Solihull Council’s Education Related SEND Strategic Activity

The Schools White Paper (Every child achieving and thriving) and the accompanying special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reform consultation paper (Putting children and young people first) offer a 10-year plan to transform England’s education system focused on standards, inclusion, early intervention, and family support. 

In response to the challenges faced within the SEND system in particular, the proposed reforms aim to shift the system toward earlier identification, mainstream provision capable of meeting a wider range of needs, consistent national standards which reduce reliance on statutory thresholds, and fostering a more inclusive and responsive approach to supporting all children effectively moving funding away from Councils to schools for all but the most complex.

Further information is available below:

SEND reforms - information for parent carers

SEND reform briefing paper

This provides an overarching strategy across the local area SEND partnership to provide robust leadership inspection regime. It also meets the requirement for a published SEND strategy whilst reflecting our drive to focus more on early intervention for any child with any additional need and reduce the need for statutory intervention. This strategy will underpin any other SEND policies and activity.

Further information about the Additional Needs Strategy

Additional Needs Strategy annual report 2025

Solihull SEND SEF 2025

This provides an agreed multi-agency framework to focus on early childhood development, identification and support alongside ensuring children have access to high quality and differentiated childcare and early years’ education.

Maternity and Early Years Strategy 2022-2025

This provides a commonly agreed understanding of good inclusive practise within education settings and a platform for greater school ownership and accountability of this agenda – leading to improved access and outcomes in mainstream and maintained settings for all vulnerable children.

Further information about the Strategy for Inclusive Education

The strategy for inclusive education will draw to a close at the end of 2025. The principles included as part of the strategy will be retained as part of the new education strategy.

This provides the LAs statutory overarching strategy for ensuring children with special needs and/or disabilities are not unfairly disadvantaged due to the education environment, facilities, equipment or resources available to them. This will inform individual school strategies to reduce discrimination for these children and young people.

Accessibility Strategy 2021 - 2026

The education sufficiency strategy will help all key stakeholders understand the need for school place planning, as well as establishing the principles against which school reorganisation will be planned.

The strategy will consider the future need for school places throughout the borough and set out the framework within which the Council will consider the organisation of school places over the next five years.

The aim of the draft education sufficiency strategy is to set out the way that Solihull Council intends to address its statutory responsibility to ensure a sufficiency of places across all areas of education provision including:

• Early Years (0-4 years)
• Mainstream - primary and secondary (4 - 16 years)
• Alternative Provision (4 - 16 years)
• Post-16 (16 - 19 years)
• Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) (0 - 25 years)

Consultation on the draft education sufficiency strategy

The Department for Education acknowledges the current challenges which local systems are experiencing in delivering special educational needs and disability services (SEND). The Delivering Better Value in SEND programme (DBV in SEND) is aiming to support local authorities and their local area partners to improve the delivery of SEND services for children and young people whilst working towards financial sustainability.

As part of the DBV programme, we will be working to:

• Improve inclusion for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and additional needs through a structure of assessment, analysis, and training for inclusivity at mainstream schools and other settings.
• To develop a strong, comprehensive suite of resources for all schools, settings and partners that will help improve inclusion of children and young people with young people with SEND in schools that best suit their needs, and without non ideal education health and care plans (EHCPs).

The Solihull Council SEND JSNA combines available data, research and intelligence to explore SEND prevalence and trends for children and young people aged 0 25 living and/or studying in Solihull as compared to statistically similar local authorities and the national average.

SEND JSNA Summary 2023

MIME Solihull SEND Dashboard - Commentary Report (August 2025)