Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) will not lose their places at special schools or current levels of assistance, schools minister Georgia Gould has said. Taking questions at an online forum as part of the Department for Education’s "national conversation" on changing SEND provision in England, during which the future of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) was repeatedly raised, she said: "No child is going to be asked to leave the school that they’re in. So I just want to give that reassurance." In an interview with The Guardian, Ms Gould said she had met parents who had personally paid £30,000 to receive support under the current system, and that ministers are keen to ensure "support is in place earlier, in a really clear way". The paper notes that the forthcoming Schools White Paper is likely to allow children and young people with existing EHCPs to retain them for as long as they are happy, including the right to appeal to a specialist SEND tribunal. By Richard Adams.

Schools in more than one in three areas of the country face cuts to their core funding next year, Tes can reveal, as local authorities handle "mountainous" deficits in SEND spending. An investigation by the paper has found over 60 areas of the country where councils are set to transfer money away from their core schools funding block into the high-needs block to meet SEND cost pressures. Debts to cover high-needs funding, which is used by local authorities to fund specialist places and to provide top-up funding for pupils whose needs cannot be readily met in mainstream schools, are forecast to reach £14 billion by 2028. By John Roberts.

Ministers have said they will spend £5 billion to cover 90 per cent of the debts English councils have amassed through supporting children and young people with SEND to the end of the financial year. It comes shortly after the Local Government Association warned that eight in 10 English councils would face bankruptcy if they had to honour SEND deficits built up in recent years. Further details on how the government intends to deal with any deficits built up from April 2026 to April 2028, when the statutory override is due to expire, are expected in the white paper. By Kate McGough, BBC News.

Today, we are bringing you two blogs that explore how schools are supporting young people to navigate some of the challenges of modern life.

Marking Safer Internet Day, Muriel, a student at Milton Abbey School, explains how a pupil-led programme is equipping young people with the skills to build a safer online world. Muriel speaks highly of how her school approaches the challenges of the digital environment, describing it as "a culture where online safety is not just a set of rules imposed by teachers, but a shared responsibility".

In a blog for Children's Mental Health Week, Leanna Barrett, head of Liberty Woodland School, says schools have a duty to foster resilience and self-belief in young people. "Importantly, wellbeing is not about removing challenge. It is about helping young people build the resilience, confidence and emotional awareness to meet challenges with steadiness and self-belief," she writes.

More than one in 10 students have witnessed their peers using AI to make sexual deepfakes, according to a survey by the UK Safer Internet Centre and the domain-name registry Nominet. The study found around 12 per cent of young people aged 13 to 17 have seen other teenagers create sexual pictures and videos of other people using AI, while 60 per cent of the 2,000 young people surveyed were worried about AI being used to make inappropriate pictures of them. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said the findings highlight the extraordinary scale of AI use among young people and serve as a "clarion call for government to act urgently". The research comes after UK regulators looked into X and xAI over the chatbot Grok generating sexual deepfakes without consent. Tes.

Children are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) for homework, advice, and even friendship, a Vodafone poll has revealed. The survey of 2,000 young people and their parents found that 81 per cent of those aged 11 to 16 use the technology, and youngsters engaging with chatbots spending an average of 42 minutes a day interacting with them. Around 31 per cent of AI users said they consider the chatbot similar to a friend, turning to it for advice on difficult situations (24 per cent) and to help manage worries or anxieties (20 per cent). ITV News.

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) monitors the national and educational press in order to keep independent schools up-to-date with relevant education news. The DNS is a service primarily for schools in membership of ISC associations, although other interested parties can choose to sign-up. We endeavour to include relevant news and commentary and, wherever possible, notable public letters. Where capacity allows, we may include links to ISC blogs, press statements and information about school or association events. News stories are selected based on their relevance to the independent sector as a whole. Editorial control of the DNS remains solely with the ISC.

Sign-up to the email service is available on our website.

Members can contact the ISC if they know in advance of news, letters or opinions that are likely to feature in the media, or are aware of existing coverage which they would like to see featured in the DNS.

Headlines and first-line summaries are written by the ISC with the link directing to the source material. You should read and comply with the terms and conditions of the websites to which we link.