February 26, 2026
Individual Support Plans: What Schools Need to Know About the New Statutory Duty
Blog
The SEND White Paper comes with a £4 billion funding package over three years. That is a headline figure that sounds significant, and it is. But the question most SENCOs and headteachers are asking is simpler: what does this actually mean for my school?
This blog breaks down each funding stream, explains how schools will access it, and flags what is still unclear. If you have read the White Paper and felt overwhelmed by the numbers, this is the practical guide.
This is the funding stream that will land directly in schools. The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is £1.6 billion over three years from 2026/27, paid directly to all schools, colleges and early years settings to support early intervention and targeted provision for children with SEND.
No formal assessment is required to access this money. It is not tied to EHCPs or specific diagnoses. Schools will receive it as part of their budget and will be expected to use it to fund things like small group interventions, adaptive teaching approaches, staff training and early identification of need.
What does that actually look like for a primary school?
In practical terms, this works out at roughly £26,000 per year per school. That is not transformative on its own. It would not cover a full-time teaching assistant, though it could fund targeted intervention programmes, additional training, or specialist resources. The NEU has pointed out that for an average primary school, this equates to roughly a part-time teaching assistant.
Schools will be expected to publish an Inclusion Strategy setting out how all inclusion funding is deployed. Ofsted will assess this as part of the inspection framework. So while the money arrives without a formal application process, there is clear accountability for how it is spent.
When: From 2026/27.
How to prepare: Start thinking now about how you would evidence the impact of targeted SEND spending. An Inclusion Strategy will become a requirement, and schools that already have a clear picture of their provision and its outcomes will be ahead.
This is the largest single new commitment in the reforms. The Experts at Hand service will bring specialist professionals directly into mainstream schools, including educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists. Schools will be able to access these specialists regardless of whether children have an EHCP.
For a typical primary school, the government estimates this will equate to around 40 days of specialist time per academic year by the end of 2028/29. That is roughly one day a week of specialist input, which would be a significant step up from the current reality for most primaries, where accessing an educational psychologist means waiting months through an oversubscribed local authority service.
The service will be commissioned by local authorities and Integrated Care Boards, not by schools directly. This means schools will not be applying for funding or managing budgets for this. Instead, the specialists will be deployed into schools through local commissioning arrangements.
What is still unclear?
There are legitimate questions about whether there are enough specialists to deliver this. Educational psychologist and speech and language therapy vacancies are already high, and recruiting at the scale needed across the country will take time. The service is expected to be fully operational by 2028/29, but building capacity will be a challenge.
When: Commissioning begins 2026/27. Fully operational by 2028/29.
How to prepare: Build strong records of the specialist support your pupils currently need. When Experts at Hand arrives in your area, schools that can clearly articulate their needs and evidence what support would make the biggest difference will be better placed to use the service effectively.
Every teacher and school staff member will have access to a national, evidence-based SEND training programme. This is £200 million over three years, available from September 2026.
The aim is to make sure that every teacher knows how to identify commonly occurring needs, adapt their teaching, and support children with SEND in the classroom, not just specialist staff. For primary schools, where class teachers often have the most sustained contact with children, this is particularly relevant.
The training will be developed centrally and made available nationally. Schools will not need to fund this from their own budgets.
When: Available from September 2026.
How to prepare: Audit your current SEND CPD provision. Identify gaps in staff confidence and knowledge. When the national training programme launches, schools that already know where their staff need support will be able to target uptake where it matters most.
This is the funding for buildings and physical infrastructure, not day-to-day running costs. The £3.7 billion over five years (2025/26 to 2029/30) will fund 60,000 new specialist places in nurseries, schools and colleges, the creation of inclusion bases in mainstream schools, and adaptations to existing school estates to make them more accessible.
The government has set an expectation that in time, every secondary school will have an inclusion base, alongside the same number of places in primary schools. Inclusion bases are dedicated spaces within a mainstream school that can be used for small group work, targeted interventions, regulation support or specialist teaching.
For primary schools, the capital funding could mean physical changes to your building, whether that is creating a dedicated space for interventions or adapting environments for accessibility. This funding is allocated centrally and managed through local authority capital programmes, so schools will not receive it directly.
When: Rolling programme from 2025/26 to 2029/30.
This funding is aimed at early years and community-level support. Every Best Start Family Hub will have a dedicated SEND practitioner, backed by over £200 million over three years. There will also be additional funding through an Inclusive Early Years Fund to help early years providers identify and respond where children have emerging additional needs.
For primary schools, this matters at the transition point. Children arriving in Reception with SEND needs that have already been identified and supported will be better prepared, and schools will receive better information about their needs. This is upstream investment that should, over time, reduce the number of children arriving at school with unidentified needs.
When: Rolling out alongside wider reforms.
This is not funding that flows to schools directly, but it affects the system schools operate in. The government has announced that all local authorities with SEND deficits will receive a grant covering 90% of their high needs deficit up to the end of 2025/26. Local authority high needs deficits are projected to reach £6 billion by March 2026, and this write-off is intended to give councils breathing room while the new system is built.
The remaining 10% (roughly £500 million across the country) will still need to be managed by councils. And the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that new deficits of £8.7 billion could accrue over 2026/27 and 2027/28 before the reforms take effect, so financial pressure on the system is not going away quickly.
For schools, the practical implication is that local authority SEND services should become less financially constrained, which could mean faster assessments, better commissioning and more responsive support. But this will depend on how quickly reforms are implemented locally.
The White Paper signals that in the longer term, schools will be expected to join local SEND groups and contribute to a collective funding pool. Details on how this will work are not yet available and will likely be shaped through the consultation process.
This is worth watching. For primary schools, pooled funding could mean shared access to resources and specialist staff across a group of local schools, but it could also mean contributing a portion of funding to a collective pot.
New funding comes with new accountability. Schools will need to publish Inclusion Strategies, evidence how inclusion funding is spent, and demonstrate the impact of their SEND provision to Ofsted.
Senflow gives schools the infrastructure to do this. Intervention records, support plans, specialist input and outcomes are all tracked in one place, making it straightforward to show how funding is being used and what difference it is making.
When Ofsted asks how your school deploys its inclusion funding, you need a clear answer. Senflow helps you have one.
Start your free trial at senflow.co.uk
The SEND consultation is open until 18 May 2026. Many of the details around funding allocation, timelines and accountability will be shaped through this process. If your school has views on how the Inclusive Mainstream Fund should be distributed, or how Experts at Hand should work in practice, now is the time to feed them in.
