WELLBEING
SEND data: how can we mitigate the workload impact?
In his column this month MARK SOLOMONS – founder of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, and Edu Intelligence, the first AI tool that connects stakeholder feedback, documents and wider school data, and most importantly, makes sense of it for schools, groups and trusts – shares his insights into how schools can deal with new data requirements arising from the SEND reforms.
used for which pupils and the resulting outcomes. Another major shift is the statutory duty for all educational settings to create digital Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for any child with identified SEND. These plans must capture barriers to learning, day-to-day provision, reasonable adjustments, and intended outcomes. And they must be reviewed at least annually. Ofsted will assess the quality and use of these ISPs during inspections, meaning schools must demonstrate that these plans are not just administrative exercises but are actively improving outcomes.
The fragmentation trap and administrative friction
T
he publication of the Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, marks the most comprehensive overhaul of SEND provision since the Children and Families Act 2014. Working with schools and trusts, I see both the enormous potential in these reforms and the significant challenges they present. The system is shifting to a fundamentally new model of support built around three layers: Universal, Targeted, and Specialist. While the moral imperative of inclusive education is clear, the practical reality for schools is likely to be a dramatic increase in data, tracking, and evidence requirements. What might the workload impact of these changes be and, crucially, how can we mitigate it before it takes a toll on staff and their wellbeing?
The expanding data burden Under the current system, a school’s data obligations regarding SEND are largely triggered by statutory processes such as Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and SEN Support registers. Under the new model, every school must track, record, and evidence support across all three layers for a significantly larger number of children.
The creation of the new £1.6 billion Inclusive Mainstream Fund gives schools direct responsibility over SEND funding. This empowers leaders to develop targeted, evidence-based support offers without requiring formal assessments. However, it also brings strict accountability. Schools will be required to publish an Inclusion Strategy detailing how these resources are deployed. They will be held accountable for how they use all their inclusion funding, including existing notional SEN budgets. This requires schools to track funding at a granular level, monitoring which interventions are
The risk here is not the intention behind the reforms, but how schools manage the flow of information. The white paper explicitly acknowledges that information about children’s needs is often fragmented across multiple systems. This fragmentation makes it harder to keep records accurate and can lead to gaps during key transitions.
In many schools, leaders spend hours each week acting as manual data processors. They export spreadsheets, cross-reference attendance with behaviour logs, and trawl through pastoral notes just to build a picture for reviews or inspection. Every hour spent stitching data together is an hour taken away from supporting staff and students, working with families, or leading strategic improvements. When data remains siloed, we lose the narrative of the whole child. For instance, a behaviour incident might be recorded simply as dysregulation. However, the true pattern behind it stays hidden because the causes are scattered across different systems. Perhaps the dysregulation clusters around transition-heavy days, or it correlates with periods when agency staffing is higher. Spotting these vital connections requires someone to have the time to pull information from multiple places and piece it together manually. Most leaders simply do not have that time, meaning we end up responding to symptoms rather than causes.
The reformed SENCO role outlined in the white paper envisions these leaders becoming more strategic and less administrative. Yet, how can a SENCO focus on strategic leadership if they are buried in disconnected tracking systems? A more strategic role demands that SENCOs can see the big picture of SEND provision and trends across the school without having to manually compile the information.
Mitigating the workload impact now To protect staff wellbeing and ensure these reforms succeed, schools will need to rethink their data infrastructure. Schools that invest in
14
www.education-today.co.uk
connected systems now will be best positioned to meet these demands. Practical mitigation strategies include: • Implementing connected systems: Schools need digital tools capable of creating, updating, and sharing the new ISPs seamlessly. These plans must be linkable to wider pupil data, including attendance, progress, behaviour, and wellbeing. This connection is vital to demonstrate that provision is responsive without requiring staff to duplicate entries across different software or sheets.
• Automating the graduated approach: The updated SEND Code of Practice places a stronger emphasis on the graduated approach: assess, plan, do, review. This is inherently a data cycle. Using connected records that automatically link professional recommendations from the new Experts at Hand service to classroom practice saves time and provides an ongoing evidence trail.
• Preparing for group accountability: Every school will be required to be part of a local grouping to work together on SEND, sharing expertise and commissioning shared resources. Developing systems that can aggregate data on need types and gaps in provision across a group will reduce duplicate reporting and streamline strategic planning for leaders.
• Monitoring pupil voice efficiently: By 2029, every school must monitor pupils’ sense of belonging and engagement, which is particularly critical for children with SEND. Establishing automated, systematic ways to gather and act on pupil and parent views will prevent this from becoming a burdensome, time-consuming exercise.
The timeline for these reforms is fast approaching. In the 2026/27 academic year, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund launches and ISP requirements start to be phased in. By 2028, National Inclusion Standards will define what all children and families should expect from their school.
We cannot wait until these statutory duties are fully enforced to address the underlying administrative burden. The SEND reforms represent the most significant increase in school data requirements in a generation. By moving away from fragmented spreadsheets and systems, to embrace connected intelligence, we can strip away administrative friction. When we connect the information efficiently, we do more than save time and protect staff wellbeing; we see the child more clearly, and that is exactly what these reforms set out to achieve.
For further information and practical advice, visit: u
https://welbee.co.uk
April 2026
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
