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SEN support in school is changing. On 6 October 2026 I attended Professor Christopher Robertson’s webinar on SEND policy reform in England. This post is an update on what I learned. I’m sure you are aware of ‘the SEND crisis’: a growing funding deficit for SEN provision in England. Local authorities in England were estimated to have built up a combined SEND deficit of £6 billion by April 2026. There is an argument to be made that if specialist educational support were to be m

The battle to complete homework is a familiar one to parents of a child with ADHD. After a long day at school, with medication waning, it can be hard for a child to get excited about a 30 minute maths sheet - even if maths is a strength. Parents become increasingly inventive, frustrated and sometimes just despairing: how can I get my child to just pay attention for long enough to get this done? The A in ADHD is attention, and so it follows that we try to restore attention. Me

A new UK definition of dyslexia I wanted to share this one because it is already being operationalised in the UK as part of granting extra time and other exam accommodations. It will help you, as a parent, understand more about decisions being made for your child. A large panel of dyslexia experts has agreed on a shared definition of dyslexia for the first time. They also agreed on how it should be identified. The researchers ran a two-round survey with 58 experts from the UK

What research suggests about teaching explicit planning skills Planning doesn’t come naturally for most children with ADHD. Imagination and insight, yes, but organising learning for storage and retrieval is not necessarily intuitive. Ask a child what sort of planning they have done for an essay, and you’re likely to hear that they prefer to free-style in the moment. As you might imagine, the constraint of planning can actually feel uncomfortable. Researchers at the Link Campu

Practical support for reluctant readers Summer is a great time to read. For many kids, sitting in the shade of a big tree and devouring a book is synonymous with summer leisure. You can choose your own book without the pressure of school performance, just losing yourself in a story. For a dyslexic child, a standard paperback is not a neutral object. Reading is effortful, associated with the stigma of reading poorly in class, or being taken out for reading support. Even though

What families of children with complex learning needs actually need — and why the answer is rarely another report The SEN Code of Practice is unambiguous. A child who does not respond to quality-first teaching requires more targeted and more specific instruction. If that intervention does not produce progress, the response should be support which is even more specific, intensive, frequent, or long lasting. The assess-plan-do-review cycle is well-evidenced. The framework is no

Supporting Neurodivergent Children with ADHD, Dyslexia or Autism Returning to School After the Summer I’m a parent of a child who learns differently. I’m the teacher of many children who learn differently. We are champions and cheerleaders. We celebrate the successes with real joy and listen to the challenges with a heavy heart. Most of all, we are advocates. We stop at nothing to draw attention again and again to ways the school can help our unique learner succeed. This has

Most teachers begin their school year expecting to reteach a certain amount of material from the end of the previous year. Spirits run high in the last weeks of school, teachers are writing reports, the sun is shining and on the whole, no one really has their head in the game. Throw in a play, a concert, a party or two and it makes sense that September is dedicated to settling in your new class and re-establishing the baseline from which you hope to teach. One of the notable

"...what teachers really teach is themselves — their contagious passion for their subjects and students. It reminded us that children learn from people they love, and that love in this context means willing the good of another, and offering active care for the whole person." David Brooks Isn’t that beautiful? As my teaching practice has matured, so have my students: what began as a career as a primary school specialist has necessarily evolved into secondary school specialism

Dear Gus Walz, You know what I really like about you?Your love is so big it got the world talking. Respect,Julianne It’s a bold move starting a doctorate at 59 & 11/12ths. I have a full private practice earned in 50-minute hours, shaped by the repetition of vowel digraphs, writing frames and Lady Macbeth. For any woman who has found herself late in life suddenly in need of financial independence, it can seem profoundly counterintuitive to halve your business. My business i

Why Rising ADHD and Autism Diagnoses May Be Good News for Neurodivergent Children in Mainstream School When I began private practice, after decades within educational institutions, the concept of neurodiversity was just gaining traction. Initially conceived by the autistic community, the idea that non-normative cognitive expression - neurodivergence - could (and should) be untethered from value judgements was edgy. The pioneering work of Michael Oliver’s The Politics of Disa

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson is set to announce a reading assessment to be taken by all pupils in Year 8. There are concerns that a significant number of low income white British pupils are falling behind in literacy, and this measure aims to identify them and… and what? The UK is a world leader in reading research. From the pioneering work of Snowling and Hulme on phonological awareness, Cain and Oakhill on reading comprehension and Duff et al on language intervent

Why Schools Are Built for One Kind of Brain — and What That Costs Neurodivergent and Underachieving Children Privilege: (noun) a special advantage or authority possessed by a particular person or group based on perception of status. There is a spirited challenge to systemic privilege taking place in contemporary culture. Like so many, I've been educating myself using the wealth of resources which have proliferated this year. What's so innovative, so promising, is the shift aw

Why Specialist Tutoring for Neurodivergent Children with ADHD, Dyslexia or Autism Is Not a Luxury The practice of ‘tutoring’ is viewed with scepticism in certain circles, especially by teachers in schools. I think this is a shame. 1:1 tuition can offer both neurodiverse and typically developing learners the opportunity to develop deeper awareness of how they learn, what constitutes individual differences, why it may feel like a disability in certain contexts and what strategi

ADHD and Dyslexia Strategies to Prevent Learning Loss During the Summer Holidays Most teachers begin their school year expecting to reteach a certain amount of material from the end of the previous year. Spirits run high in the last weeks of school, teachers are writing reports, the sun is shining and on the whole, no one really has their head in the game. Throw in a play, a concert, a party or two and it makes sense that September is dedicated to settling in your new class a

Teachers hate fidget toys. We want you to Pay Attention. It’s a pleasure to teach history - there is a compelling storyline one can deliver with enthusiasm and drama; fractions are a tougher ticket. We’re building on skills which I hope are embedded, asking a child to go on the journey with me for 30 or 40 or 60 minutes (hopefully first thing in the morning, early in the week) in a step-by-step process that can challenge a child’s attention. I do my best to be engaging, deliv

How to Build Resilience in Children with Learning Differences, ADHD and Anxiety There is a fuss being made in education at present about resilience. Like strong verbal skills or good working memory, current research suggests that resilience can positively affect educational outcomes. For children with learning differences this becomes hugely important because unlike processing and memory, resilience is not a fixed construct; there is no inherent barrier to full and free expre

Teaching Tip: starting revision 1= ‘I could take this exam right now and ace it’ test ready 2= ‘I definitely learnt this, could probably blag it and have a 50/50 chance of success’ revision 3= ‘Never seen this in my life’ initial learning Steps: 1. Take an A5 piece of paper and turn it landscape 2. Divide into 3 sections numbered (from l to r) 1 2 and 3 3. Open your textbook. Look at the table of contents. Go to a chapter/unit. 4. Skim and scan for broad topics. 5. Assess whe

When is revision not revision? Part 2. Initial learning is when you learn something new, begin to lay the groove in your memory which homework (a form of revision) then deepens. Initial learning is the first encounter with material, during which time you find the mental drawer into which you will come to file this new information. So in some respects, initial learning is rarely new material per se, it is additional material on a topic which has previously been introduced. It

When is revision not revision? Part 1. If you were in my spelling group you would know the answer straight away; the root of revision is vis – to look or see. Re as a prefix means again, and the suffix –ion turns a verb into a noun. Therefore revision means to look at or to see again. But what if for the life of you, you have never seen this material before? The answer is simple. You can’t revise if you haven’t learnt it. A parent, particularly one paying school fees, might t