Our response to the SEND consultation
In March 2026 we submitted formal evidence to the DfE's consultation on SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First. This is our full response — all 39 questions answered, reproduced exactly as submitted.
In March 2026 we submitted formal evidence to the Department for Education's consultation on SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First. We answered all thirty-nine questions. This is our full response, reproduced here exactly as submitted.
Submitted: 23 March 2026 · Response ID: ANON-NWUY-VQXP-2 · Submitted by: My School View Ltd
Why we responded
We build software for SENDCos, so the shape of the new system matters to us and to the schools we work with. But most of what follows isn't about software. It's about what a workable SEND system needs from the ground up: structured plans, shared data, parents who can see what's happening, and evidence that builds as you go rather than being reconstructed under pressure. Where the technology is relevant, we've said so plainly.
Involving families and using evidence
1. How can we make sure children, young people and their families have a genuine say in decisions about SEND?
Parents can't co-produce what they can't see. The single most effective thing the DfE could do is require that digital ISP platforms include a parent-facing view as standard, not as an optional add-on. Parents should be able to read their child's plan, see whether outcomes are being met, and add their own perspective at any point, not just at a scheduled meeting.
At the local level, LAs should publish anonymised SEND data annually: ISP numbers, escalation rates, assessment waiting times. Give parent groups something concrete to hold their LA accountable against.
Children's own views need capturing directly, not filtered through a teacher or parent summary. A distinct pupil voice section in every ISP, completed by the child in an age-appropriate format, should be a minimum expectation.
2. How can we make sure that high-quality evidence and best practice inform decisions about SEND?
The ISP itself should be the evidence base. If ISPs are structured properly and connected to live MIS data, schools build a longitudinal record of what's working without any extra admin. Attendance trends, intervention history, APDR cycles, outcomes over time — it's all there, accumulating naturally through normal use.
The problem today is that evidence gets compiled retrospectively, usually when a SENDCo is writing up an EHCP referral under time pressure. That's not evidence-based practice, it's paperwork archaeology.
Best practice example: require ISP platforms to log every review cycle with dated outcomes and RAG-rated progress. Over two or three terms, you get a clear picture of whether provision is having an impact. That record should then feed directly into any escalation decision, so the evidence for moving a pupil from SEN Support to specialist provision already exists in the system rather than being reconstructed from memory and filing cabinets.
The DfE could accelerate this by publishing a standard data schema for ISPs early, so that aggregated, anonymised data can be compared across schools and regions. That's how you move from isolated best practice to system-wide learning.
Part one: putting children and young people first
3. How can we ensure that children are best supported by the Universal offer?
Fund training, not just awareness. Most classroom teachers have had little or no formal SEND training, so the universal offer falls down at the point of delivery. The £200m SEND teacher training commitment is welcome, but it needs to reach every classroom teacher, not just SENDCos and TAs.
Beyond training, the universal offer depends on schools being able to spot which pupils need additional support before they fall behind. That means teachers need access to simple, role-appropriate data — attendance patterns, behaviour trends, academic progress — without having to request it from the SENDCo or dig through spreadsheets. If a class teacher can see that a pupil's attendance has dropped and attainment is slipping, they can act early. If that information sits in a system only the SENDCo can access, early intervention doesn't happen.
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund gives schools budget for this. The DfE should be explicit that it can be spent on tools and training, not just additional staffing.
4. How can we ensure that children in the Targeted layer are best supported?
Structure and consistency. The risk with the Targeted layer is that support varies wildly depending on which school a child attends and which SENDCo happens to be in post. ISPs are the right mechanism to fix this, but only if there's a common expectation of what a Targeted ISP actually contains and how often it's reviewed.
Termly APDR cycles should be the minimum. Each review should record what was put in place, whether it worked, and what changes next. If three cycles pass without meaningful progress, that's a clear signal the pupil may need to move to Targeted Plus or be assessed for specialist provision. The ISP becomes the escalation pathway rather than a separate referral process bolted on afterwards.
The other gap is parental involvement. At the Targeted level, many parents don't even know their child has an ISP. That needs to change.
