Artificial intelligence is moving into almost every part of our lives. Now, increasingly sophisticated digital tools are appearing within the SEND system too.
For parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities, that raises an important question:
Could software or AI be influencing your child’s EHCP or the funding attached to it?
The answer requires some nuance.
Technology has enormous potential to improve an overstretched SEND system. But when decisions affect a disabled child’s education, provision and funding, families deserve to understand exactly how those decisions are being made.
Why are SEND parents talking about this?
Recent attention has focused on technology supplied by Imosphere, a private company providing digital SEND tools to local authorities.
Imosphere describes its SEND technology as connecting needs, plans, funding and oversight. The company says its systems are designed to produce clearer and more consistent decision-making while supporting professional judgement. It also says more than £186 million is allocated annually through its banding tool.
This matters because funding decisions aren’t abstract numbers.
They can ultimately affect the support available around a child.
Is AI deciding children’s EHCP funding?
We need to be careful here.
There is an important difference between:
software assisting a professional with a decision
and
software making the decision itself.
Digital funding systems aren’t entirely new. For example, Staffordshire County Council announced in 2022 that it was using an Imosphere education banding tool to calculate top-up funding based upon needs identified within children’s EHCPs.
Imosphere currently says its technology supports councils with transparent funding decisions, EHCP quality, workflows and oversight. It describes its systems as supporting professional judgement rather than replacing it.
So parents shouldn’t assume that a computer is independently deciding their child’s EHCP.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate questions to ask.
The really important question: who actually made the decision?
This is where things become much more interesting.
Two education barristers, Alice de Coverley and Jim Hirschmann, have examined the growing use of AI around education and EHCPs.
They warned of the risk that professionals could effectively fail to exercise their own discretion if they rely too heavily upon algorithmic or AI-generated material.
They predicted public-law challenges where algorithms or AI are used to generate EHCPs without adequate human oversight.
In plain English:
Putting a human being at the end of an automated process doesn’t necessarily make the process genuinely human.
If software produces an analysis or recommendation and somebody simply approves it without properly considering the individual child’s evidence, that’s very different from a professional genuinely exercising their judgement.
Five questions SEND parents should be asking
If you are concerned that digital or automated systems may have played a role in your child’s EHCP or funding decision, reasonable questions include:
- Was automated software or AI used at any stage of my child’s EHCP or funding decision?
- What information was entered into or analysed by the system?
- Did the system calculate or recommend a funding band or level?
- Who reviewed the recommendation and what evidence did they personally consider?
- Could the decision-maker depart from the software’s recommendation — and if so, did they consider doing so in my child’s case?
The purpose isn’t to assume something improper has happened.
It’s to understand how the decision was reached.
AI itself isn’t the enemy
This distinction is incredibly important.
At AskEllie, we’re not opposed to artificial intelligence.
Quite the opposite.
We believe AI has the potential to transform access to information for SEND families.
The SEND system is extraordinarily complicated. Parents are expected to understand lengthy EHCPs, professional reports, legislation, correspondence, annual reviews and appeal processes while simultaneously caring for their child.
Technology can help make that information understandable.
The issue isn’t simply:
“Should AI be used?”
The better question is:
“Who is AI empowering?”
This is one of the reasons we created AskEllie
We could see where technology was heading.
If local authorities, professionals and organisations were going to have increasingly sophisticated technology available to analyse information and support decision-making, we believed parents needed powerful tools on their side of the table too.
That’s why we’ve developed AskEllie’s EHCP support technology.
Our tools are designed to help parents understand their child’s EHCP, examine the wording, identify potential gaps and weaknesses, understand correspondence and prepare the questions they may need to ask.
AI shouldn’t replace the parent.
It should make the parent better informed.
And it shouldn’t replace lawyers, SEND professionals or expert advice where those are required either.
It should help families understand a system that has traditionally been extremely difficult to navigate.
AI can potentially make EHCPs better
There is another side to this conversation.
Used responsibly, AI could help professionals identify inconsistencies, reduce administrative workloads, extract relevant evidence from lengthy reports and improve the quality of plans.
Imosphere itself reports benefits including faster EHCP drafting and review processes and greater consistency in funding decisions. These are the company’s reported outcomes rather than independent guarantees, but they demonstrate why councils are interested in this technology.
And in a SEND system struggling with delays and enormous workloads, reducing unnecessary administration could be valuable.
The danger comes when efficiency becomes more important than individuality.
An EHCP exists for one particular child.
That child cannot simply become a data point.
SEND funding makes transparency even more important
Local authorities are operating under enormous financial pressure.
BCP Council, for example, has reported substantial financial pressures associated with its SEND High Needs expenditure and has approved borrowing connected with expenditure exceeding available government grant.
That doesn’t mean a digital funding system is being used to reduce children’s provision.
We should not make that leap without evidence.
But it does demonstrate why transparency matters.
When financial pressure, automated funding tools and statutory decisions about disabled children meet in the same system, parents need confidence that their individual child’s needs remain the starting point.
The future of SEND will almost certainly involve technology
This conversation is unlikely to disappear.
Imosphere is already discussing the potential role of technology and assistive AI in future SEND workflows, including possible Individual Support Plans under SEND reform.
The question therefore isn’t whether SEND will become more digital.
It already is.
The challenge is ensuring that technology makes the system more accountable, more transparent and more personalised — not less.
The AskEllie position
Our position is simple.
AI should assist human judgement, never quietly replace it.
Parents should know when significant automated tools have been involved in decisions concerning their child.
Professionals should remain accountable for those decisions.
Children must continue to be treated as individuals.
And families should have access to technology capable of helping them understand and challenge the system too.
Because if increasingly sophisticated technology is going to sit on one side of the table…
SEND parents shouldn’t be expected to sit on the other side armed with nothing more than a folder full of paperwork.
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