Ofsted and CQC Inspectors Arrive at County Hall Monday for Kent’s First Full SEND Inspection Since Improvement Notice

Joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspectors will be on site at Sessions House from Monday for the county’s first full SEND inspection since a Government improvement notice was lifted in 2024 — with the report due later this year.

Inspectors at County Hall from Monday

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have notified Kent County Council that they are carrying out a SEND Local Area Partnership Inspection in Kent, with on-site visits taking place at Sessions House, Maidstone, from 6 to 10 July.

The inspection examines how well education, health and care services work together to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities from birth to age 25. It assesses the local area partnership as a whole — Kent County Council together with its NHS partners — rather than the council alone.

During the week, inspectors will review information about services across Kent, speak with professionals from education, health and care, talk with leaders from KCC and the NHS, meet children, young people and parents and carers, and look closely at a small number of individual experiences in detail. Ofsted’s surveys for families, young people and practitioners closed on 30 June.

Why this inspection matters for Kent

Kent’s SEND services carry recent history. When inspectors visited in September 2022, they found that not enough progress had been made on areas of significant weakness identified in 2019. That led the Department for Education to issue an improvement notice in March 2023 to speed up progress — a notice that was lifted in August 2024 after what the council describes as significant progress, including substantially faster completion of Education, Health and Care Plans.

Next week’s visit is therefore the first full, independent test of whether those improvements have held — and gone far enough — since Kent came off the Government’s watch list.

What the inspection can and cannot conclude

Area SEND inspections under the current framework do not award the familiar Outstanding-to-Inadequate grades. Instead, the partnership receives one of three outcomes: arrangements typically lead to positive experiences and outcomes; arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes; or arrangements have widespread and/or systemic failings. Neighbouring Medway received the middle judgement — inconsistent experiences and outcomes — when its partnership was inspected in February 2024.

Once the on-site week ends, inspectors analyse their evidence before publishing a report, typically within weeks. The outcome will be a significant marker for the county: Ofsted’s most recent inspection of KCC’s children’s services overall, carried out in November 2025 and published in February 2026, rated the service Good — down from Outstanding in 2022 — with support for children in care judged Outstanding but services for care leavers rated as requiring improvement.

What happens next

The report is expected later in 2026 and will be published on Ofsted’s website. Kent Local News tracks KCC’s education and children’s services record — including this inspection when its findings land — on the Kent Council Scorecard.

KCC has told families that day-to-day SEND support and activities will continue as normal during the inspection week.