5. How can we ensure that children in the Targeted Plus layer are best supported?
This is where the quality of the evidence trail really matters. Targeted Plus pupils are often on the path towards specialist provision, so the data captured at this stage needs to be strong enough to support an assessment if it comes to that.
That means professional involvement should be logged properly — EP visits, SALT input, OT recommendations — with dates, actions, and outcomes, not just a note that a referral was made. Intervention costs should be tracked too. LAs routinely ask schools to demonstrate what they've spent before agreeing to assess, so schools need that information structured and ready, not buried in invoices and emails.
The Experts at Hand service could make a real difference here, provided schools can access specialists quickly rather than joining the same waiting lists that already exist. Speed matters at this level. A pupil stuck waiting six months for an EP assessment is a pupil whose ISP can't progress.
6. How can we ensure that children in the Specialist layer are best supported?
Continuity of information. When a child moves into specialist provision, too much gets lost in the handover. If they've had a well-maintained ISP through the Targeted layers, that record should transfer with them — not as a PDF attachment, but as structured data the receiving school or setting can actually use.
The new-format EHCPs need to be living documents in the same way ISPs should be. Annual reviews that simply confirm "provision continues" aren't good enough. The same APDR discipline that applies at the Targeted level should apply here, with clear outcomes, progress tracking, and regular parental input.
One practical concern: the transition assessments at phase changes from 2030 will be high-stakes moments for families. If the decision between a new-format EHCP and an ISP is based on a well-structured evidence record built over years, families are more likely to trust the outcome. If it's based on a single assessment snapshot, expect appeals to remain high.
7. How do you think early years settings, schools, and colleges can best support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people?
Spotting problems early is more useful than responding to crises. Schools already hold the data that flags when a pupil is struggling — attendance dropping, behaviour incidents increasing, withdrawal from activities — but that information often sits in separate systems and nobody joins the dots until things escalate.
Staff training matters here too. Teachers and TAs need to feel confident having initial conversations with pupils about wellbeing, not just confident enough to make a referral. The reflex to immediately pass it to a specialist creates bottlenecks and delays.
The SEND overlap is significant. A large proportion of pupils with SEND also experience anxiety, low self-esteem, or other wellbeing difficulties, and these are often entangled with their learning needs. ISPs should capture wellbeing alongside academic progress, not treat them as separate concerns managed by different people in different systems.
8. Do you agree that the refreshed 'areas of development' will support educators to understand and address barriers to learning and participation?
Generally, yes. The current four categories of need are well understood by SENDCos but they can be blunt instruments. A pupil rarely fits neatly into one box, and the categories don't always help a class teacher understand what to actually do differently in their lesson.
If the refreshed areas of development are framed around functional barriers to learning rather than diagnostic labels, they'll be more useful in practice. A teacher knowing that a pupil struggles with working memory and processing speed is more actionable than knowing they're classified as SpLD.
The risk is that a change in terminology creates confusion and retraining costs without changing outcomes. The transition period needs clear mapping from old categories to new, and ISP platforms will need to support both during the changeover. The DfE should publish this mapping early so schools and software providers can prepare.
9. What arrangements would best support effective joint working between early years providers, Best Start Family Hubs, health, local authorities, and parents for children with SEND in the early years?
Shared data. The biggest obstacle to joint working is that each agency holds its own records in its own system and nobody has the full picture. A child can be known to a health visitor, a nursery, and a Family Hub, with none of them aware of what the others are doing.
A common identifier and a shared record that follows the child across services would make a practical difference. It doesn't need to be one monolithic system, but there needs to be a way for professionals to see what support is already in place before they add their own. The ISP could serve this function from school age onwards, but something equivalent is needed for the early years.
The other priority is speed. Early years is where early identification matters most, and it's also where waiting lists are longest. If a two-year-old is flagged at a health check, the pathway to support shouldn't take eighteen months to activate.
10. How can the EYFS two-year-old progress check and the Healthy Child Programme development review be improved so that children's needs are identified and supported more quickly?
Combine them into a single check. Two separate reviews by two separate professionals covering much of the same ground is inefficient for services and confusing for parents. A joint assessment at age two, with health and education input in one visit, would catch more and waste less.
