Welcome to the Winter 2025 edition of the Isos Partnership newsletter. We’re delighted to tell you about the work we’ve been doing in recent months, and to share some of the things we have in the pipeline.

If you want to chat to us about anything featured in this edition, or to engage with the discussions we’re having as a team, we’d love to hear from you.

Reports, blogs and announcements

We published new research for the County Councils Network on the acute financial pressures within the SEND system. The report received widespread media coverage ahead of the budget, which revealed that central government will absorb the costs of SEND provision from local authorities from 2028/29 - although it is not currently clear what will happen to existing historic deficits.

We published a report for the Local Government Association exploring the widespread perception that there are ‘rising needs’ in the early years, setting out the importance of the early years in improving outcomes for children with additional needs and disabilities, and the opportunity to develop an inclusive early education system.

We published a report for the Government of Jersey on parents’ and carers’ views on early childhood education and care on the island and were pleased to see that, subject to approval by the States Assembly, the 2026-2029 Budget proposes expanded nursery provision for two- and three-year-olds to support families and child development, which was a key priority for parents and carers who engaged with our research.

Adam has written a think piece on what we can learn from local authorities about addressing school attendance. Our work across multiple contexts — from national pilots to local deep dives — has given us both breadth and depth of insight, making us well placed to help local authorities navigate this landscape.

We published a short piece of research on mainstream school spending on SEND, as part of the Inclusion in Practice project which was convened by the Confederation of School Trusts and Ambition Institute.

We worked with the Area-based Education Partnerships Association, in collaboration with Christine Gilbert and Estelle Morris, on a report exploring how place-based, school-led partnerships are reconnecting schools, academies and communities to deliver improvement, inclusion and belonging.

As part of our ongoing role in the What Works in SEND programme, we published case studies on Hertfordshire’s continuous improvement journey and the Nursery Inclusion Project for All in Wandsworth.

You can see all of our recent publications here.

Talking about our work

We were part of a two-fold launch of the outcomes of the Funding Futures project, which we worked on in collaboration with mime and the Education Policy Institute. In November we ran an online workshop for local authority early years leads on how our Local Context Tool and Data Dashboard can support LAs to develop their Best Start Local Plans. In December, Nat spoke alongside Stella Creasy MP at Walthamstow Family Hub to discuss the findings of our research and how they can support funders to target their support more effectively in the early years.

In November Ben spoke alongside Dame Christine Lenehan at the Rethinking Inclusion conference in Surrey about the ‘why, who, when and how’ of building an inclusive education system.

Also in November, Nat presented headline analysis from our report on the acute financial pressures facing the SEND system at the CCN Annual Conference.

What we’re working on

We’re firmly underway with our research on integrated working between early years education and family support services for Nesta. As part of the research, we’re running a short survey for LAs to capture information about approaches to joined-up and integrated working between early education and support for families in LAs across England and Scotland (open until the end of term). We're also running a short call for evidence for individual early years providers to share their experiences of providing direct support to families and of integrated local working.

As part of our role in the What Works in SEND programme, we’re convening a group of young experts to review and feed back on our local area case studies, and the Council for Disabled Children are currently running a survey to gather views on how people are engaging with our WWiS case studies. We’re also now well underway with our local area learning community, which is bringing together eight LAs all working to embed youth voice within their local SEND systems.

We’re working alongside Bristol City Council and a number of other LAs to support them to drive improvement in their Alternative Provision (AP) systems and fulfil their Section 19 duties.

As primary school rolls continue to fall in many areas, we’re working with local authorities to help them think strategically about their school estate and take effective action to maintain high education standards as school finances face growing pressure.

On the horizon

Alongside the rest of the sector, we’re anticipating the publication of the government’s plans for reform of the SEND system, which are now due to arrive in early 2026. We’ve set out detailed proposals for what a future, more effective SEND system should look like, and convened government officials, parents and carers and practitioners across education, health and care to discuss and refine those proposals. In the meantime, we continue to work alongside a number of local authorities as they strive to deliver better support within the broken architecture of the current system. Nat will be speaking about SEND funding at the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) Annual Conference in the new year.

Local authorities have until the end of March to publish their Best Start Local Plans, which will set out how they intend to meet the challenging GLD targets they have been set by the DfE. These targets address the proportion of young people achieving a ‘good level of development’ by the start of Reception, and include a separate target for disadvantaged young people. We’re having discussions with a number of local authorities about how we can support their planning before the end of March, and the delivery and monitoring of their plans before the end of the current parliament.

We’re running a webinar on 22nd January exploring the widespread perception that there are ‘rising needs’ in the early years, setting out the importance of the early years in improving outcomes for children with additional needs and disabilities, and the opportunity to develop an inclusive early education system, before setting out our calls for action to build a more inclusive, holistic and proactive approach to additional support in the early years. The webinar will be of interest to anyone working in the early years, whether in a local authority, provider, specialist support or research role. You can register here.

Get in touch

If you want to follow up on anything we’ve covered in this edition of the newsletter, or discuss some ideas we might be able to help with, we’d love to hear from you. Or feel free to reach out to an individual member of the team. We hope you have a lovely festive break.

🎄