Supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities in schools: critical insights from educational neuroscience

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) encompass heterogeneous learning profiles that require additional support in schools. This paper draws on evidence from educational neuroscience to explore how best to support students with SEND. We highlight three core findings: substantial variability within diagnostic categories, high co-occurrence across conditions, and the importance of developmental trajectories. Evidence from educational neuroscience points toward the importance of foundational skills—attentional control, working memory, and oral language—while recognising individual strengths and developmental stage. These findings have implications for the identification of SEND needs, the interventions to support students with SEND in schools and teacher training needs. Evidence from educational neuroscience is still evolving and we outline research priorities related to early holistic assessment and identification of children’s needs, mechanism-linked interventions, and longitudinal studies to determine for whom approaches work and why.