Creating Value In Schools
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The DfE has promised a £200 million investment into SEND training for teachers in nurseries, schools and colleges. This will be used to develop live and online training courses to deepen knowledge of how to adapt teaching to a wide range of needs in the classroom. The training will be underpinned by a new expectation, set out in the SEND Code of Practice, that all staff in every setting should receive training on SEND and inclusion.
So far we know that there will be both live and online courses on offer. According to the press release £200 million landmark SEND teacher training programme, there will be:
Recognising the need for greater SEND confidence and expertise in schools, the DfE has already set up an NPQ for SEND leadership, and promised to strengthen the SEND training element for early career teachers (see What's changing for early career teachers? for further details).
The DfE is keen to see more mainstream inclusion for pupils with SEND, and Ofsted now has ‘inclusion’ as an inspection category.
With increasing demand for SEND support alongside increasing strain on budgets, skilling up teachers makes sense.
For more on the current SEND situation, see:
Listen to the podcast discussion with Benedicte Yue on sustainable SEND (37 minutes).
We don’t know when the training will be available, who is providing it and how staff will access it. We also don't know much about the proposed content, other than it will help teachers adapt teaching to meet a wide range of needs, including visual impairments and speech and language needs.
The DfE press release says that ‘Kicking off from next year, flexible online self-study sessions and live in-person lessons will be available, recognising the workforce’s already busy workload.’ However, it’s not clear if ‘next year’ means next academic year (2026-27) or next calendar year, which could be as late as autumn 2027.
While there is mention of experts supporting the development of materials, we don’t know who those experts are.
More details to come in due course we hope!
