Westminster Education Forum - Improving Teacher Training

In February 2025, we were invited to the Westminster Education Forum to give a keynote speech on ‘The way forward for collaboration, coordination and inclusion in SEND provision’.

We spoke primarily about our 2022 ‘State of the Nation in SEND Education’ report, which since it’s publication, has had six of its recommendations taken on by the Government, through the 2023 ‘SEND and AP Improvement Plan’.

One of the policies that we particularly wanted to highlight was the recommendation for better local networks to support teacher training:

“Recommendation One: Each region in the country, led by the respective Local Authorities, should set up hubs of best practice. This will encourage co-creation as well as the sharing of ideas between both specialist teachers and mainstream teachers, ensuring that no child is in an institution where the teaching staff lack the skills, expertise and understanding required.”

In conversations around SEND provision, there are consistent calls from campaigners to improve teacher training around disability inclusion. Setting up local networks, sharing best practice between mainstream teachers and specialist teachers, are excellent ways to foster collaboration and produce an evidence base of what good practice looks like in teaching and learning.

We are really pleased to see these ideas develop into Government policy, through the introduction of ‘Local Authority Improvement Plans’, and more recently through initiatives such as ‘Partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools’.

It was a privilege to meet leaders doing excellent work across the country. Thank you to the forum for the invitation.