While the government’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) plan prompted a broad spectrum of responses when it was published earlier this year, there was one point everyone agreed on: it would do very little to improve provision for children with SEND in the short term.

The reality for most of the children with SEND currently in the system is that schools are going to have to try to make things work despite the barriers that exist - and, increasingly, staff are finding innovative ways to do that. 

Scaling these solutions can be tough, but there are trusts that have managed to run multi-school approaches. We highlight five that are proving particularly successful. 

1. A multi-focus strategy

There are four main strands to how the E-ACT multi-academy trust approaches SEND. 

“First and foremost, it’s about creating your own experts,” says Simon Tanner, national director of SEND for E-ACT. “With the demand (and cost) of using external professionals, such as educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, we have committed to developing our own speech and language lead practitioners to support identification and intervention.”

The second strand is support for Sendcos. Tanner explains that the trust has established an aspiring Sendco course to better prepare staff with a passion for SEND to progress into the role. This builds upon a previous drive to have a deputy Sendco in post across every academy to support succession planning and add capacity to the role.

“The third focus is embedding SEND-focused CPD,” reveals Tanner. “This year, we have completed a trust-wide SEND improvement programme where every academy completes an action plan highlighting the areas of strength and development. Coupled with this is a series of CPD sessions delivered by leading SEND experts and facilitated by Whole Education to strengthen networks.”

And the fourth strand? It’s all about SEND having a seat at the top table, says Tanner.

“The world of SEND can be incredibly lonely and isolating,” he explains. “For those MATs that have taken the strategic decision to employ a director of SEND/inclusion, this demonstrates a commitment to this vital and growing area of education. It helps Sendcos have a voice at the very top table and equally is someone who can support problem solving, provide advice and guidance, and ensure that the strategic element of the role is front and centre rather than becoming buried in the operational.”

2. CPD, pedagogy and professional development

Our Community Multi Academy Trust is a mixed MAT of 10 primary, infant and junior schools across Kent, including one specialist resource provision school for speech and language difficulties.

Last year, it appointed Cassie Young as inclusion executive officer so that, as she puts it, “pupils with SEND are always a priority in decision making and strategic planning” within the MAT.

To aid this work, the MAT’s executive team now also consists of both a standards executive officer and a standards executive officer for the early years foundation stage, and inclusion officers who work alongside school leaders and their teams to raise standards for all pupils.

“These roles allow us to triangulate need,” explains Young. “For example, if the EYFS officer identifies some need for early intervention, in agreement with the school leaders, I can work on finding the most suitable professional or CPD to support.”

This work led the trust to realise it needed to enhance its provision in this area, and so it has hired an occupational therapist, a speech and language therapist and more educational therapists to support pupils as quickly and efficiently as possible.

‘If the culture, behaviour and curriculum aspects of each unique school are right, all children will flourish’

“We needed to create our own pathways,” says Young, who says it is now a lot easier for a school to get access to educational psychology, speech and language therapy or occupational therapy for pupils. 

The team don’t just look at interventions, however; they look at ongoing inclusion processes, too. 

“Both the standards officer and I are working with all schools this term, looking at writing across the curriculum, with a focus on accessibility and inclusion of pupils with SEND,” she explains. “This will highlight strengths and areas for development, which in turn will allow us to share good practice and pool resources.”

To build on this work, the trust has also created a centralised CPD portal accessible to all staff and stakeholders. This offers access to research, documents, training and safeguarding so all staff have the latest information to support pupils with SEND and there is uniformity across the trust.

Young adds that having a central function that facilitates the sharing of best practice across different schools means everyone benefits. 

“If the culture, behaviour and curriculum aspects of each unique school are right, all children, and especially those with SEND, will flourish and make progress,” says Young. 

3. Conferences, inclusion and pupil feedback 

In September 2022, Jane Nolan took on a new role as director of inclusion at Ormiston Academies Trust, which comprises 43 schools throughout England including four alternative provision schools and one special school that serve more than 30,000 pupils between them.

It was recognition that, in order to do everything required to support pupils with SEND, the trust needed a dedicated job role: “Having a role at central level ensures everything is enhanced and joined up,” says Nolan.

Since taking on the role, she now leads regular inclusion meetings looking at both trust-wide and school-focused issues, spotting trends and linking schools where there are common challenges or approaches that could be shared more widely. 

“It ensures we are not duplicating and that we are sharing all information,” she adds.

The trust has also hired three new full-time SEND lead practitioners to work with staff so they are more informed about issues such as the link between SEND and behaviour, mental health issues and exclusions. They also ensure that, through CPD, coaching and mentoring, staff know how to better support pupils as a first point of contact.

“The majority of the lead practitioners’ time is that direct work with Sendcos - upskilling, empowering, supporting so that they in turn are able to advise and guide and support staff in their academies,” adds Nolan. 

