In 2023, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission started implementing a new way to inspect local area SEND services. There are now two years’ worth of inspection reports under this new framework. So what are these inspections unearthing?
Ofsted & CQC have been inspecting SEND services since 2016. The first cycle of local area inspections looked at how well local area partnerships (that’s the LA plus the NHS bodies that work within the LA’s boundaries) were implementing the 2014 SEND reforms.
The new inspection framework refocused things, looking more at the lived experiences and outcomes of children of young people with SEND. It also brought aspects of the local area partnership’s social care and alternative provision offerings into the mix.
You can find a post explaining the differences between these two inspection frameworks here. There are 153 local area partnerships for Ofsted and CQC to inspect. So far, they’ve issued inspection reports for 54 of these partnerships under the new framework. Area SEND inspections don’t use the grading system used for schools or local authority children’s services. Instead, there are three possible grades for local area partnerships:
The “best” possible
The best possible outcome, which we’ll shorten to ‘positive,’ is this:
“The local area partnership’s SEND arrangements typically lead to positive experiences and outcomes for children and young people with SEND. The local area partnership is taking action where improvements are needed.”
Local area partnerships rated as ‘positive’ will be inspected again in around five years. You don’t need to demonstrate anything like an outstanding service to get this grade.
“Middle” ranking
The middle-ranking outcome in the new inspection framework, which we’ll call ‘inconsistent’, runs like this:
“The local area partnership’s arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people with SEND. The local area partnership must work jointly to make improvements.”
If this is the outcome, the local area’s next full inspection will be brought forward – usually to within three years, rather than five.
Worst possible
The lowest possible outcome – which we’ll shorten to ‘significant concerns’ – is this:
“There are widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with SEND, which the local area partnership must address urgently.”
There’s no formal definition of how bad things have to be to be considered a ‘priority action’. It’s mostly a matter of the inspectors’ judgement. If a local area partnership gets this outcome, they have to produce a priority action plan showing how they intend to improve things. Most of the time, they’ll also be subject to a formal improvement notice from the Department for Education.
In theory, under the inspection framework a local area partnership with this outcome gets a monitoring inspection 18 months on. In practice, this isn’t happening yet.
How are Area SEND Inspections looking in 2025?
Roughly one in three local area partnership SEND services have now been inspected under this new system. How are things shaking out?
If you want to see whether your local area partnership has been inspected yet, or how their inspection has panned out, check the interactive map at this link, or check the image below.
Over the last two years, inspection outcomes have tended towards inconsistent. Of the 54 area SEND inspections that have been graded so far:
- 14 local area partnerships have been graded as ‘positive’;
- 26 have been graded as ‘inconsistent’;
- 14 have been graded with ‘significant concerns’;
People can spin this spread of outcomes according to their priors. If you’re an optimist, you can read these inspections as showing that only one in four local area partnerships has significant weaknesses in its SEND services and that most are a mixed bag.
If you’re a pessimist, you can read it as saying that only one in four local area partnerships enables positive outcomes and experiences for most of its children and young people with SEND, and that three quarters of them have problems severe enough for Ofsted & CQC to bring forward the date of their next inspection.
A lot depends on the thresholds for grading, and what seems to count as a significant weakness in a SEND service. And those are a matter of inspector judgement, which is sometimes baffling.
What’s a significant weakness to you?
For example, it’s possible to run a SEND service that completed just 3% of its new EHCPs in the statutory 20-week timeframe at the time of inspection, with an average completion time of 49 weeks, and NOT have that counted as a significant weakness under these inspections. You can run a paediatric autism pathway where the median waiting time from referral to initial care contact is more than three years for its younger children, and that won’t necessarily be counted as a significant weakness in service. In fact, this local area got a positive grade in its area SEND inspection.
So what sort of things earn positive grades from area SEND inspectors?
Under these inspections, local area partnerships tend to do well when they can convince inspectors that joint working is in place: education, health and social care leaders working together constructively and coherently, with a clear strategic ambition.
Similarly, local areas tend to get a positive result where inspectors see persuasive evidence of leaders working well with families of children and young people with SEND, and where early identification of need and rapid access to specialist support (when needed) seems to happen.
Across the board, local area partnerships that know their own strengths and weaknesses (and can show what they’re doing about those weaknesses) also tend to get their grades lifted. Bear in mind that no one seems to go back to see whether the plans for action that appear at the time of inspection actually have an impact.
Identifying areas for improvement
In the last two years, Ofsted and CQC inspectors have identified many areas for improvement (over 180 of them) and more than a few areas for priority action (over 50) in area SEND services. Here’s how these tend to break down:
In 2023 and 2024, the most common aspects of SEND services that inspectors deemed needed priority action were strategic things:
- Defective leadership and poor joint working between education, health and social care.
