Ofsted tells Hackney Council to act quickly as too many SEND children excluded from school

Hackney Council were urged to take action. Photograph: Josef Steen / LDRS

Ofsted has urged Hackney Council to act quickly to bring down the number of pupils in the borough being excluded from school.

In a report published on Thursday, 5 February, the watchdog found the number of children and young people permanently excluded from Hackney secondary schools with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) had been high for “too long”.

Inspectors said the council accepted it needed to significantly cut permanent exclusion levels over time. However, Ofsted said it was too early to see the impact the local partnership’s work was having on the issue.

The report added that some children’s social, emotional and mental health needs in particular were being identified “too late”.

In November 2025, inspectors reviewed SEND support across Hackney’s schools, nurseries and social care services and heard from parents who said some secondary schools weren’t identifying their children’s needs quickly enough, or were not using reasonable adjustments pupils needed to be supported properly.

The inspectors verified these claims with evidence provided by Hackney’s SEND services.

Ofsted acknowledged the council’s strong performance in key areas. Inspectors praised local leaders’ knowledge of the area, the quality of speech and language therapies on offer, and the positive support families of newborns with SEND had received from Homerton Hospital’s neonatal unit.

However, inspectors pressed the council to work harder to speed up the process of assessing Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. These legally entitle SEND children and young people to extra support, funded by the local authority.

In Hackney, 3,839 children and young people have EHC plans – double the amount recorded in 2019. According to the council, as of 2025 the borough has the 23rd-highest number of residents with these plans in England.

Local authority data shows Hackney also has one of the highest rates of pupil suspensions and exclusions in London, and councillors have in the past raised concerns that expulsions were disproportionately affecting specific groups of children.

Ofsted’s report follows the council’s publication of its new strategy to promote inclusion and anti-racism in the borough’s schools. A year ago, the council also began an “in-depth” review of school behaviour policies in Hackney.

The majority of secondary schools in Hackney are academies and not under local authority control.

Ofsted’s latest review took place shortly before the local safeguarding partnership published a damning report into one of the borough’s top-performing schools, Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy (MVPA).

Led by a former Director of Children’s Services in Hackney, Sir Alan Wood, the report found MVPA had fostered a “particularly harmful” disciplinary culture for vulnerable pupils. Among other areas of concern, the investigation criticised the school for sanctioning pupils with SEND for behaviours linked to their conditions.

A Freedom of Information request (FOI) sent by local resident and Green Party candidate Dylan Law – shared with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) – revealed the number of detentions issued to special needs pupils in four Hackney academies between 2022 and 2025.

During this period, Haggerston School pupils with SEND comprised more than 20 per cent of the total number of children and young people who received detentions. For the City of London Academy in Shoreditch the rate was 18 per cent.

On average, 6.5 per cent of City Academy Hackney pupils involved in recorded ‘behaviour incidents’ over the same period had EHC plans. However, unlike the other academies who provided data, the school did not say how many pupils who received detentions were on the SEND register but did not have a care plan.

The Bridge Academy said it did not hold school detention data prior to 2024 due to a “system change”, but during its spring and summer terms last year, a third of detentions handed out were given to pupils with SEND.

Responding to the Ofsted report in a joint statement, Cllr Antoinette Bramble, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Young People, and Cllr Anya Sizer, Deputy Cabinet Member for SEND and Early Years, expressed some disappointment in the findings but thanked the watchdog for its “positive and fair assessment”.

Cllr Antoinette Bramble, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Young People. Photograph: Hackney Council

“While we would have liked to be able to pride ourselves with the best possible inspection outcome, we are glad to see the inspectors recognise our progress so far”, they said.

“Our improvement journey does not start, nor does it end here. We already have robust plans in place that will guide us in the months and years ahead, and we will continue to advocate for and on behalf of each and every child and young person with SEND.

“We are looking forward to sharing our progress three years from now, when the next inspection will take place.”