SEND in numbers
The scale of SEND in English schools is often underestimated. As of the January 2025 School Census, 19.6% of pupils in England have identified special educational needs. Of these, 14.3% receive SEN Support — the school-based provision stage, where the class teacher remains responsible for planning and delivering adapted teaching — and 5.3% have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), the statutory document that legally requires schools to deliver specific provision.
The most common primary need types are speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), moderate learning difficulties (MLD), social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH), and specific learning difficulties (SpLD, which includes dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia). In a typical class of 30, roughly six pupils will have some form of identified SEN — and many more may have unidentified needs that still affect their access to learning. These are not pupils on the margins of the classroom; they are a significant proportion of every teacher's class, every lesson, every day.
The legal framework: Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 imposes an anticipatory duty on schools to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils. “Anticipatory” is the key word here: it means schools must plan ahead. They cannot wait for a specific pupil to arrive and then react. Schools are expected to think in advance about what disabled pupils might need and to have adjustments ready. This is a proactive obligation, not a reactive one.
Disability is defined broadly under the Act and includes learning difficulties, sensory impairments, mental health conditions, and physical disabilities. Many pupils with SEN will meet the definition of disability under the Act, even if they are not commonly thought of as “disabled” in everyday language. A pupil with dyslexia, for example, has a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, and the school has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments for them.
Reasonable adjustments might include providing materials in alternative formats (larger print, different fonts, coloured backgrounds), modifying teaching approaches, or providing auxiliary aids such as overlays or adapted worksheets. The threshold is “reasonable” — schools are not required to do everything conceivable, but they must do what is practicable given their resources. Failure to make reasonable adjustments is unlawful discrimination, and parents can challenge it through the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST).
The SEND Code of Practice 2015
The SEND Code of Practice is the statutory guidance that all schools, local authorities, and health bodies must follow when working with children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Three concepts within it are particularly relevant to everyday classroom teaching.
First, the graduated approach: Assess, Plan, Do, Review. This is the cycle that underpins all SEN Support. Teachers identify a need through assessment, plan an intervention or adaptation, deliver it, and review its effectiveness — then cycle again. The graduated approach is not a one-off event; it is a continuous process that should be documented and evidenced over time. Each cycle should show what was tried, what the impact was, and what will change next.
Second, Quality First Teaching (QFT) is the foundation of the Code's approach. Every pupil's first entitlement is high-quality, inclusive classroom teaching. The Code is explicit: additional interventions and support are meant to supplement QFT, not replace it. A pupil should not be withdrawn from class to receive their “real” teaching from a teaching assistant while the rest of the class receives quality input from the teacher. QFT comes first; everything else is layered on top.
Third, the Code defines four broad areas of need: communication and interaction; cognition and learning; social, emotional and mental health; and sensory and/or physical needs. These categories help schools think systematically about what adjustments might be needed, but the Code stresses that individual pupils' needs are unique and should not be reduced to a single label.
Quality First Teaching as the foundation
QFT — also called “ordinarily available provision” in some local authority frameworks — means inclusive teaching that meets the needs of most learners without requiring additional intervention. It is the bedrock on which everything else is built. If QFT is not in place, no amount of additional support will compensate: interventions built on a weak teaching foundation are interventions built on sand.
In practice, QFT includes: clear learning objectives shared with pupils; scaffolded activities that allow all pupils to access the same curriculum content; varied presentation of material (not just text-heavy worksheets, but visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic approaches); accessible resources formatted for the range of needs in the classroom; ongoing formative assessment to check understanding; and flexible grouping that avoids permanently labelling pupils by “ability.” The SEND Code of Practice is clear that additional support should be layered on top of QFT, not used as a substitute for it.
For resource design, QFT means that the materials pupils interact with should already be accessible before any “extra” adjustments are considered. A worksheet set in 9pt serif font with dense paragraphs and no visual breaks is not QFT — it creates unnecessary barriers for a significant proportion of the class. Starting with accessible formatting (clear fonts, adequate spacing, logical layout) is not a SEND-specific adjustment; it is good teaching for everyone.
What Ofsted's framework looks for
The Ofsted inspection framework, updated in November 2025, now includes a standalone report card area for inclusion. This is a significant change from previous frameworks, where SEND provision was assessed as part of broader quality of education and leadership judgements. Having its own dedicated area means inclusion — and SEND provision specifically — receives focused attention from inspectors.
Inspectors evaluate whether: all pupils, including those with SEND, access the full curriculum (not a narrowed or “watered down” version); teaching is adapted to meet diverse needs within each lesson; pupils with SEND make good progress from their individual starting points; the school operates a clear graduated approach with evidence of the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle; and reasonable adjustments are embedded in everyday practice, not confined to policy documents or one-off interventions.
