More than two thirds of councils inspected by Ofsted last year had “significant weaknesses” in how they support pupils with special educational needs (SEND) – the worst record since the watchdog started visits six years ago.
Schools Week has extensively covered the failures of councils in their SEND provision. Around half of inspections already resulted in councils being ordered to produce a written statement of action.
An investigation last year revealed how seven of the eight areas visited by the watchdog after inspections restarted following Covid found “significant areas of weakness”.
New Ofsted figures, published this morning, show 68 per cent of councils effectively failed inspections in 2021-22.
This is worse than the 56 per cent in 2019-20, before the pandemic, and since inspections started in 2016-17.
