Contracts for Innovation: Earlier identification of UK children with Special Educational Needs (SEN)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will invest up to £2.5 million from the UKRI R&D MAP Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity Mission in this Contracts for Innovation competition. This is subject to us receiving a sufficient number of high quality applications. The aim of this competition is to develop innovations that enable earlier, fairer, and more reliable identification of special educational needs (SEN) in contexts where existing market solutions underperform or do not operate. The competition has a UK-wide remit, with the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) and Additional Support Needs (ASN) terms used in Wales and Scotland being within the definition of "SEN" used in this brief. Projects should focus on developing, testing and rolling out innovations to enable the earlier identification of children and young people with SEN, and for strengths and needs assessment, that can be integrated into education settings. This is phase 1 of a potential 3 phase competition. The decision to proceed with phase 2 will depend on the outcomes from phase 1 and assessment of a separate application into a subsequent phase 2 competition. Only the successful applicants from phase 1 will be invited to apply to take part in phase 2. We expect to receive a high volume of applications and will not be able to fund them all. We expect to award a maximum of 12 contracts.