Checking if a school is right for a child with SEND

For a family whose child has special educational needs or a disability (SEND), choosing a school involves a layer of questions that go well beyond Ofsted ratings and exam results. Here's how to approach it practically.

Start with what kind of support your child actually needs

SEND covers a genuinely wide range of needs — from a specific learning difficulty that needs some extra classroom support, to a need for a specialist resourced provision or unit within a mainstream school, to needs that might be better met by a specialist school altogether. Being clear about what your child specifically needs, ideally informed by any existing assessments or an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) if they have one, makes every other step in this process more focused.

What to check before you even visit

• Does the school have a resourced provision or specialist unit, if your child would benefit from one? Not every mainstream school does, and this is usually easy to check on the school's own website or by asking directly.
• What does the school's most recent Ofsted report say about SEND and inclusion specifically? Inspectors do look at this, and the detail often goes beyond the headline rating.
• How many pupils at the school currently have SEND support or an EHCP? A higher proportion isn't necessarily better or worse on its own, but it can be a useful indicator of a school's real experience supporting additional needs, rather than it being a rare occurrence they're less practised at.

Questions worth asking directly — ideally to the SENCO

Every mainstream school has a Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), and it's genuinely worth asking to speak to them directly rather than relying only on general admissions staff.

• How do you identify a need if it isn't already diagnosed or documented?
• What does support actually look like in practice — in-class, small group, or one-to-one, and how often?
• How do you communicate with parents about progress and any adjustments being made?
• How do you handle transitions — between year groups, or from primary to secondary — for pupils with additional needs?
• Can you connect us with a current parent of a child with a similar need, so we can hear about their real experience?

Reading the data with this lens

Standard academic measures — Progress 8, KS2 results — are calculated across an entire cohort, and won't tell you much specifically about how pupils with SEND are supported or how they perform. Some published data does break results down by SEND status specifically, which can be a more relevant comparison point than a school's overall headline figures, if you're trying to judge how well pupils with similar needs to your child tend to do there.

A note on EHCPs specifically

If your child has an Education, Health and Care Plan, the process works somewhat differently to standard admissions — your local authority is legally required to consult with a school before naming it in the plan, and the school has a legal duty to admit if it's named. If you're aiming for a specific school and your child has, or is going through the process of getting, an EHCP, it's worth speaking to your local authority's SEND team directly and early, since this runs on a different timeline to the standard admissions calendar.

The most important step

Visit in person if you possibly can, and don't just take the prospectus's word for it — ask to see support actually happening, meet the SENCO, and talk to a current parent if the school will facilitate it. General reputation and data can only tell you so much; how a school genuinely supports additional needs day to day is something you'll get a much clearer sense of in person.