SEND

Parents wait up to a year to challenge SEND support

'In the most extreme cases you could have kids sitting at home, self-harming for a year with no provision'

Samantha Booth
Samantha Booth
SEND

Kent wants school ‘volunteers’ to clear its SEND backlog

Council promotes 'exciting' and 'behind the scenes' opportunity

Samantha Booth
Samantha Booth
Schools

‘Disturbing neglect’ as severely disabled children left to go hungry

Investigation reveals harrowing details of special school closed after damning Ofsted inspection

Samantha Booth
Samantha Booth
SEND

School leaders rebel over raid on reserves amid ‘shameful’ bail-out ultimatum

A council set for a multi-million pound government bailout to bring its soaring SEND deficit under control will claw back...

Jessica Hill
Jessica Hill
Ofsted

7 things you need to know about Ofsted’s thematic reviews of AP

Ofsted will not make judgments about AP from thematic reviews, but serious concerns could lead to further inspection

Amy Walker
Amy Walker
SEND

‘People like me were absent when things were going wrong’

Tony McArdle is the man who holds the purse strings to stop councils going bankrupt – but only if...

Jessica Hill
Jessica Hill
SEND

SEND costs leave councils on brink of bankruptcy

Some councils are draining reserves to plug high-needs deficits while their other services face cuts

Freddie Whittaker
Tom Belger and Jessica Hill
Schools

Sir Gav’s £17k golden goodbye, and 6 other things we learned from the DfE’s accounts

Bumper payouts for sacked ministers, staff retention issues and fears over SEND performance all revealed in annual accounts

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
SEND

Success! Councils required to boost special school funding by 3.4%

New requirement comes after Schools Week's 'SEND robbery' campaign, but leaders say rise 'won't fully alleviate challenges'

John Dickens
Samantha Booth and John Dickens