- Deep problems with local area Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) processes were also often identified by inspectors as areas for priority action.
These problems were also identified as significant weaknesses under the previous local area SEND inspection cycle. But something has changed under the new area SEND inspection system—inspectors are now much more frequently identifying weaknesses in specific services, mostly in services provided by health bodies.
Most people involved in the SEND world at ground level know that assessment and provision pathways for neurodivergence, mental health, and speech & language therapy are often in very bad shape. Over the last two years, this has started to come through more frequently in the Ofsted & CQC inspection reports. In aggregate, these are now the most frequent areas identified for improvement under this inspection system.
So what happens next?
This version of the Area SEND Inspection system has now been working for two years. Last year, Ofsted announced that it is reviewing how this framework operates. It’s not entirely clear why.
The explanation on the tin is that this framework needs “to enable local areas to enhance the support they offer to children with SEND”. This implies the inspectors think the framework doesn’t currently do that well enough.
What will be changing, and for whose benefit, is anyone’s guess. But there’s a sense you get from the inspectorate that local authorities are being hard done-by under the current setup. Check these quotes, from a session that Ofsted bigwigs had with the Education Select Committee last month:
“…as a nation, we are saying that at the moment local authorities are really failing to deliver across the system, and yet we know that we have very experienced, well-committed, excellent directors of children’s services who are out there trying their level best. We have to be really careful. Ofsted can cause all sorts of unintended consequences.”
Sir Martyn Oliver, HMCI
“Although we are still in the process of reviewing how we approach area SEND, after about 18 months of this inspection framework, there is something about a report card that would allow us to get the same nuance but would be better able to direct us to where improvement is needed and where the strengths exist.” –
Lee Owston, National Director for Schools, Ofsted
“We are saying to health that the assessment waiting lists and delivery are very poor. The same local authority is in a recovery conversation with the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to recover and reduce its spend on SEND in the next five years, so what is its priority—reducing spend or improving services? Of course, one can spend one’s money better, but those two things in parallel really stick in the craw of local authorities. We are getting the grief of that on our local inspector. We can take that. We are trying to find a method of reporting that, as Martyn says, more fairly reflects that, but that is the national systemic issue that has to be addressed.”
Yvette Stanley, Ofsted National Director for Social Care
That all suggests a new approach to inspecting local area SEND services—possibly something similar to the proposed changes to Ofsted school inspections rather than tinkering with what’s there now. It also sounds like an approach that will be a bit more sympathetic to the burdens the local authority carries. If that sounds like improvement to you, then I admire your positivity.
Monitoring inspections STILL “paused”
For the moment however, the main area SEND inspections continue. But part of the current system has been paused – monitoring inspections. These are supposed to happen 18 months after inspections that identify significant concerns. They’re designed to check whether a local area partnership is sorting out the significant weaknesses that inspectors have identified.
None of these monitoring inspections have yet taken place. It’s unclear whether they ever will. There are also 13 local authorities that had significant weaknesses identified in their SEND services three years ago and still haven’t been inspected yet under the current system.
Once we know what changes are coming, we’ll let you know.
Please consider a one-off or regular donation to help SNJ keep going in 2025!
Also read:
- A guide to Ofsted and CQC’s “new, improved” Local Area SEND Inspections 2023 (Part 2)
- The Ofsted changes are bad news for SEND accountability
- How will Ofsted’s inspection overhaul affect children with SEND? And why you need to respond to the consultation
- PAC SEND report: Slightly pointless when decision-makers don’t know what they value more—money or children’s futures?
- 55% rise in 2024 SEND Tribunal appeals. LAs’ 1.3% success rate cost £153m. The cost to families? Incalculable
- Will £740m make mainstream truly accessible? Plus SEND safety valve deals halted—we call that a win!
- Ofsted Area SEND Inspections: How bad does a council have to be to fail?
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
Let's write the true narrative of the SEND reform proposals: We want your unfiltered-by-AI viewsJune 23, 2026
When “fine” at school isn’t fine at home: the hidden cost of autistic masking on familiesJune 16, 2026
Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SENAugust 4, 2026
Don’t miss a thing!
Don’t miss any posts from SNJ – simply add your email address below. You must click the link in the confirmation email you’ll receive to activate your free subscription.
You can also keep up with us by following our
Want more? Be an SNJ regular donor!
SNJ is a non-profit and everyone who writes here does so voluntarily. We need your support to help us with costs by donating once or as a regular patron. Find out more here
Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support - August 19, 2026
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame - June 27, 2026
Please share this article!
Discover more from Special Needs Jungle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
