Across England, SEND leaders are asking similar questions:

• How do we improve consistency without removing professional judgement?
• How do we make decisions easier to explain to schools and families?
• How do we strengthen confidence across increasingly stretched teams?
• How do we prepare for reform while continuing to manage today's pressures?

These challenges sat at the heart of recent work undertaken by one London Borough.

Working collaboratively with Imosphere, the borough used different elements of the SEND Genie Toolkit to strengthen the links between evidence, quality assurance, and decision-making across the SEND process. Rather than replacing existing practice, the tools were configured around the borough's local approach, helping improve consistency, transparency, and confidence while supporting professional judgement. Alongside wider service improvements, this work contributed to reducing the borough's projected SEND deficit from £26m to under £5m.

Every local authority is different. But through our work with 1 in 4 councils across England, we’ve seen the same challenges emerge time and again - making the lessons from this borough’s journey relevant far beyond one local area.

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‍Lesson 1

Designing descriptors is only the beginning

Many authorities invest significant time and effort into developing descriptors, funding values, and decision-making frameworks. But implementation is where the real challenge often begins.

As demand grows and teams become busier, consistency becomes harder to maintain. Different interpretations emerge. Local practices evolve over time. Confidence can vary between practitioners, panels, and schools.

Strong frameworks matter – but so do moderation, governance, and opportunities for practitioners to develop a shared understanding of how decisions should be applied in practice.

Having descriptors in place is one thing - and having confidence they are being applied consistently across the system is something else entirely.

Lesson 2

Evidence matters as much as funding values

One of the strongest themes to emerge from the work was the importance of maintaining a clear thread between need, evidence, and decisions. When those links become difficult to follow, decisions become harder to explain and defend.

The borough found that bringing evidence, descriptors, and funding rationale together in one place through Funding Genie made it easier for practitioners and panels to reach decisions they could clearly explain and defend.

Conversely, when the rationale behind decisions is visible and evidence can be clearly traced through the process, conversations with schools and families often become more constructive.

Transparency does not remove difficult conversations. It can however, create greater confidence in how decisions have been reached.

Lesson 3

Professional judgement remains central

Technology is playing an increasingly important role in SEND services. Whether supporting EHCP quality assurance, identifying gaps in evidence, or helping practitioners prepare for panel discussions, its greatest value comes when it strengthens professional judgement, rather than replaces it.

The objective is not to remove expertise from decision-making. It is to make professional judgement easier to evidence, easier to explain, and easier to apply consistently at scale.

As councils begin exploring AI-supported workflows, maintaining that balance will become increasingly important.

Lesson 4

Schools need confidence in the rationale

Many SEND disagreements are not simply about outcomes. Often they stem from uncertainty around how decisions have been reached.

When schools can see clearer links between need, evidence, and funding decisions, confidence grows - even where difficult conversations still need to happen.

The authority found that improving transparency helped make decisions easier to explain and defend, while reducing challenges driven by inconsistency.  

Trust is rarely built through funding values alone. More often it comes from clarity, consistency, and transparency.

Lesson 5

Quality assurance becomes more important as demand grows

As volume and complexity grow, maintaining consistent decisions becomes harder. Without a clear thread between need, evidence, and funding rationale, variation can go unnoticed - and decisions become more difficult to scrutinise and defend.

The borough found that when evidence and funding rationale were visible in one place, quality assurance became part of the decision-making process rather than something added afterwards.

For many councils, quality assurance is no longer just about checking individual plans. It's about understanding whether practice is consistent across teams, schools, and the wider SEND system.

What supported this work?

Rather than introducing a completely new approach, the borough used different parts of the SEND Genie Toolkit at different stages of its journey, including:

• Strengthening evidence and funding decisions
• Improving consistency through structured moderation
• Supporting quality assurance of EHCPs
• Identifying variation across cohorts
• Building confidence through data and insight

Every council's starting point is different, which is why the toolkit is designed to be adopted incrementally, supporting existing practice rather than replacing it.

The bigger lesson

Perhaps the biggest lesson from the work is that meaningful SEND improvement rarely comes from technology alone.

It comes from combining:

• Strong practice  
• Professional expertise  
• Operational insight  
• Technology used in the right way  

As one SEND leader involved in the work reflected:

Across the country, councils we support continue to demonstrate that improvements in consistency, confidence, and transparency are possible.

The question is increasingly becoming not whether change is needed - but where to start.

Want to read the full story?

The full case study explores how one London borough strengthened consistency, improved transparency, and contributed to reducing a projected SEND deficit by over £21m.

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