The direction of travel on special educational needs and disabilities policy is clear: children with SEND should be supported in mainstream settings wherever possible, and schools are expected to meet a wider range of needs earlier, more consistently and with less reliance on statutory plans.

At the same time, we are all seeing the volume and complexity of need rising rapidly.

All this means schools are expected to respond to a broader spectrum of needs, from mild classroom adjustments to highly complex, multi-agency cases, with the same or fewer resources.

So schools will need to start thinking differently to try to meet these needs.

No single Sendco for each school

Perhaps one thing that could help is rethinking the idea of a single Sendco responsible for all pupils in a school and them having to have all the knowledge required to do this.

After all, expecting one person to have deep expertise across autism, SEMH, cognition and learning, and physical or medical needs, while also leading provision strategically, is simply too much.

That is why at QUEST Trust, for the past year, we have been taking a different approach. Rather than having a generalist Sendco in each school trying to do everything, we now have a trust-wide network of specialist expertise to share the load more evenly.

It means each school still has an in-house Sendco as a consistent point of contact for families, but each Sendco now acts as a specialist, carrying a caseload across the whole trust.

They step in when a child’s needs go beyond what the base Sendco can reasonably manage, supporting the school, the pupil and their family. This dual role allows for a true “team around the child” approach, rather than a reactive, one-person model.

Building specialisms

To make this work, each Sendco develops specialisms in line with the four main areas of need in the SEND Code of Practice: communication and interaction; cognition and learning; SEMH; and physical, sensory and medical needs.

Some of these skills have been developed among our existing staff through targeted CPD, and staff are also recruited directly. Our trust of four primaries and one secondary now comprises a SEND team of director of inclusion, five expert Sendcos across the five schools, and a head of SEND.

The result is a highly collaborative, practical model that has real impact in classrooms every day - where each Sendco is both the local expert for their school and a specialist resource for the wider trust.

Because most of our schools are geographically close, this network works in person, not just remotely.

Specialists can visit classrooms, model strategies and work alongside teachers. This hands-on approach doesn’t just support pupils. It builds capacity across the school, upskilling staff so they feel confident managing a wider range of needs.

More knowledge, less work

Of course, there may be a perception that this means more workload for Sendcos, who have their own school work and the work of pupils in other schools to factor in.

In our experience, this is definitely not the case. Because there is a specialist for the most common needs, those experts can deal with those cases more swiftly and effectively, thereby reducing workload in the whole and allowing families and pupils to get support faster.

We also run SEND roadshows, bringing our experts and local services together to share strategies with families and connect them to support networks.

Overseeing this is our director of inclusion, who ensures that the strategy is joined up across the trust and that expertise is deployed where it’s needed most.

The results speak for themselves. Pupils with complex needs who might otherwise have struggled are now able to access lessons and thrive.

For example, an autism spectrum disorder specialist recently worked with a secondary school to implement classroom strategies for a student with complex autism needs, allowing them to fully engage with their learning.

Our Year 6 data shows SEND pupils performing significantly above the national average in reading, writing, maths and combined measures.

We’re not suggesting that this is the only way to structure SEND in schools. But we know from experience that one Sendco per school is no longer enough.

When trusts invest in building networks of specialist expertise, pupils benefit, staff are empowered and inclusion becomes a practical reality rather than just an aspiration.

Marc Doyle is CEO of QUEST Trust