Initial teacher training (ITT) is carrying more of the system’s hopes for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) than ever before, and providers have responded with real ambition and graft.

Yet there is a growing tension between the demand for more training on SEND and the reality of fitting more into a nine-month course that must prepare novices for every aspect of teaching.

Over the past five years, ITT providers have shifted decisively away from the old model of a single “SEND afternoon”, towards SEND and inclusion being deliberately threaded through programmes.

Focus groups with school‑based providers, undertaken by the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), reveal an impressive mix of placements in specialist settings, sessions on particular conditions, conferences, masterclasses and opportunities to shadow pupils with SEND, usually anchored in quality-first teaching and adaptive teaching.

Ofsted’s recent thematic work reflects this trajectory, noting that, in most cases, SEND training is now “comprehensive and well‑integrated”, even as concerns about coherence and sequencing remain.

At the same time, the complexity threshold in mainstream classrooms is rising, and providers know it. In the latest NASBTT ITT Insights Survey, around two‑thirds of responding providers expressed concern about new teachers’ readiness to support pupils with more complex needs, despite all this additional work on curriculum design.

Essentially, ITT is being asked not just to catch up with current need, but to anticipate what inclusive practice will have to look like in 2030 and beyond.

Do we really need better training on SEND?

Whenever the system worries about SEND, the reflex answer is often the same: better training. ITT and the early career years become the lightning rod for policy anxiety, with new frameworks and additional content positioned as the primary solution.

But providers are already operating with a significantly content‑heavy curriculum, especially on one‑year routes, and adding further modules risks turning a planned tapestry into a patchwork of disconnected interventions.

This “add more” mindset can also fuel a subtle deficit narrative about ITT itself. Providers report feeling held accountable for the totality of teaching quality in a nine‑month window, without sufficient clarity on what is foundational and what is desirable.

The danger is that the call for extra SEND training, especially in response to the government’s expectation for a more “inclusive mainstream”, results in a checklist exercise: counting the number of SEND‑branded inputs, rather than asking the deeper question of whether trainees complete their course feeling confident to teach pupils who learn differently.

ITT cannot be self‑contained solution

The new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (ITTECF), live from September 2025, offers a welcome opportunity to rebalance. By integrating the previous Core Content Framework and Early Career Framework, and strengthening guidance on adaptive teaching, oral language and SEND across all eight standards, it promises a more coherent journey from trainee to early career teacher (ECT).

However, the framework also brings fresh complexity. Statements such as “learn from experts” can unintentionally promote a compliance mindset, as providers scramble to evidence every expectation and bolt on extra sessions to prove coverage.

In reality, many placement schools do not yet have the depth of SEND expertise implied by the documentation, and Sendcos are often carrying the main training load without the systematic involvement of teaching and learning leads.

The most telling feedback is coming from trainees themselves. Many report that the SEND provision in the centre‑based element of their course feels strong, but they do not always experience the same practices modelled consistently in schools, creating a form of cognitive dissonance.

They are taught high‑quality adaptive teaching, graduated responses and the importance of not over‑relying on labels, before being placed in environments where the reality of pupil engagement is often unpredictable, support for SEND in many classrooms is under-resourced and inclusive practice is still emergent.

This is not a failure of individual schools so much as a natural time lag between policy intent, ITT reform and classroom practice. It does, however, underline that ITT cannot be treated as a self‑contained solution. The self‑efficacy of novice teachers is shaped as much by school culture and mentoring capacity as by any taught session.

SEND is no longer a ‘bolt-on’

Longitudinal studies suggest that teachers’ sense of efficacy often rises at the end of training and then dips in the induction year, which is precisely when they start to grapple with the full responsibility of meeting diverse needs.

One of the most significant shifts underway is conceptual rather than structural. Where SEND was once treated as a bolt‑on, providers will need to design curricula that start with struggling learners in mind and see inclusive pedagogy as the entitlement of every trainee, not a specialist niche.

That means placing classroom routines, modelling, explanation and assessment for learning under the lens of “who will find this hardest, and what would make it work for them?”.

In that framing, a session labelled “modelling” is also, implicitly, a session about autism, working memory, processing and anxiety. A sequence on oral language is simultaneously about pupils with developmental language disorder, social communication needs and early literacy barriers. The more thoroughly SEND is woven through these core elements, the less it makes sense to box it up as a discrete topic.

Here lies one of the most delicate challenges for providers: if SEND training is genuinely permeated, trainees may struggle to recognise it. When asked, “How much SEND training did you have?”, there is a risk that they think in terms of labelled lectures or condition‑specific inputs and answer “not much”, even when the principles and practices of inclusion have underpinned their seminars and placement experiences.

In the short term, this perception gap risks pushing providers (and school partners) back towards visible, SEND‑badged content to reassure both policymakers and trainees that the topic has been covered.

Over time, however, the more powerful move is to narrate the inclusive intent of the whole curriculum explicitly: showing trainees how each element of “quality teaching” is designed to work first for pupils who find learning hardest, building in structured opportunities to practise decision making with complex classroom scenarios.

What are the next steps to improve ITT?

It’s essential that we both recognise the progress providers are making and support further improvement, without defaulting to simple quantitative measures and calls for more content.

So, with that in mind, what might a realistic “next steps” agenda look like? Three priorities stand out:

1. Clarify what is fundamental

We need a shared national agreement on essential SEND knowledge and skills within the ECT timeframe. Let’s move the discourse away from “cover everything in a year” towards “build the right platform for a three-year journey through ITT and the early career phase”.

2. Measure confidence and competence, not just coverage

We also need to agree on a measure of “SEND self efficacy” throughout ECT years. Let’s notice and celebrate an ECT’s developing pedagogy towards a minimum expected standard, such as “working with complexity”.

Mentoring, feedback and leadership expectations can be aligned to support this progression and act as a standard within any school culture.

3. Codesign a permeated curriculum

We must ensure that adaptive teaching becomes a collective, systematised practice, rather than an individual teacher’s heroic effort.

Let’s build on good practice, such as the collegiate work of NASBTT, working with schools to establish concrete models of a “permeated” ITTECF curriculum. This enables struggling learners to be centred across all standards, and for SEND expertise to be shared between Sendcos and teaching and learning leads.

If ITT is to play its full part in reshaping the system for inclusion, the task is not to bolt on yet more SEND content, but to keep refining how the entire training experience helps new teachers become curious, confident problem solvers for the pupils who do not fit the template.

Providers are ready to move forward; the challenge now is to ensure that the policy narrative, the ITTECF and school cultures move with them.

Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders

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