The SEND Reform Briefing Every School Leader Needs to Read
- Last updated on: 6th July, 2026
- IRIS Connect
A new SEND reform is live, funding is already flowing, and your first accountability deadline is 31 December 2026. Here is what is happening, what it means for your school, and what you need to do.
Why This Reform Exists
The attainment gap between pupils with SEND and their peers is twice the size of the gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and their peers. That is not a small or acceptable difference. It persists, in large part, because the current system is too reactive: support arrives too late, provision is inconsistent across schools and areas, and too many mainstream teachers lack the confidence and tools to meet diverse needs well.
The government’s white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving (February 2026), sets out a ten-year plan to fix this. The core argument is that mainstream schools should be inclusive by design, not by exception. Every child should receive high-quality, adaptive teaching and early help as a matter of course, without needing a formal assessment or legal plan to access it.
The legislative changes are not due until 2029. The funding and accountability measures are live now. You can read the full SEND reform consultation document on GOV.UK.
The Funding: What Reaches Your School
The government has committed £4 billion in transition funding across 2026-27 to 2028-29. Not all of it reaches school budgets directly.
The strand that matters most to school leaders right now is the Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF): £1.6 billion over three years, flowing directly to mainstream schools as discretionary resource. In 2026-27, £400 million is allocated to schools nationally. Allocations are confirmed in May, paid in June. An average primary school will receive around £14,000; an average secondary around £48,000.
Alongside this, £200 million funds a centrally procured national SEND training programme for all teaching staff, available from September 2026. Schools do not receive a share of this to spend as they choose, but they can use their IMF to fund additional training of their own selection.
A further £1.8 billion funds the Experts at Hand service, commissioned by local authorities and Integrated Care Boards to bring specialist professionals into mainstream schools. Schools draw on this bank of expertise, but do not commission it themselves.
What Schools Must Do, and By When
Every mainstream school must publish an Inclusion Strategy by 31 December 2026, setting out how it understands the commonly occurring, predictable needs within its cohort and the approaches taken to meet them. Schools must report how they have deployed their IMF to improve their universal offer. Ofsted will reference this.
The DfE has published a template and a menu of approaches. Planning should begin before then, because meaningful activity needs to be evidenced between June and December.
What Good Inclusive Teaching Actually Looks Like
The DfE’s IMF best practice guidance is specific about the classroom-level expectation. The foundation is adaptive teaching: identifying and removing barriers to learning by design, rather than retrofitting support after the fact.
The evidence base the DfE points schools towards is the Education Endowment Foundation’s Five-a-Day framework, five strategies that should be embedded in everyday teaching for all pupils:
- Explicit instruction: clear modelling, guided practice, and systematic checking for understanding.
- Cognitive and metacognitive strategies: supporting pupils to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning.
- Scaffolding: temporary, targeted support that is withdrawn as pupils develop independence.
- Flexible grouping: temporary groups formed around shared current needs, including pre-teaching of vocabulary or concepts.
- Technology: used to assess understanding and adapt teaching in the moment.
These are not specialist interventions. They are features of high-quality teaching in every classroom. The DfE’s IMF guidance confirms that training to strengthen exactly these approaches is eligible IMF expenditure.
The Teacher Training Gap
The national £200 million programme will give every teacher in mainstream schools a baseline knowledge of SEND and inclusion from September 2026. This is a significant commitment and a genuine foundation.
But knowledge and changed classroom practice are not the same thing. The EEF’s research on effective professional development identifies four domains that sustained change requires: building knowledge, motivating teachers, developing technique, and embedding practice. Programmes that omit any of these, particularly the embedding stage, are unlikely to change what teachers actually do in classrooms. The EEF is direct: teachers may understand the content, be motivated to improve, and have the techniques to apply, but without systematic follow-through, they revert to prior habits.
The national programme builds knowledge. It does not provide the coaching, observation, feedback, and reflection cycles through which techniques become embedded practice. That gap is the school leader’s responsibility to close, and the IMF is the resource available to do it.
This Funding Cannot Afford to Go to Waste
Previous SEND reforms were also well-resourced and well-intentioned. Many schools found it difficult to translate that resource into lasting change in classrooms. The risk is real and it is worth naming.
The measure of this reform will not be the number of schools that publish an Inclusion Strategy in December. It will be whether children with SEND, and the wider cohort who benefit from adaptive teaching, are better served because of what happens in classrooms over the next three years. School leaders have both the funding and the responsibility to make that happen purposefully.
Where IRIS Connect Fits
IRIS Connect is built for exactly the gap the EEF identifies: turning knowledge into embedded classroom practice.
Through structured, evidence-aligned Pathways, video-based lesson reflection, and coaching frameworks built on the principles of the EEF’s Five-a-Day, IRIS Connect gives teachers the tools to practise adaptive teaching, receive feedback, and develop technique over time. For leaders and SENCos, the platform provides the engagement and impact data the Inclusion Strategy’s evidence requirement demands.
Our evidence-aligned Pathways do more than develop technique: they foster the adaptive expertise to use it responsively. Learning experiences like dialogue, collaboration, and reflection sit on equal footing with modelling and rehearsal, supporting teaching that is fluent yet underpinned by situational awareness and professional judgement, equipping teachers to notice and respond to each pupil’s needs.
Critically, IMF allocations can be used to fund this directly. The DfE’s own best practice guidance names adaptive teaching CPD, training in evidence-based interventions, and professional learning that generates evidence of practice change as eligible spend. IRIS Connect maps to each of these categories.
Three Things to Do Before September
One: Use the DfE’s IMF calculator now to understand your indicative allocation and start shaping how you will spend it purposefully, not reactively.
Two: Audit your current SEND and adaptive teaching CPD provision against the EEF’s four domains of effective professional development. Identify where you have the embedding stage covered, and where you do not.
Three: Block time before the summer to draft the shape of your Inclusion Strategy so the DfE template, due this summer, can be applied quickly rather than from a standing start.
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Turn Adaptive Teaching Into Embedded Practice
IRIS Connect is built for the gap the EEF identifies: moving from knowledge to changed classroom behaviour. Our evidence-aligned Pathways, video-based reflection, and coaching frameworks give teachers the tools to practise and refine adaptive teaching over time. And as DfE-eligible IMF expenditure, it is a purposeful use of your allocation.