High-quality teaching and differentiation to support pupils with SEND

Understand what is meant by high-quality teaching, and find evidence-based strategies to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Last reviewed on 25 September 2025See updates
School types: AllSchool phases: AllRef: 8207
Contents
  1. What do we mean by high-quality teaching?
  2. Incorporate the graduated approach
  3. 5 key high-quality teaching strategies
  4. High-quality teaching for specific areas of need
  5. Next steps

What do we mean by high-quality teaching?

High-quality teaching, differentiated for individual pupils, is the first step in responding to pupils who have or may have special educational needs (SEN). This is stated in paragraph 6.37 of the SEND Code of Practice.

Ofsted inspectors will expect to see teachers adapting their practice and the curriculum to meet pupils' needs, including for those with SEN. This is part of the 'inclusion' and 'curriculum and teaching' evaluation areas, set out in pages 13, 17, 18 and 22 to 25 of Ofsted's school inspection toolkit.

To provide high-quality teaching, teachers need to:

  • Be aware of pupils' individual needs
  • Make appropriate adjustments, rather than teaching the same material to the whole class in the same way

Content     Adapting what pupils are expected to learn, or how they gain access to knowledge Time     Allocating more time for some pupils to complete tasks Task     Using different tasks to achieve