We Checked 63 Kent Schools’ SEN Information Reports.
Only 19 Passed a Basic Test.

Every maintained school and academy in England must publish an SEN Information Report on its website. It’s the document that tells you what the school does for children with special educational needs, who the SENCO is and how to contact them, how to complain, and where to get independent advice. It should be updated every year. So in October 2026 we picked 63 Kent schools, systematically rather than by reputation, and looked for it the way a parent would. Nineteen of them passed a simple test: a report you can find from the SEND page, that is in date, with nothing the law requires missing. The other 44 fell short somewhere, and some fell a long way short.

What the law says

Section 69 of the Children and Families Act 2014 requires every maintained school and academy to publish information about how it supports pupils with SEN. The SEND Regulations 2014 (regulation 51 and Schedule 1) list 13 things the report must contain, from the kinds of SEN the school provides for to the contact details of support services for parents and where the Kent Local Offer is published. The SEND Code of Practice says the report “must” be published on the school’s website, “should be updated annually”, and should be “easily accessible by young people and parents and … set out in clear, straightforward language” (paras 6.79 and 6.81).

How we checked

• The sample. We took every 11th primary school and every 5th secondary school from the public list of schools in Kent, plus two we had looked at earlier: 42 primaries and 21 secondaries. No school was picked because of its reputation, good or bad.
• Finding it. We went to each school’s website, looked for the SEND or Inclusion page, and followed the links. Where that failed, we searched the policies and statutory information pages, as a persistent parent might.
• Reading it. We read every report we found in full and checked it against the 13 items in Schedule 1. Where a report used a picture or diagram, we checked the page itself, not just the text.
• When. 20 to 24 October 2026, seven weeks into the school year. Three schools replaced their reports while we were checking, which tells you how live this is; a school may have updated since.

What we found

1. Finding it was harder than it should be

• Every school had something, eventually. But at 19 of the 63, we found it only after a hunt a parent shouldn’t have to make.
• One school’s website address on the government’s own register goes to a page offering the domain name for sale. The school’s real website is at a different address. A parent following the official link would never reach it.
• One school’s only report is a document called “SEND Policy” that nothing on its website links to. Its SEND page and its policies page both point elsewhere. We reached it only by typing in the address.
• Four have folded the report into their SEN policy and labelled it only “SEN Policy”, so a parent looking for an information report wouldn’t know it was there.
• Two have something else standing in for it: a web page missing most of the required content, and a set of annual evaluation reports.
• The hunt itself. SEND pages whose link goes to the site’s 404 page, to the homepage, or to a different school’s website. Reports with no mention on the SEND page, sitting among 54, 100 or 144 documents on a policies page. One whose only link is an unlabelled icon. Two published as Google documents on a policies page rather than anywhere near the SEND section.
• Some that were linked still weren’t easy to use. One is a scan of a printed, hand-signed document, so it can’t be searched or read aloud by a screen reader. One is published only as a flipbook on a third-party site. Two are Word downloads. One SEND page links to files on a staff member’s own computer.
• The remaining 44 had a working link from the school’s own SEND page to a report, or to what the school presents as one.

2. Two in five couldn’t show they were up to date

Of the 63, 37 were in date. The other 26 weren’t:

• 14 were past the review date the school itself had set, by anything from a month to thirteen months.
• 9 were labelled or dated for a previous school year with no sign of review since. One is titled for 2023-24. One was last reviewed in 2021.
• 3 had no date at all. One was uploaded in July 2023.
• Labels and documents disagreed at several schools. A file labelled “2026” that turned out to be from January 2025. A file named for 2024-25 whose title page says 2023-24. A site label saying “September 2026” on a document last reviewed in September 2024.

3. More than a quarter were missing something the law requires

• 18 of the 63 were missing at least one of the 13 required items when we read every report in full against the list.
• The commonest gap was the one that matters most when things go wrong. The regulations say every report must give the contact details of support services for parents, which in Kent means IASK, the free, independent advice service. At 41 of 63, we couldn’t find them properly: thirteen had nothing at all, and twenty-eight named a service, or linked to a web page, without giving a phone number or email.
• Five had no complaints route at all. Four had nothing on where to find the Kent Local Offer, and six nothing on equipment and facilities.
• Half answer the first question, “what kinds of SEN do you provide for?”, with only the four broad areas of need from the Code of Practice, usually as a diagram. That tells a parent nothing about the school.

4. Many were plainly unfinished

• 16 contained template placeholders or blank fields: “[Date]”, “Insert contact details of the …”, a header still announcing a model policy template, a question meant for the author left in the text, a SEND Governor listed as “TBC”, a sentence where the number of teaching assistants was never filled in.
• Two contained the name of a different school or setting, one of them in two places. Another used the school’s old name alongside its new one.
• One contained a child’s first name.
• One linked to a test version of the school’s website. Another’s SEND page links to files on a staff member’s computer (addresses beginning “file:///D:/”).
• At three schools, the SENCO named on the website is not the SENCO named in the report.
• Several share a template so closely that the same misspelling appears across schools.

What a good one looks like

The 19 that passed weren’t unusual. They had a clear link on the SEND page, usually labelled “SEN Information Report”. A date on the front, with the next review date. The SENCO’s name, email and phone number. Plain answers to the 13 questions, written about this school rather than copied from the Code. The contact details for IASK and a link to the Kent Local Offer. A complaints section that says what to do and who to write to. Several were updated in September or October 2026, which is exactly when you’d hope.

We also read every report through the eyes of a parent, a child, an educational psychologist, Ofsted and the law. Part 2: what the reports actually say about your child →

Check your child’s school in 60 seconds

1. Go to the school website and find the SEND or Inclusion page. If there isn’t one, that’s your first finding.
2. Look for a link called “SEN Information Report” (or “SEND Information Report”). If it’s called “SEN Policy”, open it anyway: some schools combine the two.
3. Check the date. It should say when it was reviewed and when the next review is due. If the review date has passed, or there’s no date, it’s out of date.
4. Check for the SENCO’s name and contact details. Name, email or phone, not just “contact the office”.
5. Check for the contact details of IASK (Information, Advice and Support Kent), a link to the Kent Local Offer, and a section on complaints. Those three are the ones most often missing.
6. Look for anything unfinished. Square brackets, “insert” or “TBC”, another school’s name.

If it’s missing, out of date or incomplete

1. Ask the SENCO, politely and in writing. “I’ve been looking for the school’s SEN Information Report and couldn’t find a current one. Could you send me a copy, or let me know where it’s published?” Most schools will fix it quickly once someone asks.
2. If nothing changes, write to the governors. The duty to publish sits with the governing body (or the academy trust). The chair’s contact details should be on the website. Quote section 69 of the Children and Families Act 2014 and paragraph 6.79 of the SEND Code of Practice.
3. Use the complaints procedure if you need to. Every school must have one, and it should be on the website too.
4. Get free, independent advice. IASK: 03000 41 3000. If the report doesn’t give you that number, you now have it.
5. Don’t let the paperwork distract from your child. The report tells you what the school says it does. What matters is what it’s doing for your child. If you’re worried, our parents’ evening guide and free letter template will help you start that conversation.

About the author: Lauren Robson

Lauren is the founder of Education With Lauren, a qualified teacher and SEND specialist with 16 years’ experience across mainstream schools, Kent County Council provisions and specialist settings. She holds a BA (Hons) in Primary Education with QTS (SpLD, Needs and Inclusion) and an MSc in Neuroscience and Brain Cognition, and is an approved education supplier to Kent County Council.

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