The output of that check also needs to go somewhere useful. Currently a two-year progress check can flag a concern, but there's no consistent mechanism to ensure it triggers a referral or follow-up. If the check identifies a developmental delay, there should be an automatic pathway to the next step, not a suggestion that the parent "mention it to their GP."
Practically, the check findings should feed into whatever record follows the child into nursery and school. If a child was flagged at two for speech and language delay, their Reception teacher shouldn't be discovering that for the first time at age four.
11. What should the top three priority areas be for building and sharing evidence within the National Inclusion Standards?
One, what provision is actually in place and whether it's working. Schools should be reporting how many pupils have ISPs, what interventions they're delivering, and what progress looks like across APDR cycles. Not as an accountability stick, but as a baseline so schools can benchmark themselves against similar settings.
Two, workforce capacity. How many SENDCos, how much dedicated SEND time, what specialist access the school has. You can't judge inclusion without knowing what resources are behind it.
Three, transition outcomes. What happens to SEND pupils when they move between phases or leave the school. Too many children fall through gaps at transition points and nobody tracks whether the support they had actually carried over.
12. What are the most important issues for national training to cover, to help support children and young people with SEND?
How to differentiate teaching in a mixed classroom without relying on a TA to do it. That's the single biggest gap. Most teachers default to "the TA will support them" because they haven't been trained in any alternative.
After that, understanding what an ISP is and what their role in it looks like. Class teachers will need to contribute to ISP reviews and deliver the provision recorded in them. If they see ISPs as "the SENDCo's paperwork," the whole system breaks down.
Third, recognising when a pupil's needs are escalating beyond what universal or targeted support can address, and knowing what to do about it. Teachers shouldn't need to diagnose, but they should be able to articulate what they've tried and why it isn't enough.
13. What practical actions can help teachers, educators and leaders manage workload whilst implementing these changes?
Auto-population. If ISP platforms pull data from the school's MIS automatically, the SENDCo's job becomes reviewing and updating a plan rather than building one from scratch every term. That's the difference between 45 minutes per pupil and five minutes. For a school with 150 SEND pupils doing termly reviews, that's hundreds of hours saved.
Beyond that, don't ask teachers to enter the same information twice. If attendance, behaviour, and attainment data already exists in the MIS, it shouldn't need re-entering into a separate SEND system. Integration isn't a nice-to-have, it's the only way this is workable at scale.
Schools also need permission to phase this in. Expecting every ISP to be perfect from day one will create exactly the workload crisis the reforms are trying to avoid. Let schools start with their highest-need pupils and build outward.
14. How should the SENCO role evolve to better meet the needs of children and young people with SEND?
SENDCos need to be strategic, not administrative. Right now most of their time goes on chasing paperwork, compiling evidence packs, and manually updating records. If the digital tools are right, that admin should largely disappear, freeing them to do what they're actually qualified for: coordinating provision, leading staff, and working with families.
The role should sit within senior leadership, with protected time that's ringfenced and not eroded by cover teaching or general admin duties. A SENDCo who's also teaching four days a week can't meaningfully oversee ISPs for 150 pupils.
The mandatory SENCo qualification is welcome, but it needs updating to reflect the new system. If SENDCos are expected to manage digital ISPs, use data to track the graduated approach, and coordinate multi-agency input, the training should cover those skills explicitly rather than assuming they'll pick it up.
Part two: new Targeted and Targeted Plus support that is written into law
15. What would provide assurance for families that an Individual Support Plan (ISP) is high quality and contains the essential information?
Parents being able to see it. That sounds obvious, but the biggest assurance problem right now is that most parents have no visibility of what's in their child's plan between meetings. A parent portal where they can view the ISP at any time, see what provision is in place, and check whether outcomes are being met would do more for assurance than any quality framework.
Beyond access, the ISP itself should contain dated evidence, not just intentions. If it says "weekly small group phonics intervention," there should be a record of whether that actually happened and what impact it had. Plans full of aspirations with no progress tracking don't give families confidence.
A simple quality marker would be: does this ISP show what was tried, whether it worked, and what changed as a result? If it does, it's a useful document. If it reads the same at every review, something's wrong.
