Schools Lack Staff to Make SEND Reforms Work, Union Warns

Published: March 30, 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online—Providing trusted news and professional analysis for the UK.

The National Education Union (NEU) has issued a stark warning to the Government, claiming that the “once-in-a-generation” reforms for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are destined for failure unless there is a massive injection of frontline staffing. As the NEU’s annual conference begins in Brighton today, a survey of over 10,000 teachers has revealed a profound crisis of confidence in the Department for Education’s (DfE) ambitious “Every Child Achieving and Thriving” white paper. The union’s findings suggest that while the principles of greater inclusion in mainstream schools are widely supported, the current reality of overcrowded classrooms and a dwindling number of teaching assistants makes the plan practically unworkable.

According to the NEU survey, an overwhelming 83% of teachers identified insufficient staffing as the single most significant barrier to successful inclusion. The government’s new model, which aims to move away from the current “binary” system of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), proposes that most children with SEND will instead be supported through new digital Individual Support Plans (ISPs). However, NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede warned that these administrative changes are being introduced into a system that is already “running on empty.” He noted that the promised “Inclusion Grant”—calculated at approximately £13,000 for the average primary school—is only enough to fund a single part-time teaching assistant, a sum he described as “laughable” given the complexity of the needs being managed in mainstream settings.

The survey also highlighted a deeply troubling “confidence gap” among educators. Just 22% of teachers reported feeling confident that referring a pupil for SEND assessment or diagnosis would actually result in the child receiving the help they need. Many described a “knife-edge” existence where children with severe needs, including those experiencing mental health crises, are trapped on waiting lists for months or even years. The union argues that the government’s focus on “training every teacher to be a SEND teacher”—backed by a £200 million training fund—is a distraction from the core issue. As one teacher poignantly put it in the report: “No amount of training can compensate for not having an extra pair of hands in a room of thirty children when one of them is in distress.“

In response to the union’s criticism, the Department for Education defended its £4 billion investment package, which includes £1.8 billion to rebuild local authority SEND teams and create a bank of “Experts at Hand” for schools to draw upon. A DfE spokesperson reiterated that the reforms, which are currently undergoing a twelve-week public consultation, are designed to end the “postcode lottery” of support and provide earlier, fairer interventions. However, with 89% of teachers now stating that current class sizes are too large to be “properly inclusive,” the gap between ministerial ambition and classroom reality appears to be widening. As the NEU begins consulting its members on potential industrial action over pay and workload, the battle over SEND funding is set to become the defining struggle for the UK’s education sector this year.

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