A message from Christine McInnes:

9 January 2026 weekly update

9 January 2026

This week, Christine updates on Ofsted inspections, the Schools Funding Forum and an upcoming series of three national Whole School SEND webinars.

Dear Colleagues,

Happy New Year, I hope you had a peaceful Christmas break and welcome back.

Chez McInnes we were blessed to have welcome time with family and friends, with a final Epiphany celebration on Sunday.

Ofsted inspections

We have had a number of inspections already this term and feedback on the new process that I am aware of has been fairly positive. Well done to colleagues in schools that have effectively managed this so early in the term. You may be aware that there is a cohort of Kent leaders who are undertaking training with Ofsted to inspect under the new framework and I am confident that the whole system will benefit greatly from this experience. Now that this inspection framework is operational the government has announced an amendment to the long awaited Schools and Wellbeing Bill on introducing an inspection framework for Trusts

One significant change in the new framework is a sharper focus on SEND inclusion and this SENDcast where host Dale Pickles and Adam Sproston, a senior His Majesty's Inspector for SEND, AP, and Inclusion discuss:

  • The key changes in Ofsted's new framework and what they mean for SEND
  • How inclusion is now at the heart of educational inspections
  • The collective responsibility of school leaders in supporting neurodiverse students.

This SENDcast may be of interest

Meetings attended - KCC Cabinet

The key meeting this week was Cabinet and the agenda included

  • Cabinet Member Updates
  • Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement
  • Quarterly Performance Report, Quarter 2, 2025/26
  • Corporate Risk Register

All the papers can be found online

KCC proposed budget

This was published last night

The Council is in a difficult budget position. Officers have been working on developing savings proposals with a view to protecting statutory services and minimising impact on frontline services and this work is reflected in the budget.

Schools Funding Forum

The first forum of the term took place this morning and the agenda included:

  • Communities and High Needs update
  • De-delegation
  • Early Years rates and Maintained Nursery School
  • Growth Fund and Falling Rolls policies
  • Disapplications - rentals.

The DfE has now announced funding for 2026-27, which has been frozen at 2025-26 levels. There is no inflationary increase nor any changes for demographics and whilst it refers to a future review of funding there is no information as to what this will include and we are hoping this may be linked to the publication of the SEND White Paper later this year. The forecast KCC submitted to DfE for the December Safety Valve report assumed 7% grant uplift and adjustments for demography in line with last year and within KCC officers are considering the implications. The first implication is the estimated in-year overspend for 2026-27 will increase.

The first discussions about the current information took place at today’s School Funding Forum and I am going to take the opportunity to highlight the importance of you and your chair of governors to actively engage with your particular representatives on SFF to make your views known. Today’s SFF had some very difficult conversations in a collegiate and professional manner ably Chaired by Ben Cooper, which is positive and encouraging. As a system, we will be making some tough financial decisions over the coming months based on difficult choices. I strongly encourage you to get actively involved as that will help to ensure our decisions are robust and sustainable, information about your representative is available on the Kelsi website

A very big thank you to all members of the SFF who work really hard on a voluntary basis to represent you and to provide advice and guidance to officers which is much appreciated.

Whole School SEND webinar series - leading specialist spaces in mainstream

I am happy to share there will be an upcoming series of three national Whole School SEND webinars, to run in January and February 2026.

These are free-to-access through the Department for Education’s Universal SEND Services contract, and aimed at teachers, SENDCos and school leaders at all levels.

The series is called leading specialist spaces in mainstream. It will cover different components of leadership, curriculum, specialist pedagogy, assessment and the experience of children with complex SEND profiles who are learning in separate, internal spaces in mainstream schools.

The registration link for each of the sessions are below:

Lunchtime Leadership Lounge

We are organising speakers for this year and will be circulating information in the near future.

In the meantime you can hear from:

And finally…

Two recent SEND-related reports that may be of interest. This international comparative review of SEND policy compares approaches to support for children with SEND across 10 OECD countries

Secondly, this large, longitudinal study about young people’s screen time, including social media use, and its effects on two key symptoms of ADHD: inattention and hyperactivity. The study, based in the USA, found that screen time devoted to social media demonstrated some increase in these symptoms among the young people, while other activities such as gaming did not.

With all best wishes

Christine McInnes
Interim Corporate Director, Children, Young People and Education

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