16. How can we ensure Individual Support Plans are clear, concise and practical for professionals to use?
Standardise the structure but not the content. Every ISP should follow the same template — strengths, barriers, provision, outcomes, review — so any professional picking it up knows where to find what they need. But the detail within each section should be written by the SENDCo for that specific child, not selected from dropdown menus that produce generic plans.
Keep them short. If a class teacher won't read it in five minutes, it's too long. The provision section especially should tell them what to do differently for this pupil in their classroom, in plain language. Save the detailed intervention logs and APDR histories for the SENDCo's view.
The practical test is whether a supply teacher could pick up an ISP on a Monday morning and know how to support that child by period one. If it passes that test, it's working.
17. How can we best support transition for young people with SEND into post-16 provision and further education, training or employment?
The ISP record should follow the young person, not stop at the school gate. If a pupil has had years of structured support documented through ISPs, that information is gold for a college or training provider trying to work out what they need. Right now most of it gets lost.
Post-16 providers need the information early enough to act on it. A transition meeting in July for a September start isn't enough time to put provision in place. Year 10 isn't too early to start planning, especially for pupils with complex needs.
The other gap is that post-16 destinations are rarely tracked back to the school. If a SENDCo knew that their SEND leavers consistently struggled in the first term of college, they'd plan transitions differently. That feedback loop barely exists.
18. How can we make sure that every area can meet the full range of needs through Inclusion Bases?
Inclusion Bases only work if they're genuinely integrated into the mainstream school, not just a separate unit with a different name. The risk is that schools treat them as somewhere to send pupils rather than a resource the whole school draws on. Staff in Inclusion Bases should be working with class teachers, not replacing them.
Local authorities need to map where the gaps actually are before deciding which schools get them. That means looking at the data: which need types have the longest waiting lists for specialist places, which areas have the least provision, where are pupils travelling furthest. The capital funding should follow that analysis, not go to whichever school applies first.
Staffing is the harder problem. You can build the room, but recruiting specialist staff to work in them is a different challenge entirely. The workforce plan needs to come before or alongside the capital programme, not after it.
19. How can we make sure that Inclusion Bases help children and young people succeed in mainstream settings?
Measure it. If a pupil spends time in an Inclusion Base and then returns to mainstream lessons, track whether they're actually coping better — attendance, engagement, progress. Without that data, you can't tell whether the Base is a stepping stone back to the classroom or a permanent withdrawal by another name.
The pupils themselves should have a say in how and when they use it. An Inclusion Base that a pupil chooses to access for specific support feels very different from one they're sent to because a teacher can't manage them in class. The former builds independence, the latter reinforces exclusion.
20. What arrangements are needed between local area partners to deliver the Experts at Hand offer effectively?
A single referral route. If a SENDCo has to work out which agency to contact, fill in different forms for each, and chase separately, it won't be quick regardless of how many specialists are available. One request, triaged centrally, with a guaranteed response time.
The response time matters more than anything. Schools don't need a perfect multi-agency assessment in six months. They need practical advice from a specialist within weeks, so they can adjust provision while the pupil is still in front of them. Set a maximum wait target and publish performance against it.
Specialists also need to feed their input back into the child's ISP, not produce a separate report that sits in someone's inbox. If an EP visits and makes recommendations, those should appear in the ISP's professional involvement record so the SENDCo and class teacher can act on them immediately.
Part three: specialist support for those with complex needs
21. What needs to be in place so that children and young people with low incidence, highly complex needs can always access the right specialist placement?
Regional planning. Individual LAs can't sustain specialist provision for every low-incidence need within their own boundaries — the numbers don't work. Regional commissioning, where neighbouring authorities jointly fund and plan specialist places, is the only realistic way to cover the full range without massive duplication.
Families need transparency about what's available and where. A national register of specialist placements, searchable by need type and vacancy, would save months of parents and SENDCos ringing round trying to find somewhere with a space.
The funding model also needs to work for the receiving school. If a specialist placement costs significantly more than the funding that follows the pupil, schools will quietly avoid taking the most complex children. The gap between place cost and funding is where provision breaks down in practice.
22. How can Specialist Provision Packages be designed to effectively support the main types of need we currently recognise?
