Samantha Booth | Schools Week

Government to write off 90% of councils’ SEND deficits

Local authorities will get a grant to cover all but 10% of historic deficits accrued by the end of 2025-26

Recruiter: Hire us and get EHCP applications done free

Concerns over ‘troubling commodification of statutory SEND processes at a time when schools are already overwhelmed’

Revealed: DfE’s orders to councils as SEND reforms quietly begin

Whitehall tells councils not to wait for the white paper or further information on deficits to get started

Councils snub alternative funding to press on with special schools

Local authorities were offered the choice of continuing with projects or taking cash to boost places elsewhere

The long, lonely wait for SEND help

As schools and families await the white paper, Schools Week speaks to three families who have found specialist provision hard to come by

More reception children not ‘school ready’, survey finds

The annual Kindred Squared survey also found regional gaps in school readiness, amid an increase in pupils not toilet trained

Schools ‘at the heart of SEND reforms’, says adviser

Dame Christine Lenehan says reforms look at ‘changing nature’ between schools and local authorities

Ofqual boss ‘signals anxiety’ to DfE about AI in A-level coursework

Sir Ian Bauckham was questioned by MPs this morning on artificial intelligence risks, his new ‘rebuke’ powers and on-screen exams

Baroness Barran, shadow education minister

A few days after she was appointed as academies minister in 2021, officials described to Baroness Diana Barran the severity of a key item in her in-tray. “This is your Grenfell, minister.” They were describing the RAAC crisis that has now blighted hundreds of England’s schools. Huge sheets of reinforced autoclave aerated concrete installed decades ago […]