Kent’s SEND reforms collide with the people expected to deliver them

Kent’s SEND reforms collide with the people expected to deliver them

Specialist teachers who support mainstream schools with special educational needs provision have begun strike action in the county, accusing Kent County Council of pushing through major changes to their roles after bringing the service in-house.

Staff in the Specialist Teaching and Learning Service (STLS) walked out yesterday, with a further five strike days planned in March. This is not a pay dispute. Instead, it is a fight over what counts as support in Kent’s SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) system, and over whether a service that has always operated in the messy middle can survive being forced into a single countywide model.

STLS is one of those services most people never notice until they need it. It sits behind the scenes in mainstream schools and early years settings, helping staff deal with pupils whose needs are not being met. Much of that work is with adults, not children. It is advice, training, and practical problem-solving with SENCOs (Special Educational Needs Coordinators) and teachers. But the council’s own reporting on the service also describes a more intensive tier of active support for individual children in some cases, usually involving planned visits with targets set and reviewed. It also acknowledges a point that now sits right in the middle of the dispute. Practice varied across Kent. In some areas, specialist teachers worked more directly with pupils. In others, they worked through observation and the SENCOs.

The strike is being organised by the National Education Union, which says it represents more than 60 STLS staff in Kent. There was also a demonstration outside County Hall yesterday (Wednesday) morning to coincide with the walkout. The union argues the council has changed staff roles without proper consultation, and that those changes affect children with SEND across the county.

Since STLS moved in-house at KCC in September, staff and the union say the work has been narrowed and reorganised in ways that change what they can deliver day to day. The NEU’s public line is that specialist teachers are no longer permitted to do face-to-face work with individual children, leaving expertise mothballed rather than deployed where schools are struggling most.

A big part of the union’s public case is that the service is valued and should not be tampered with lightly. Kent NEU has been pushing figures from a 2024 consultation analysis, which found strong support for the service, including that 91% of educators agreed STLS has a positive impact on inclusive practice in their setting, and 75% of parents agreed STLS advice and guidance had a positive impact on how classroom teachers support their child’s SEND needs. Those figures come from analysis produced for the council’s consultation work, with responses collected by the council and analysed independently.

The council rejects the core allegation that it has ridden roughshod over staff. In its statement responding to the industrial action, Kent County Council said it “respects the lawful right of staff to take industrial action,” but added that “it is important that the public record accurately reflects the actions of all parties.” It described the claim that it failed to consult with staff around their working arrangements as “simply incorrect” and said a full staff consultation was carried out before the transfer in September 2025, alongside a public consultation on the future model of the service.

It also set out its version of what STLS should be. Bringing staff together from 12 different organisations, it said, meant it had been necessary to align day-to-day practice with contractual standards in a local authority context. It gave one clear example of what it believes the service should focus on: “supporting schools through advice, training and capacity-building.”

That line is a neat summary of the council’s position, but it is also why the row has escalated. On paper, STLS has always been about building capacity in mainstream settings. In reality, the council’s own reporting on the service in 2023/24 describes something wider. Alongside training and advice, it sets out an active support tier involving bespoke work around individual children, delivered through multiple visits with targets set and reviewed, and it acknowledges that different districts already operated differently in how directly specialist teachers worked with a child.

This is fundamentally the crux of the dispute. The council is trying to make STLS more consistent and better defined. The union says that consistency is being achieved by narrowing the job, and that this is being done without proper consultation and at the expense of the kind of support that schools and families actually need.

The wider SEND context is part of the council’s justification. Shortcomings identified by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission led to a government Improvement Notice in 2023, lifted in August 2024. The council argues that Kent’s SEND system has undergone a 'root-and-branch overhaul' since then, and says it would be “neither responsible nor fair” to exempt STLS from changes needed locally and nationally.

An options appraisal prepared as part of the process gives a clearer sense of what the council was trying to achieve. It argues that any future model needed to enable consistency of equity across the county. It described extending the previous arrangement as 'less preferable,' citing claims that it was not financially sustainable for the special schools involved. It makes the case for bringing STLS in-house partly on the basis that the council would then have “maximum control” over a service it treats as strategically important.

That is the administrative logic. The political logic is messier because implementation spans a change in control. The redesign work, consultations, and decision-making were largely completed by the previous Conservative administration, but the responsibility for making it work now rests with the current Reform leadership, which inherits a programme already in the pipeline and is still judged on the consequences of its rollout.

The Green group has declared its support for the strike, with Paul Stepto, its education spokesperson, saying a 2021 consultation showed considerable support for STLS within the education sector and calling it “baffling” that the authority appears to be acting in a way that damages both the service and the people who work within it. Labour has also attacked the council’s handling of negotiations, framing this as an early test of the new leadership’s approach to workforce relations.