Start from what the child needs, not from what the system offers. The current EHCP process often works backwards — families fight to get a plan, then discover the provision named in it isn't available locally. Specialist Provision Packages should begin with an honest assessment of what's actually deliverable before committing it to a legal document.
The packages need to be specific enough to be enforceable but flexible enough to adapt as the child develops. A provision package written at age seven shouldn't still be dictating the same support at age twelve without review. Annual reviews need teeth — a genuine reassessment of whether the provision is still right, not a rubber-stamping exercise.
For the main need types, the DfE should publish example packages showing what good looks like for each, so there's a common baseline rather than every LA inventing its own version.
23. We propose that EHCPs will guarantee educational provision set out in a Specialist Provision Package, with day-to-day provision captured in Individual Support Plans. What is needed to make these proposals work effectively?
The ISP and the Specialist Provision Package need to talk to each other. If the Package specifies weekly speech and language therapy and the ISP tracks day-to-day provision, there has to be a clear link between the two so everyone can see whether what was guaranteed is actually being delivered. Otherwise you've just split one document into two without solving anything.
Schools need clarity on who owns what. The SENDCo manages the ISP, but who's responsible for ensuring the Specialist Provision Package is being fulfilled? If it's the LA, they need access to the ISP data showing delivery. If it's the school, they need the authority and funding to commission what's in the Package without going back to the LA every time.
The transition from old-format EHCPs to this new structure is the biggest practical risk. Families with existing EHCPs will be anxious about losing protections. The DfE needs to be very clear that the legal guarantee isn't weakening, it's just being structured differently.
24. We propose creating a more direct route to Specialist Provision Packages and EHCP assessments for children under 5 with complex needs. How can we make sure this works in practice?
Health professionals need the power to trigger the process directly. For under-fives with complex needs, the first people to identify them are usually paediatricians, health visitors, or therapists — not schools. If they have to refer back through the LA and wait for an educational assessment before anything starts, you've lost months that matter most at that age.
The evidence requirements should reflect the child's age. Expecting three APDR cycles of school-based intervention data from a three-year-old who isn't in a school setting yet doesn't make sense. The evidence base for early years referrals will look different — developmental assessments, therapy reports, parent observations — and the process should be designed to accept that from the start.
25. What would you expect to be considered as part of the needs assessment, for example evidence and expert or professional input?
The ISP record itself, if one exists. Multiple APDR cycles showing what was tried, what worked, and what didn't is the most useful evidence any panel can have. It tells you the story of the graduated approach without anyone having to compile it retrospectively.
Beyond that: attendance trends, behaviour patterns, attainment data relative to expected progress, and professional input from anyone who's worked with the child — EP, SALT, OT, CAMHS. All dated, all with outcomes recorded, not just "referral made."
Parent and pupil voice should carry equal weight to professional reports. A parent's account of how their child copes at home after school tells you things no classroom observation ever will.
What shouldn't be in scope: requiring families to obtain private assessments to fill gaps left by services they couldn't access. If the waiting list for an EP is eighteen months, the absence of an EP report shouldn't hold up the assessment.
26. What factors should LAs take into account in proposing to parents and young people a list of potential settings to name on a plan?
Whether the setting can actually deliver the provision in the package, not just whether it has a space. A school that's named on a plan but doesn't have the staff or expertise to meet the child's needs isn't a real option.
Distance and travel time matter enormously, especially for younger children. A placement that's technically excellent but involves a ninety-minute journey each way isn't in the child's best interests.
The child's own preference should feature, particularly for older pupils. A setting they've visited and feel comfortable with is more likely to succeed than one chosen purely on paper.
And LAs need to be honest with families about what's realistically available rather than listing options they know are full. A list of settings with no vacancies isn't a choice, it's a formality.
27. What information and support do parents need to make a decision about which setting will be best for their child?
The right to visit. No amount of written information replaces walking through a school and seeing how it actually operates. Every setting on the list should offer a visit before parents are asked to decide.
After that, parents need honest information about what the school can and can't do. How many pupils with similar needs does it currently support? What specialist staff does it have? What's the turnover been like? Schools put their best foot forward in prospectuses — parents need the unvarnished version too.
Plain-language summaries of what the Specialist Provision Package will look like in practice at each setting would help. Not the legal wording, but "here's what a typical week would look like for your child at this school."
