Leaders identify pupils’ emerging or changing needs quickly and accurately. – Ofsted, 2025
At Supporting Education Group, our goal is to help trusts design and implement SEND strategies that work at scale, without losing the personalised approach that makes a real difference.
When we know the child, teachers and leaders can identify when a pupil’s needs change and act quickly to adjust support. This approach aligns with the Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools Guidance report (EEF, May 2025), which recommends trusts:
“Build an ongoing, holistic understanding of your pupils and their needs […] and aim to understand individual pupils’ learning needs using the graduated approach of ‘assess, plan, do, review’. Assessment should be regular and purposeful rather than a one-off event and should seek input from parents and carers as well as the pupil themselves and specialist professionals. Teachers need to feel empowered and trusted to use the information they collect to make a decision about the next steps for teaching that child.”
1. Understanding the Trust-wide picture
Before implementing SEND strategy at scale, it is essential to understand the current trust-wide picture. That means developing a clear view of how SEND is being led, how consistent practice is across schools and how confident staff feel in using the graduated approach.
Collecting data – through surveys and audits that explore SEND leadership capacity, school culture and referral processes – provides valuable insight into where practice is strong and where further support is needed.
Looking at patterns across schools also helps leaders understand whether senior leaders have experience of SEND, whether accountability is clearly understood and how effectively emerging needs are being identified. This evidence then becomes a starting point for shaping a shared direction for SEND provision.
Gathering this information is the first step to designing a consistent, pedagogical approach that integrates evidence-based teaching and allows room for personalisation.
2. Building a holistic understanding of the pupil
Developing a clear picture of a pupil’s needs requires input from multiple sources: classroom teachers, specialist staff, parents and the pupils themselves. The SEND Code of Practice emphasises that this should include:
- Teachers’ assessment and experience of the pupil
- Information from other subject teachers, where relevant
- Previous progress and attainment, compared to peers and national data
- The pupil’s own views and advice from external professionals
- Concerns raised by parents, recorded and considered alongside school assessment
Many trusts and schools collate this information in pupil profiles. These hold key details such as assessment scores, barriers to learning and a few adaptive teaching strategies that, if applied consistently, should have a big impact on the child’s progress. For younger pupils, these profiles also include structured input from the child and parents, giving every pupil a voice in their education.
3. Working in partnership with parents and carers
“Parents know their children best and it is important that all professionals listen to and understand when parents express concerns about their child’s development.” – SEND Code of Practice, 2015
Parents and carers bring deep, contextual knowledge about their child’s strengths, needs and experiences beyond school, and this insight is essential for building an accurate picture of need.
In practice, this means creating opportunities for parental voice to shape SEND provision. In some trust contexts, this has included embedding parent contributions directly into pupil profiles, ensuring that the family’s aspirations, concerns and priorities are visible to all staff working with the child.
4. Using the Graduated Approach
SEN support should take the form of a four-part cycle – assess, plan, do, review – where earlier decisions are revisited, refined, and revised as understanding grows (SEND Code of Practice, 2015).
This approach is stressed by the current Ofsted framework and the EEF, as we saw earlier.
In practice, the graduated approach means moving from one-off assessments to regular, purposeful review points. Teachers should use their ongoing knowledge of pupils, combined with formal data, to adjust support and evaluate what works in terms of teaching strategies and approaches.
Any changes should be recorded in the child’s pupil profile. These documents are designed to be living, breathing tools that are reviewed regularly. In settings where I’ve led SEND strategy, the pupil profiles were reviewed termly in meetings involving teachers, SENCos, parents and the pupils.
By involving parents and pupils in the review, you ensure that everyone has a voice and that strategies can be adjusted based on progress and feedback. This helps to avoid SEND provision becoming a passive checklist, ensuring it is always reflective of the child’s current needs and abilities.
5. Building teacher confidence and capability
“Schools should regularly and carefully review the quality of teaching for all pupils, including those at risk of underachievement. This includes reviewing and, where necessary, improving, teachers’ understanding of strategies to identify and support vulnerable pupils and their knowledge of the SEN most frequently encountered.”
Even with accurate knowledge of the child, strategies only succeed if staff feel confident to use them. Teachers, SENCos and teaching assistants need:
- High-quality tools and practical strategies
- Opportunities for professional development
- Peer support and guidance from the central SEND team
Embedding SEND into everyday teaching ensures provision becomes systemic rather than an add-on and allows teachers to see the tangible difference their actions make for pupil.
Teachers, SENCOs and support staff work best when they’re not isolated. Regular consultation, peer support and guidance from the central SEND team help ensure that strategies are applied consistently and that staff feel supported to take informed decisions.
We’ll explore the role workforce development has in SEND strategy in our next blog.
Dive deeper
The best practice discussed in this blog is based on the Star Academies case study on the Inclusion in Practice website. You can also view examples of the pupil profiles in the case study, which show how personalised, high-leverage strategies are captured for each pupil.