The ONS data tells us the scale, but those of us working in SEND are hearing the nuance: disengagement is rarely a clean break. For many pupils, it’s a process: the occasionally skipped lesson, unexplained drops in participation, a missing need undiagnosed for too long, the anxiety that grows behind the mask, the sense of social misalignment or curriculum  overwhelm. 

As Assistant Head of Teaching & Learning (Quality) at Tute Education, my work focuses on ensuring that every young person has a meaningful pathway and a supported destination and I see that SEND teams are often in the position to pick up on these warning signs. For a vulnerable learner, these subtle changes in presentation can be the first indicators that something isn’t right, and they often appear long before KS4. They may present in the learner who is increasingly intermittently avoidant; whose sensory profile no longer aligns with the classroom set-up; whose behaviour is communicating distress rather than defiance. But what makes a difference is not just spotting these patterns, but having structures and partnerships in place that allow SEND teams to take early action.

SEND specialists are often already using data to work out emerging risk of a pupil who is disengaging in a holistic way. Data that looks at attendance, engagement patterns, learning behaviours, SEND profiles, progress records, attendance and wellbeing plans. The opportunity is to turn these risk indicators into early action. When SEND teams are involved in regular multidisciplinary dialogue with pastoral, attendance and wellbeing teams, we see better continuity and fewer vulnerable learners slipping through cracks. Collaborative insight, rather than compartmentalised information, becomes the power behind early intervention.

Flexible pathways are also central to SEND teams reducing risk of NEET. As the professionals with most expert knowledge, SEND specialists are often the best placed people to advise on alternative, blended or phased provision to support young people before their needs escalate and difficulties begin to build. For some learners, reconnecting through virtual learning environments, therapeutic or clinical input, community provision or part-time re-entry routes can provide the psychological safety to help them start to rebuild engagement. These pathways are not about lowering expectations, but about providing multiple access points to learning for students whose needs cannot be met through one model alone.

SEND teams are increasingly drawing on trauma-informed, adaptive and relational approaches. The SEND ethos is one of early intervention. Approaches like these not only support learners to address barriers to learning and identify scaffolds that help emotional regulation but can also help to prevent the gradual disengagement experienced by many young people long before formal risk of NEET is identified. The challenge for specialists is not to add more programmes to their caseloads, but to ensure the approaches that are known to be working are supported, resourced and understood system-wide.

Transitions are another crucial, and often underused point for SEND specialists to enact early intervention. SEND teams can play a vital role in identifying which students may struggle with the transition into post-16 provision and advocating for more time to connect with their future settings, just as they can struggle to transition between any phase and stage of education. Research is also being undertaken to evaluate the impacts of school mobility, examining the associated risk factors and preventative measures that might be associated with increased transitions. Whatever the reason for transition, it is likely that the earlier  that positive relationship building can begin – whether through mentoring, bridging curricula or phased introductions to a new setting – the better.

If there is one message that should come out of this month’s alarming data, it is that SEND specialists are already doing the work that changes outcomes. What they need, more than ever, is the capacity, continuity and collaborative infrastructure to make early intervention the norm, not the exception. Behind the NEET figures is a system and a set of teams that could be so different, and the SEND teams we work with every day know that. What they can’t do on their own is take that first step. If we really want a different story, it’s time to work backwards.