Inspectors also pay particular attention to the lowest 20% of attainers in any school. This group — which overlaps significantly with pupils receiving SEN Support — is scrutinised to determine whether they are receiving the quality of teaching and support they need. If inspectors find that lower attainers are routinely given simplified tasks that reduce curriculum ambition, or that they spend significant time with teaching assistants rather than receiving quality teacher input, this will be reflected negatively in the inclusion judgement.
Evidence inspectors want to see
Ofsted does not prescribe specific evidence formats — there is no checklist of documents to produce. Instead, inspectors triangulate evidence from multiple sources: lesson observations, conversations with staff and pupils, work scrutiny, and documentary evidence. What they are looking for, across all these sources, is a coherent picture of a school that genuinely adapts its teaching for individual needs.
In lesson observations, inspectors want to see differentiated and adapted teaching in action: the same curriculum content made accessible through scaffolding, adapted resources, and responsive questioning. In pupil work scrutiny, they look for evidence that resources reflect pupils' needs — not generic, one-size-fits-all worksheets handed to everyone regardless of their reading level or accessibility requirements. In staff conversations, they expect teachers to be able to articulate how they adapt for individual pupils and what impact those adaptations have had.
Having a systematic way to demonstrate that resources are adapted for individual pupils — and being able to show the specific adaptations made (font, spacing, reading level, background colour) — is powerful evidence during inspection. It shifts the conversation from “we differentiate” (a claim) to “here are thirty individually adapted versions of this worksheet, each matched to a pupil's documented accessibility profile” (proof).
Practical steps for creating SEND-friendly resources
So what does this look like in practice? There are several concrete steps teachers can take to ensure their resources meet the needs of pupils with SEND — and, critically, to create an evidence trail that demonstrates they are doing so.
Per-pupil formatting. Different pupils need different presentation of the same content. A pupil with dyslexia may need a sans-serif font at 14pt with 1.5 line spacing and a cream background — as recommended by the BDA Dyslexia Style Guide. A pupil with visual stress may need a pastel-coloured background. A pupil with a visual impairment may need 18pt text with high contrast. These are not complex adjustments, but applying them manually across every resource for every pupil is unsustainable at scale.
Reading level adaptation. Adjusting vocabulary and sentence complexity to match each pupil's reading level, while maintaining the same curriculum content and learning objectives, is one of the most effective forms of adaptive teaching. A Year 6 science worksheet on photosynthesis should cover the same concepts for every pupil, but the language used to explain those concepts can and should be matched to what each pupil can independently access.
Accessible worksheets as evidence. When every pupil's version of a worksheet is generated from the same source material with documented adaptations, you have a clear, auditable evidence trail. You can show exactly what was adapted, why (linked to the pupil's SEN Support plan or EHCP provision map), and that it was done consistently across lessons and subjects — not just on the day an inspector happened to visit.
Consistency across subjects and lessons.Adaptations should not depend on whether a teaching assistant is available, or whether the teacher had time to create an adapted version that evening. A pupil with an EHCP that specifies “modified worksheets with simplified language and enlarged font” is legally entitled to that provision in every lesson, not just when it is convenient. Consistency is both a legal requirement and a marker of quality provision.
Building an evidence trail
The strongest evidence of inclusive practice is systematic, not ad hoc. An occasional adapted worksheet produced for a learning walk is not evidence of embedded practice — it is evidence of performative compliance. What Ofsted (and parents, and local authorities) want to see is a pattern: consistent, documented, ongoing adaptation that is woven into the fabric of everyday teaching.
If you can show that every resource, for every lesson, is adapted to each pupil's documented needs — and you can produce the adapted versions to prove it — that is compelling evidence for multiple audiences. For Ofsted, it demonstrates that inclusion is embedded in practice, not just in policy. For parents, it shows that their child's needs are being taken seriously and met consistently. For the local authority, it provides evidence that the provision specified in an EHCP is actually being delivered.
This is especially powerful during Annual Reviews of EHCPs. Section 6.15 of the SEND Code of Practice requires that schools demonstrate the provision in the plan is being delivered and is having an impact. Being able to produce a term's worth of individually adapted resources — each matched to the pupil's specified provision — is far more compelling than a verbal assurance that “we differentiate in class.” It turns a qualitative claim into quantitative, documented evidence.
This is what Adaptify makes practical. Every resource you generate through Adaptify is individually adapted to each pupil's accessibility profile and reading level — and every adaptation is documented. When an inspector asks how you adapt resources for your SEND pupils, or a parent wants to see what their child's provision looks like in practice, you have a systematic, term-long record to show them.