How to support pupils with SEND in mainstream classrooms
Supporting pupils with SEND in a mainstream classroom is one of the parts of the job that often feels hardest to do well, partly because the framing has shifted so much in the last decade. The old model, where additional needs sat with a TA, a withdrawal group, or a separate set of resources, has largely been retired. The current expectation, set out in the SEND Code of Practice and reinforced by the Education Endowment Foundation's guidance, is that high-quality teaching for all pupils is among the most important factors for pupils with SEND. Specialist interventions exist, but they sit on top of strong classroom practice, not instead of it.
That shift puts the subject teacher at the centre of the work, which can feel daunting when you have 30 pupils and a packed scheme of learning. The good news is that the practices that work for pupils with identified needs are largely the same practices that work for everyone else.
This guide walks through the EEF's five-a-day principle, the distinction between EHCP and SEN support, and a set of moves that tend to land well in real classrooms. It is aimed at subject teachers, heads of department, and SENCOs.
What "SEND" actually covers
SEND, short for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, is a broad category. The SEND Code of Practice (2015) groups needs into four areas: Communication and interaction, cognition and learning, social, emotional and mental health, and sensory or physical needs. A pupil may have needs across more than one area.
Within that, there are two practical tiers. SEN support is the first, covering pupils whose needs can be met through reasonable adjustments and targeted classroom strategies. An Education, Health and Care Plan, or EHCP, is the more formal tier, for pupils whose needs require provision beyond what is ordinarily available. Around 5.3 per cent of pupils in England have an EHCP, and 14.2 per cent are recorded as having SEN support, giving a combined SEND figure of 19.5 per cent (Department for Education, 2024-25 SEN statistics).
The majority of pupils with SEND in your classroom will not have an EHCP. They will be on SEN support, and the provision you make for them will live mostly in your planning and your teaching. Knowing what is on a pupil's profile matters more than knowing every legal nuance.
Of pupils in England
~20%
are recorded as having some form of SEND, split between SEN support (14.2 per cent) and Education, Health and Care Plans (5.3 per cent), based on the Department for Education's school census.
The EEF five-a-day principle
The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance report on SEND in mainstream schools (2020) is probably the most useful single document for subject teachers. Its central recommendation is that five high-quality teaching strategies, used together and consistently, drive most of the impact for pupils with SEND. The phrase "five-a-day" is shorthand for these strategies.
The five are explicit instruction, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, scaffolding, flexible grouping, and the use of technology. Most experienced teachers use all five at different points, often without naming them as such. The contribution of the EEF guidance is to bring them together into a coherent set, so that a department or whole school can talk about provision in shared language.
Explicit instruction
Teach key content and skills directly, with clear modelling and worked examples, rather than expecting pupils to infer them from activities. Pupils with SEND benefit particularly when the steps of a procedure or the structure of an extended answer are made visible, narrated, and then practised with feedback.
Cognitive and metacognitive strategies
Teach pupils how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own thinking. For pupils with SEND, this might include explicit prompts to check their work against a success criterion, to identify where they got stuck, or to choose between two strategies for a problem. These are skills, not personality traits, and they respond to teaching.
Scaffolding
Provide temporary support that lets a pupil access the same task as everyone else. Worked examples, sentence starters, knowledge organisers, partial diagrams. Plan the removal of each scaffold at the same time as you plan its introduction. A scaffold that never comes away tends to become a ceiling.
Flexible grouping
Group pupils in different ways for different tasks rather than relying on fixed sets or permanent table groups. Mixed pairs for discussion, ability-aligned groups for short targeted practice, and whole-class teaching for new content. The EEF research is fairly clear that permanent low-attaining groupings tend to widen gaps.
Use of technology
Used carefully, technology can reduce barriers for many pupils with SEND. Text-to-speech for pupils with reading difficulties, speech-to-text for pupils with writing difficulties, predictive text, accessibility features built into tablets and laptops. The point is removing access barriers to the curriculum, not adding novelty.
The EEF guidance is specific that no single strategy is a silver bullet. The impact comes from the five being applied together across teachers and lessons. A pupil who gets explicit instruction in maths but inferential teaching in history will not see the cumulative benefit.
Ordinarily-available provision
A phrase that comes up often in SEND conversations is "ordinarily-available provision". It refers to the support and adjustments that any mainstream classroom should be able to provide as a matter of course, without needing a formal plan or specialist input. It is the baseline.
What counts as ordinarily available varies a little between local authorities, but the core elements are fairly consistent. Visual timetables and clear lesson structures. Pre-teaching of key vocabulary. Dual coding of explanations with diagrams. Accessible printed materials. Sentence starters where needed. Movement breaks. Reasonable adjustments to how pupils record their work. Reduced or chunked instructions. Clear, predictable routines.
The usefulness of the term is that it sets a floor. If a pupil is on SEN support and the provision matches what is ordinarily available, you are doing what is expected. If a pupil needs more, that need should be flagged to the SENCO and tracked through the assess-plan-do-review cycle. The phrase also reframes the conversation away from "what extra do I need to do for this pupil" and towards "what should my baseline practice look like for the whole class".
