3...

Will reforms fix the SEND funding crisis? Councils may face a rise requests for EHCPs to secure special school places ahead of the reforms

Some councils will remain in financial trouble even after the government intervenes on SEND deficits – and could face clamour from families and schools to get statutory support before reforms come into effect

schoolsweek.co.uk/will-reforms-fix-the-sen...

image shows a sepia colourised trojan horse image

NEW POST: We take a close look at the proposed “Specialist Provision Packages” and discover they’re more of a Trojan horse, reducing the #EHCP rights of children with SEND. www.specialneedsjungle.com/s...

The SEND reforms are out - now the real tests begin The government has finally announced its plans for special educational needs provision. Tes’ SEND and inclusion editor John Roberts assesses the challenges to come

Oops, forgot www.tes.com/magazine/ana...

@johngroberts.bsky.social put it very diplomatically, but special school was the first time my kids formed friendships, formed part of a community that wanted to be with them, gossiped, had arguments then made up. The community we lived in offered none of that

I’m sure the prospect of cheaper mainstream provision is attractive to them in its own right…

…but I get a sense that they also see mainstream as intrinsically better: the tin-eared emphasis on better attainment, and special school placements taking kids away from ‘their friends in the community’

The White Paper There are some good bits, but also an approach that isn't going to work for my family

I wrote about the SEND proposals in the White Paper, and my view of how we got here politically. V personal - no one's views but mine.

open.substack.com/pub/jimlaude...

Children's deaths due to failures of state provision should be a massive story.

Story 1 by Max Kendix of The Times, tweet posted at 14:35 on Friday 20 February Councils forced to spend £20k a year for a single child to receive horse therapy to help with special educational needs EHCPs used for therapy alpacas, dogs, angling, and aerial arts. Costs of horse-related spending alone is £1.9m across 22 councils this year, for 119 cases

Second story by Max Kendix, tweet posted on 22 February Times investigation: They had special educational needs. The state failed them so badly that they took their own lives We uncover the stories of 20 young people whose recent deaths are blamed on failures by schools, councils and hospitals to give them the support they needed

A tale of two Times SEND stories on X, the everything app: same paper, same journalist, 48 hours apart

Story about spending on equine therapy - 136,000 views, 111 RTs, 95 comments, many foam-flecked

Story about 20+ system-induced teen suicides - 4,000 views, 30 RTs, 7 mostly scornful comments

No, just a press release on funding: I’m out of action today, but other SNJ folk are on the case

Inclusive Mainstream Fund E1.6bn 2026-2029 Broad inclusive provision funding Experts at Hand E1.8bn 2026-2029 LA-commissioned specialist support services (eg EP, SALT, OT) Best Start Family Hubs (SEND Offer) £200m Unclear Equip hubs with SEND support / outreach offer Teacher Training for SEND £200m 2026-2029 Training course across multiple stas of SEND for all teaching High Needs Provisional Capital Allocation £3.74bn 2025-2030 SEND capital funding (infrastructure, buildings) to create around 60,000 "specialist places," plus "inclusion bases" for all secondary schools

There’ll be lots of references to different pots of SEND funding today: some new, some
not. Here’s a table showing recent announcements