What the Government's New SEND Reforms Actually Mean for Your Child This Year
What's actually changing this September
The headline change is straightforward. From September 2026, all staff in early years settings, schools and colleges are entitled to new, government-backed SEND training, backed by a £200 million national training programme. The broader aim behind the reforms is to move more SEND support into everyday mainstream teaching, rather than treating it as something separate that a child has to be assessed and referred into before anyone adjusts how they’re taught.
On paper, that’s a genuinely welcome shift. In practice, change like this takes time to reach every classroom, and training is not the same thing as capacity. A teacher with 30 children in front of them and one new certificate doesn’t suddenly have more hours in the day.
Why this matters beyond the policy detail
What I’d ask parents to take from this isn’t the policy itself, but the permission it gives you to trust what you’re already noticing. If your child has always found it hard to sit still for long stretches, struggles to get started on written work, or seems to understand something perfectly one day and lose it entirely the next, you don’t need a diagnosis in hand before that’s worth mentioning to a teacher, a tutor, or us.
Some children find that a slightly different pace, a quieter room, or teaching that’s broken into smaller steps makes a disproportionate difference to how much they take in — long before any formal label is involved. That’s what SEND-aware teaching means in practice: not a diagnosis-first approach, but a teacher who notices how a child learns and adjusts accordingly.
What we're doing on our side
We’ve always worked with tutors who have experience supporting children with additional needs, and this term we’re glad to welcome Becky Blackman, a specialist SEND tutor, to the team to join Christina Joannides.. Two further specialist tutors — one in science, one supporting stronger mathematicians towards competitive university entry — are completing our safer recruitment checks and will be introduced properly once that process is finished. We take that process seriously, because it’s part of how we can stand behind every tutor we introduce to your child.
To be clear about what we can and can’t promise: we are not a clinical or therapeutic service, and we don’t offer specialist SEND provision in the way a diagnostic or clinical team would. What we do offer is calm, patient, individually adapted teaching from tutors who understand that a child’s needs don’t disappear the moment a lesson starts.
A practical starting point
Frequently asked questions
Does my child need a diagnosis before you can help?
No. Many of the students we support have no formal diagnosis at all — we simply adapt teaching to how they learn best.
Are your tutors SEND specialists?
Many of our tutors have direct experience supporting children with additional needs, and we now have 2 dedicated SEND specialist tutors on the team. We describe this as SEND-aware support, rather than clinical or specialist SEND provision.
Will this replace the support my child gets at school?
No — our aim is to work alongside whatever support your child already receives, not to replace it.
Written by Claire Meadows-Smith Founder and Principal
About The Community Schools The Community Schools is a Suffolk-based education organisation supporting more than 300 families every week, working with more than 50 specialist tutors with years of teaching experience. Founded by Claire Meadows-Smith, who brings more than 45 years in education, we offer online and in-person tuition, one-to-one and small-group support, and The Community Home Education Hub for KS3 and KS4 home-educated students.
Not sure where to start? Book a free 20-minute planning call with Claire — you don’t need to know which service is right beforehand, that’s exactly what the call is for.
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