The trust also runs an annual conference for its Sendcos on areas such as mental health and has dedicated CPD strands on SEND for both Sendcos and wider teaching staff.

“We do that on a variety of issues, from large to niche-specific needs, such as pathological demand avoidance,” says Nolan. “We also provide bespoke CPD on SEND to teachers, teaching assistants and support staff in academies who aren’t SEND specialists.”

Finally, to ensure the voice of pupils is heard, Nolan recently set up a national student inclusion advisory board (SIAB) to get feedback from pupils and enhance their work in this area.

For example, she says the first meeting of the SIAB saw pupils have input into the trust’s behaviour policy while another meeting, which had a specific focus on SEND, helped the trust to realise that pupils did not understand how and why reasonable adjustments can be used for pupils with SEND.

“This led to us agreeing to have more explicit teaching of the matter, eg, through an assembly programme,” she explains. “So we now have a package of assembly ideas, such as short films, all child friendly, so they understand why children can be given reasonable adjustments - and this has been really valuable.”

Nolan says the impact of all this has been clear to see, not least through its Progress 8 and Attainment 8 score: “Given that Ormiston has schools that are largely in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation, that’s really good.”

4. In-house specialist provision

The Northampton Primary Academy Trust operates 14 schools around the Northampton, Milton Keynes and Wellingborough areas. Of its 5,000 or so pupils, 17.5 per cent are classified as having SEND, and in some schools, this figure is as high as 30.3 per cent at the time of writing. 

Furthermore, CEO Julia Kedwards says they were increasingly sending more pupils to special schools but were concerned this was not necessarily the best place for them and it was also overwhelming the local provision that did exist.

To help on both counts, the trust decided to open special unit (SU) provisions in five of its schools, operating as a halfway house between mainstream and special schools. Kedwards says they worked closely with the local authority to set these up and there are now over 100 children with specialist placement education, health and care plans in the different SUs. 

“Each SU has a specialism and caters for children with specific needs, for example, autistic spectrum disorders (Headlands Primary) or social, emotional or mental health needs (Blackthorn Primary),” she says.

‘All our children benefit from working and sharing school life together in our inclusive and thriving school’

All SU place allocations are made by the local authority, which Kedwards says gives them more options for placements and stops them having to be taken out of mainstream education entirely - offering benefits for all involved.

“The local authority can allocate specialist places in a much more economical way than opening more special schools,” says Kedwards. “It also means that the children feel part of their local community, that they’re still going to school with other children where they live.”

For staff, too, the change has been profound. Darren Smith, headteacher of Headlands Primary School, which runs an SU for 50 children who are mainly on the autism spectrum and have communication issues, admits it has been hard work but “an honour and a privilege” to deliver.

“Ensuring that our SU provision meets the needs of our children with SEND while also ensuring that our mainstream children are receiving the best quality of education possible is a challenge, but one that we relish safe in the knowledge that all our children benefit from working and sharing school life together in our inclusive and thriving school.” 

5. Building a bridge to boost outcomes 

At the Northern Education Trust, a MAT of 10 primary and 12 secondary schools across the North East and North West of England, the answer to providing for pupils with SEND is something called the Bridge.

“The Bridge is somewhere that is quite calm and doesn’t have as much footfall as other parts of the school,” explains senior executive principal Michael Robson, who is responsible for school improvement and performance, and currently oversees seven secondary academies. 

“It’s basically a specific learning space for those vulnerable children who need a very nurturing environment to connect with their studies.”

The Bridge concept is something the MAT’s CEO, Rob Tarn, brought with him from his previous MAT, and so he wanted to do something similar again.

As such, each school has its own “Bridge” and Robson explains they can be used by a pupil for a variety of reasons: “If you’re a child who’s got temporary mobility issues, or health issues or a medical condition, and you can’t get into your normal mainstream lessons, your work could be delivered to you in the Bridge - that’s your base,” he says. 

“Similarly, if you’re a child undergoing an assessment and things are not working in your mainstream classroom, you might have a placement in the Bridge for a short while until things settle down.”

Robson says some children will do all of their work in the Bridge, some will do some of their lessons in the Bridge and other children will attend all of their lessons as normal, but they might visit the Bridge during break or lunchtime to get some extra support.

Children also receive intense wraparound care and support and do work on their personal development, too. Staff work with parents to ensure there is close collaboration on how everyone can best support the child. 

Managing the Bridge is a support member of staff, and the ratio of staff to children is kept as small as possible. The children complete the work they would be completing in their usual classrooms. 

Children are referred to the Bridge based on weekly discussions between all pastoral staff in the school. 

At a recent inspection at one school - North Shore Academy - inspectors cited the focus on providing for SEND as an area of particularly good work.

Robson says the success they have achieved is by no means a case of “job done” but it shows how working to adapt provision for pupils with SEND can have real impact, and reduces the need for pupils to leave mainstream education.

Simon Creasey is a freelance journalist