Schools which develop specialist provision in 2026 will be able to avail of a number of financial and release-based benefits, according to the Education Minister.
Announced by Minister Paul Givan in February 2025, the SEN Reform Agenda boasted a five-year Delivery Plan to reform services and better support children and young people with special educational needs.
According to statistics published in the Special Educational Needs/Disability (SEN/D) Reform Agenda; Outcomes Framework the number of children and young people with SEN in Northern Ireland was 70,232 (19.8%) in 2025.
Of that 70,232, the overwhelming majority (over 58,000) were placed within mainstream school settings.
The key focus of the SEN/D Reform Agenda is to “contribute to better outcomes and support the inclusion of children and young people with SEN/D. It sets out objectives under four pillars of the right support, from the right people, at the right time and in the right place.”
Now in the second year of the Delivery Plan, Newry and Armagh MLA Justin McNulty asked the Minister to detail any support his Department intends to provide to school leaders, to facilitate making specialist provision a standard feature of mainstream schools.
The Education Minister explained that a “comprehensive package of support” is currently available to help schools develop this specialist provision.
He said: “This includes centrally financing teaching and non-teaching costs from the EA budget, an initial furniture and equipment budget of circa £20,000 associated with any set up works required and a lump sum of £3,000 per class to purchase resources.
“In addition, EA Support Services provide support with individual self-evaluation and action plans, professional learning development, facilitation of cluster groups and signposting to other services.”
In addition to this, the Minister noted that schools which develop specialist provision for 2026 will be able to avail of additional support:
- Whole school learning and development offer – 20% of teaching staff in mainstream and up to five classroom assistants can avail of specific SEN training with up to five days release to be completed between April and June 2026.
- SENCo release – one month for stabilising Specialist Provision embedding processes/workload in addition to a further one day per month per class.
- Administrative support – £10k to be provided to each school to cover additional administrative tasks associated with the creation and maintenance of specialist provisions.
- Principal Champions – To release five Principals who have implemented Specialist Provisions to provide support, advice and guidance to new schools (one Post Primary, four Primary)
It was noted that schools which already have specialist provision will also be able to avail of the first three parts of the additional support package from 2026.
Further information on support offered is available on EA’s website at Establishing Specialist Provisions in Mainstream Schools | SEND Plan.
