Full SEND (special educational needs and disability) area inspections will resume from June, ahead of the anticipated return of normal school checks in the new academic year, Ofsted has said.
From April, the watchdog will start revisiting areas where its last inspections sparked “significant concerns” about SEND provision.
It will then resume full SEND area inspections from June “at the earliest”.
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The SEND visits will come before the return to mainstream school inspections, which Ofsted expects to resume no earlier than September.
The SEND area inspections were put on hold in July last year because the disruption to education, health and care services during the coronavirus pandemic made it “impossible” to reach valid judgements.
However, Ofsted said that in the interim period, it would conduct visits with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to understand what children and young people with SEND had experienced during the lockdown.
The watchdog said in a statement: “We plan to restart full area SEND inspections from June 2021 at the earliest. These visits will be to areas that have not yet been inspected under the current framework. The precise restart date for full inspections will be kept under review, subject to government guidance and any Covid-19 restrictions in place at the time.
“We are currently developing a new area SEND inspection framework. We will continue to engage stakeholders on the framework’s design and we will consult publicly as part of its development.”