28. What do you think is the right maximum length of time for a temporary placement in Alternative Provision (AP) schools?
One term. Long enough to do meaningful work on whatever caused the placement, short enough that the pupil doesn't lose connection with their mainstream school entirely. Beyond a term, temporary starts to become permanent by default, and the return gets harder with every week.
The important thing isn't the time limit itself though — it's what happens during it. A twelve-week AP placement with a clear plan, regular reviews, and a structured transition back is far more effective than six weeks of containment followed by a cliff-edge return. The mainstream school needs to stay involved throughout, not treat AP as someone else's problem until the pupil reappears.
29. Do you agree that the proposed changes to regulate the Independent Special Schools (ISS) sector will lead to suitable placements being available at a fair cost?
Regulation is overdue. Some independent special schools charge extraordinary fees because they can — demand outstrips supply and LAs have no alternative. Regulation should bring more transparency to what's being charged and what's being delivered for the money.
Whether it reduces costs depends on whether the supply problem gets fixed alongside it. Regulating prices without creating more specialist places just means the same schools charge less but have longer waiting lists. The capital investment in Inclusion Bases and specialist places needs to move at the same pace as the regulatory changes.
The quality threshold matters too. The goal should be ensuring every ISS meets a consistent standard, not driving smaller providers out of the market through compliance costs they can't absorb. Fewer providers means less choice, which pushes costs back up.
Part four: reforming the system to reward inclusion
30. How should settings be held accountable for how they spend their Inclusive Mainstream funding?
Through outcomes, not receipts. Schools should show what they spent it on and whether it made a difference, not just produce an itemised list of purchases. If a school spent its funding on a TA and can show improved progress for the pupils that TA worked with, that's accountability. If they spent it on a TA and nothing changed, that's a conversation worth having.
ISP data is the natural mechanism for this. If every SEND pupil has a plan showing provision and progress, you can see at a school level whether the funding is translating into results. That's more meaningful than a spreadsheet of invoices submitted to the LA.
The DfE should resist the temptation to create a separate reporting framework for this. The ISP infrastructure is already being built — use it.
31. Do you agree that more SEND funding should sit directly within mainstream budgets?
Yes. Schools that have the money can act quickly. Schools that have to apply to the LA for every intervention face delays that hurt the pupils waiting.
The current system also creates a perverse incentive: schools are encouraged to push for EHCPs partly because that's where the funding is. If mainstream budgets include meaningful SEND funding from the start, schools can invest in early support before needs escalate to the point where a statutory plan is the only route to resources.
The risk is accountability — some schools will absorb SEND funding into general budgets and nothing changes for SEND pupils. That's where the ISP data becomes important. If funding is sitting in schools, there needs to be a visible link between that money and the provision recorded in individual plans.
32. We propose that every school becomes part of a local SEND group. Do you agree that this aligns with the aim for all schools to be part of high-quality, community-based trusts?
In principle, yes. Pooling resources means smaller schools can access specialist support they couldn't afford alone, and it encourages schools to think collectively about local SEND provision rather than in isolation.
The concern is governance. Who decides how pooled funds are allocated? If it's dominated by the largest school in the group, smaller schools lose out. If it's the LA, you've just recreated the system you're trying to move away from. The group needs genuine shared decision-making with every school having a voice proportionate to their SEND population, not their size.
There's also a risk that pooling becomes a reason for individual schools to do less. "The group handles that" can't become an excuse for not investing in your own universal and targeted provision. The pooled resource should cover what no single school can do alone — specialist outreach, shared EP time, training — not replace what each school should already be doing.
33. How should disagreements about membership, provision, or funding in groups of schools for SEND be resolved?
An independent arbiter, not the LA acting as both funder and judge. Someone outside the group who can hear both sides and make a binding decision within a set timeframe. Disputes that drag on for months hurt the pupils caught in the middle.
Clear terms of reference agreed upfront would prevent most disagreements in the first place. How funds are allocated, what each school contributes, what happens when a school joins or leaves — if it's written down before the group starts, there's less to argue about later.
If a school genuinely can't resolve a dispute through the group, they need an exit route that doesn't leave their SEND pupils stranded. The children's provision shouldn't depend on whether adults can agree.
