Week 2 of term.

Mock results in.

Three SEN pupils needing additional support.

Budget stretched.

Staff tired.

The log doesn't start with solutions. It starts with pressure.

Last week, we onboarded an Executive Head of a MAT. Across their 20 schools, the picture was the same: increased SEN demand, two additional TAs employed for three pupils, a separate provision room created. Similar pressures repeating across all 20 schools.

In 2024 -25, the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) high needs block is overspent in the majority of local authorities in England. The national deficit now runs into the hundreds of millions. Schools are absorbing cost that was never in their budget.

This isn't backstory. It's the room the headteacher is already standing in.

— Brent Council, High needs block financial report (2025)

The pressures arrive in layers: attendance issues, behaviour signals, SEN complexity, budget tightening, parental expectations, reform noise from the new RAISE 2026 white paper.

The challenge isn't ideas. It's prioritisation. When everything matters, nothing leads.

Each SEND placement outside a mainstream school costs a local authority between £63,000 and £147,000 annually . For a MAT managing ten schools, even two or three such placements can consume the entirety of that year's Pupil Premium allocation, before a single lesson is planned.

The government's own white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, acknowledges the scale:

"Children with SEND must be able to attend their local mainstream school and have their needs met by highly trained teachers, leaders and support staff, driving the highest standards for all." 

But between that ambition and the daily reality sits the question every leadership team faces: where do we start?

Introducing the OBC Tool

We built the One Big Change (OBC) tool to be a filter, not another framework. Not "here's another initiative" but "here's a way to decide."

When this Executive Head claimed their school profile, the OBC tool guided them through:

The question we used in the workshop was simple:

"If funding wasn't the constraint, what one initiative would make the biggest difference this term?"

This gives permission to disrupt the pattern. Pause there for a moment.

Then the second layer:

"Which existing funding streams could support that?"

Now funding aligns to priority. Not the other way around.

The S.C.H.O.O.L. Structure

This system, Seed & Sustain S.C.H.O.O.L. was piloted with Kent headteachers in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University and Sam Clarke. It follows a simple rhythm:

S - Spotlight: What is actually happening beneath the noise?

C - Co-Design: Align SLT around one measurable outcome.

H - Harness: Map existing resources and funding streams.

O - Organise: Assign ownership and timeline.

O - Own: Commit publicly within leadership.

L - Leverage: Connect to the right external support.

The OBC process that was once facilitated in a room is now embedded into how schools onboard onto LocaeRise Match.

When a school claims their profile, a guided AI tool walks them through the same S.C.H.O.O.L. questions, not to replace the conversation, but to surface clarity before it happens. The language is the same. The method is the same. The difference is that it can happen at 9pm when the headteacher finally gets a quiet moment.

The RAISE Reform Context

The government's white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, published February 2026, sets out the most ambitious SEND reform in a generation :

Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson writes in the foreword:

"Children with SEND must be able to attend their local mainstream school and have their needs met by highly trained teachers, leaders and support staff, driving the highest standards for all. We will not tolerate the blind eye that has been turned to the underperformance of white working-class children, and we will back aspirational school leaders to work in low-income communities." 

The white paper also signals a crackdown on profiteering in the independent special school sector a direct response to cases like the one in Stockton, where one provider made £4m profit while charging over £100,000 per placement . As Phillipson puts it: "We're cracking down on providers who put profit before children. New standards and proper oversight will ensure every independent special school placement delivers real outcomes for children, not unreasonable bills for local authorities."

Schools being clear about their One Big Change are better positioned to access this reform-aligned funding, justify resource allocation, and engage the right partners. Clarity unlocks leverage.

There is one economic argument missing from the white paper. It is not about more funding. It is about where existing funding goes.

Schools in England spend an estimated £10 billion annually on goods and services, from provision support to equipment, technology, training, and operational contracts. The majority of that spend flows to national chains and large suppliers. Very little reaches local businesses.

The New Economics Foundation's Local Multiplier 3 (LM3) methodology shows that every £1 spent with a local business generates £1.76 of economic activity within the same community compared to £0.36 when the same £1 leaves the local economy through a national supplier .

In one North East project involving 140,000 suppliers, a ten per cent increase in local procurement would mean £34 million extra circulating in the local economy each year .

Here is the government's blind spot: if schools became intentional local buyers, having a real choice when it comes to local vendors verified against their outcome priorities, a portion of that £10 billion would circulate back into the communities those schools serve.

Local businesses would grow. Local employment would rise. Local spending would increase.

And some of that economic activity would eventually return to schools through increased council tax receipts, stronger community partnerships, and higher family income stability, which directly reduces the attendance, behaviour, and SEND complexity that is currently consuming school budgets.

School-Backed Commerce is not just a school strategy. It is a local economic engine. The government has not named it. We have.

The schools that move fastest aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones with the clearest priority. OBC is not about ambition. It's about focus.

And the schools that choose local, by design, not default, compound that clarity into something larger than their budget can do alone.

Try this with your SLT this week:

If the sentence isn't clear, the strategy won't be either.

— The LocaeRise Team

Leadership isn't about solving everything. It's about choosing what to solve first.

Three invitations:

Run the OBC session with your SLT this week using the five steps above.

Claim your school's profile on LocaeRise Match, the OBC tool is waiting.

Apply to join the Founding Cohort Roundtable, the first schools shaping how School-Backed Commerce works in practice.

Yvonne

LocaeRise: Change, handled well.

Next Step for School Leaders:
Explore how other schools are structuring retention support without overloading their teams.
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