“Innovative workforce deployment” should be explored to overcome concerns about delivery of the Department for Education’s Experts at Hand offer in schools, new guidance states.

The DfE has today set out expectations for local authorities and integrated care boards (ICBs) after repeated warnings that workforces such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists would be unable to meet the demands outlined in the schools White Paper.

The idea of Experts at Hand is that schools in every local area will be able to draw on support from a bank of specialists, such as educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and SEND-trained teachers.

In March, experts raised concerns with Tes over the timing of the launch of the service and the fact that educational psychologists and speech and language therapists are already “severely stretched”. They also warned of the risk of schools being left without much-needed support even after Experts at Hand is implemented.

Today’s DfE guidance aims to allay such concerns with its calls for workforce innovation, including “repurposing existing resources, without diverting NHS staff from commissioned services outside the Experts at Hand offer” from September.

The DfE expects local areas - comprising local authorities and ICBs - to develop joint workforce plans to satisfy local needs and national expectations when it comes to the support offered to schools.

In the second and third years of the programme, local areas will be expected to build on what they have learned from the first year across “the full 0-25 age range”.

Should local area plans “lack sufficient detail” on how they are engaging with schools, the DfE will consider a more “prescribed approach” in a bid to address concerns that schools will not get the resource they require, the guidance indicates.

How funding will be split

The DfE previously announced that the Experts at Hand service would be backed by £1.8 billion investment. Today it revealed more details.

The service has been allocated £429 million in funding for 2026-27, and the DfE anticipates that the figure will be around £750 million in 2027-2028 and £850 million in 2028-2029.

For the 2026-27 allocation, the largest recipients will be Kent (£12 million) and Essex and Birmingham, both of which will receive more than £10 million.

The guidance states that the Experts at Hand grant should only fund experts from speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, educational psychology and specialist teaching, both in maintained schools and alternative provision.

It also emphasises that “in most cases” the “direct involvement of specialists” from Experts at Hand should be “time-limited”, with the aim of building skills and confidence that allow school and other settings to support children independently.

Of the £40 million funding previously committed to developing the workforce, £26 million will go towards training at least 200 educational psychologists per year in 2026 and 2027, and the DfE will invest £5 million annually to establish new speech and language therapy “advanced practitioners” in every ICB in the country.

In 2023, 63 per cent of respondents to the Royal College of Occupational Therapists workforce survey said that, at that time, the profession could not provide the level or type of input children and young people need.

Last year, a Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ survey found that 14 per cent of speech and language therapist posts were vacant; in May, minister Baroness Merron said that the Department of Health and Social Care did not hold information on the total number of speech and language therapists employed in each ICB area in England.

SEND expert panel

The DfE also announced today the members of its expert panel to help oversee the development of national standards for SEND support in schools.

The panel will also work on creating specialist provision packages that will underpin the support provided through education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in a reformed system.

The National Inclusion Standards will set out “what good support looks like” across the country, the DfE said.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the panel would help set “a new national standard for SEND support, shaped by the people who work with children every day”.

The panel will be co-chaired by Tom Rees, chief executive of Ormiston Academies Trust, and Dr Anne Gordon, head of clinical innovation research at NHS England, who will act as the health co-chair.

The other members on the panel are:

• Katherine Walsh, director for inclusion at River Learning Trust
• Mark Vickers, CEO of Olive Academies
• James Waller, headteacher at Sunningdale School in Sunderland
• Susan Douglas, CEO of The Eden Academy Trust
• Ben Bastin, chair of Natspec and head of Treloar College in Hampshire
• Alison Stewart, deputy director of children’s services for the South West London Integrated Care Board
• Professor Susana Castro-Kemp, professor of inclusion at the University of Birmingham
• Professor Courtenay Norbury, professor of developmental disorders of language and communication at UCL
• Dr Sue Franklin, principal educational psychologist, London Borough of Lewisham
• Sarah Clarke, co-chair of the National Network of Parent Carer Forums
• Professor Karen Guldberg, head of the School of Education, University of Birmingham.

The panel will also include representation from UK Research and Innovation; the DfE Scientific Advisory Council; and the Education Endowment Foundation.