The council, for its part, says it is disappointed by the union’s decision to use social media to misrepresent the situation and that it has been engaged in good-faith discussions to resolve localised issues. It says it sent proposals to the union the day before the walkout to try to avoid strike action and claims it has not received a response. It says its priority is continuity of support for schools and settings, and that it will keep services running and minimise disruption where possible.

Further walkouts are scheduled for 4 and 5 March and again between 10 and 12 March. For schools and families, the question is not just what happens on those days. It is what STLS looks like after this, once the new model is fully bedded in and the service has stopped being the thing different parts of Kent did in slightly different ways. If the council is right, a more standardised STLS will help more schools handle SEND needs earlier and more consistently. If staff are right, Kent is heading for a version of reform where the paperwork still says support is there, but the people who used to show up and do it are no longer allowed to.

Kent’s right-wing musical chairs

Kent’s right-wing councillor churn has reached the point where you can barely tell whether you are watching a realignment or just a very public falling out conducted through similarly named political parties.

At Kent County Council, the new Restore Britain bloc has now formally chosen its leadership. In a press release issued after the group’s first meeting held on Tuesday, Restore says Paul Thomas was elected as leader of the new KCC group, with Maxine Fothergill announced as deputy leader.

The statements themselves are predictable, but the subtext is not. Restore’s pitch, repeated again here by Rupert Lowe, is that this will be a new kind of operation. He claims Kent is “one of our strongest counties in terms of membership,” says Restore expects to compete across Kent at the next general election, and promises there will be “no national whip,” with councillors free to decide local issues.

Thomas leans into that framing. He says his focus will be to “empower” the group members to champion local issues “unimpeded.” Fothergill describes Restore as “new beginnings” and says she is “delighted” to be deputy leader of a “strong group” on the council.

One immediate reaction from Reform’s KCC administration was blunt. Peter Osborne, the cabinet member for highways, posted on X after the leadership announcement that he'd “give them a month before the squabbles begin,” complete with crying laughing emoji.

Thomas has been blunt in his criticism of his former party. He claimed there is “a poison within Reform” that “ignores true Reformers and expels them,” and pitched Restore as offering “true reform,” arguing Reform took on a Conservative agenda but failed to deliver. Restore is presenting itself as a refuge for people who think Reform’s internal culture has turned sour, and as a vehicle for pushing further without the discipline of a party whip.

It is also happening as Restore has had a bumpy first week nationally. A proposed tie-up with Advance has already spilt into public hostility and arguments about how the project is run, while elsewhere in the country, at least one councillor who briefly joined Restore has already publicly reversed course. Elsewhere, a high-profile US white supremacist claimed he had been able to join the party, despite being banned from entering the UK.

Restore’s KCC group did not appear from nowhere. It landed last week as a ready-made bloc of seven councillors, mostly pulled from the continuing fragmentation of Reform’s Kent group. That earlier story was never really about ideology alone. It was also about a group that had spent months suspending, expelling, reorganising and relabelling itself, producing a trail of mini-factions and independents. The leadership vote is the first step toward turning that into something that looks less like a prolonged internal argument and more like a functioning group with a plan.

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But the more interesting development this week is that the same musical chairs dynamic is now visible a tier down, too.

In Swale, Kieran Mishchuk, who sits on Swale Borough Council, has defected from Reform to Restore. Mishchuk had only recently been featured in a BBC documentary promoting Reform and is now presenting Restore as his political home instead.

Meanwhile, in Thanet, two district councillors have gone the other way, joining Reform. Marc Rattigan (Cliftonville East, previously Conservative) and John Dennis (Garlinge, previously independent, previously Thanet Independent Group, previously UKIP, previously Conservative) have been announced as new party members at Thanet District Council.  The statements follow the well-worn template for these moments. Rattigan says the Conservatives have drifted away from his principles and that Reform is “our only hope” to restore national vitality. Dennis says joining Reform feels like “coming home” to a party that represents his values and promises changes and improvements locally.  The local Conservative association, for its part, has responded by saying the “honourable thing” would be for Rattigan to resign and trigger a by-election, but of course, they all say that.

So in the space of a couple of days you have one Kent district councillor moving from Reform to Restore, while two others in Thanet move into Reform. At County Hall you have Restore trying to look like an organised rival bloc, while Reform figures are openly betting on it collapsing into infighting. That is not a neat story of one movement replacing another. It is a constant reshuffle, with labels changing faster than the practical consequences.

Back at County Hall, Restore now has a named leader and deputy leader, and a promise of “no whip” that will be tested the first time the group has to decide what it actually believes when it comes to the boring but unavoidable business of local government. At district level, the churn continues in both directions. If you are trying to track what all of this means for Kent politics, the only safe assumption at the moment is that there is plenty more to come.

Footnotes

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