Practical moves in the classroom
The daily work is in the small adjustments. Below are moves that tend to earn their keep across subjects.
| Pupil profile | What you might notice | Practical adjustments |
|---|---|---|
| Dyslexia / reading difficulties | Slower reading speed, difficulty with multi-step written instructions, spelling errors disproportionate to oral ability. | Use accessible fonts and off-white backgrounds, chunk written instructions, allow extra processing time, provide text-to-speech where available, mark for content over spelling unless spelling is the focus. |
| ADHD / attention difficulties | Difficulty sustaining focus on longer tasks, fidgeting, calling out, work started but rarely finished. | Break tasks into shorter chunks with explicit checkpoints, use timers, allow brief movement, build in low-stakes recall to re-anchor attention, give clear next-step instructions one at a time. |
| Autism / social and communication needs | Strong preference for routine, difficulty with ambiguous instructions or open-ended tasks, sensory sensitivity. | Be explicit about expectations and timings, avoid ambiguous language, give warning before transitions, allow some predictability in seating and routines, check sensory environment (lighting, noise). |
| Moderate learning difficulties | Working memory difficulties, slower processing, gaps in prior knowledge. | Pre-teach vocabulary, use dual coding, reduce cognitive load on slides, build in regular retrieval practice, provide knowledge organisers, allow extra time for processing. |
| SEMH needs | Difficulty regulating emotions, withdrawal or behaviour incidents, low confidence with new tasks. | Build relationship before pressing on academic challenge, give low-stakes early wins, be explicit about success criteria, plan exit routines for moments of dysregulation, work closely with pastoral team. |
| Speech, language and communication needs | Difficulty with extended verbal instructions, vocabulary gaps, reluctance to contribute in discussion. | Pre-teach vocabulary, use visuals to support spoken instruction, allow rehearsal time before being called on, scaffold extended responses with sentence starters. |
These profiles are starting points, not formulas. Two pupils with the same diagnosis may need quite different adjustments. The SENCO and the pupil themselves are usually the best sources of detail about what actually helps day to day.
Working with the SENCO and the pupil profile
Every pupil on SEN support or with an EHCP should have a profile in your school's system. A good profile tells you the pupil's strengths, the specific barriers to learning, and the adjustments that work. Reading those profiles before you plan a unit is the highest-leverage thing you can do as a subject teacher.
The SENCO holds the wider picture. They know which pupils are mid-assessment, which are awaiting outcomes from external services, which have recently changed medication or family circumstances. A regular five-minute weekly check-in tends to be more useful than waiting for the formal review meeting.
It is also worth talking to pupils themselves. Most pupils with SEND know exactly what helps them and what does not, often more clearly than the adults around them. "What works for you in lessons?" gets surprisingly useful answers.
Rosenshine, scaffolding, and SEND
Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, published in 2012, sit closely with the EEF SEND guidance. The principles, including short presentation of new material, asking many questions, guided practice, and weekly review, are not designed specifically for SEND, but pupils with SEND tend to be the biggest beneficiaries when they are applied well.
The link is working memory. Most pupils with cognition and learning needs have less spare working memory available for new content. Rosenshine's principles almost without exception reduce the working memory cost of learning. Where Rosenshine and the EEF SEND guidance reinforce each other most usefully is in the move from "differentiation by task" to scaffolding. Rather than giving lower-attaining pupils a different and easier task, you give the same task with temporary support.
Common traps to avoid
A handful of mistakes show up repeatedly, often with good intentions behind them.
Lowering expectations. The most damaging trap. A pupil who is given easier work tends to internalise a low expectation of themselves. Keep the goal the same. Use scaffolds to support the journey towards it.
Over-relying on the TA. Where a TA is in the room, it can be tempting to direct them to sit with the pupil with SEND for the whole lesson. The EEF research is fairly clear that this often reduces the pupil's contact with the teacher and can lead to learned helplessness. Use TA support strategically and keep the teacher as the primary point of contact.
Differentiating by task rather than by support. Giving the pupil a simpler worksheet looks like differentiation but tends to widen attainment gaps over time. Same task, more support, less support over time.
Waiting for diagnosis. Provision should not be conditional on a label. If a pupil shows signs of needing additional support, the assess-plan-do-review cycle is meant to begin straight away.
The Equality Act 2010 places a legal duty on schools to make reasonable adjustments for pupils with disabilities. SEND provision is not optional; it is a statutory requirement. Most of this guide overlaps with good teaching for everyone, so the cost of doing it well is mostly in planning.
A short planning checklist
Most of what tends to help is good practice for the whole class anyway.
SEND planning checklist
Use this when planning a unit or scheme of learning that includes pupils on SEN support or with EHCPs.
- Read the profiles of pupils with SEND in the class before planning the unit
- Identify the cognitive demand of each lesson and the likely barriers for specific pupils
- Plan explicit teaching of key vocabulary at the start of the unit
- Build in worked examples, sentence starters, and knowledge organisers where they target a clear need
- Plan the points at which each scaffold will be removed across the unit
- Use flexible groupings rather than fixed low-attaining groups
- Check the accessibility of all printed and digital materials (font, contrast, layout)
- Coordinate with any TA support, agreeing what specific role they will play in each lesson
- Build in regular retrieval practice to address working memory and consolidate prior learning
- Plan a short conversation with the SENCO if any pupil's needs seem to be changing