34. How can we ensure the most effective use of these local partnership groups?
Shared data. If every school in the group is using structured ISPs, you can see at a local level where provision is strong, where there are gaps, and where resources could be better deployed. Without that, partnership meetings are just conversations based on anecdote.
Give them a specific job. Groups that exist to "collaborate" without a clear remit drift into talking shops. Commissioning shared specialist support, coordinating training, planning transition between schools in the group — those are concrete functions that justify the structure.
And keep the SENDCos in the room. These groups will be tempted to become headteacher forums. The people who actually know what's working on the ground need to be central to the decision-making, not feeding in through a written report.
35. Which stakeholders are important for the success of local partnership groups, and why?
SENDCos, because they know what provision each school actually has and what's missing. Parents, because they see the gaps the system doesn't measure. Health and therapy providers, because half of SEND provision depends on services that sit outside education. And someone from the LA who can actually make commissioning decisions, not just attend and take notes.
Headteachers matter for buy-in and budget sign-off, but the operational knowledge sits with SENDCos. If the group is all senior leaders and no practitioners, decisions will be made at the wrong altitude.
36. How can we build stronger collaboration and a culture of improvement through local SEND strategic plans?
Publish them. A strategic plan that sits in an LA cabinet report nobody reads doesn't change behaviour. If schools, parents, and providers can see what the local priorities are and how progress is being tracked, there's actual pressure to deliver.
Base them on real data, not aspirations. How many pupils are waiting for assessments, what's the local provision map, where are the workforce gaps. Honest diagnostics first, then actions that address what the data shows rather than what sounds good in a strategy document.
And review them annually with input from the people on the ground — SENDCos, parents, health professionals — not just the people who wrote them.
37. What information, advice and guidance can best support children, young people and their families to ensure greater fairness across the system?
A single place to find it. The current system scatters information across LA websites, school policies, charity guides, and parent forums. Families who know how to navigate this do well. Families who don't get left behind. That's the unfairness.
Plain-language guides on what your child is entitled to at each tier — Universal, Targeted, Specialist — written for parents, not for lawyers. Updated when the reforms change things, not left to go stale.
And independent advice that isn't funded by the body making the decisions. SENDIAS services do good work, but their independence is undermined when they're commissioned by the LA whose decisions families are trying to challenge.
38. Do you agree that a SEND specialist should sit on the school complaint panel when the complaint relates to SEND support and provision?
Yes. A complaints panel without anyone who understands SEND can't properly assess whether a school's provision was adequate. You wouldn't judge a medical complaint without a clinician on the panel.
The SENDCo shouldn't be from the same school though. An independent SENDCo from another setting brings the expertise without the conflict of interest.
39. Is there anything further you would like to contribute to help inform the remaining proposals that are still under consideration?
Publish the ISP data standard early. Schools and software providers need to know what fields are required, what formats are expected, and how interoperability between systems will work. If this comes out in 2029, it's too late. Schools making purchasing decisions from 2026/27 onwards need confidence that the tools they adopt will be compliant.
Avoid building a single national ISP platform centrally. Set the standard, then let the market deliver compliant tools. It'll be faster, cheaper, and better for schools.
What we built in response
Much of what we argued for here, we've built. Live MIS data flowing into structured ISPs. EHCP evidence packs generated from the work SENDCos already do. A parent portal so families can see the plan between meetings. A full audit trail behind all of it.
See the full product, how the MIS integration works, or how evidence packs are built.
About the authors
Matthew Haysom — co-founder, My School View Ltd. Product and operations lead. Fifteen years building software products before founding MSV.
Leanne Awcock — co-founder, My School View Ltd. SEND lead. Over 25 years in education, most recently as a SENDCo in a UK secondary school.
What happens next
The consultation has now closed. The Department is expected to respond to submissions in due course. The September 2029 implementation deadline for ISPs remains in place regardless of the outcome.
We'll publish updates as the response from the DfE comes through. Subscribe to our newsletter to get them when they land.
If you'd like to talk to us about anything in this response, get in touch. If you're a SENDCo wanting to see what we've built in response to the issues we raised here, book a 15-minute call.