The AI tools worth a SENCO's time on EHCP paperwork each fit one document. Use Sendix for the annual review report, Baobab for the provision map, TeachMate AI to turn a plan into classroom targets, and Gemini Notebook or Microsoft Copilot, inside your school's own account, to sort the evidence behind an EHC needs assessment request. None of them should write the request itself.
| The document | Tool | What it drafts | Price (checked November 13, 2026) | Where pupil data goes (vendor says) | Choose something else when |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EHC needs assessment request: the evidence behind it | Gemini Notebook | A cited timeline and summary from the reports you upload | Free in every Workspace for Education edition | Not reviewed by humans, not used to train models; your school's data-region settings do not apply | Your school runs on Microsoft 365 |
| The same evidence, in a Microsoft school | Microsoft Copilot | Summaries of the PDFs and Word files you upload | Copilot Chat free for staff with an A1, A3 or A5 license | Not used to train foundation models; no UK-only processing promise on the pages we read | You want Teams meeting recaps, which need the paid add-on |
| Annual review report | Sendix | Evidence for and against each outcome, then a draft in your own template | £20 per plan a year, minimum £300 | Hosted and processed in the UK; names, UPNs, NHS numbers, postcodes and dates removed before the model reads the text | You need a provision map, or you cannot wait for its January 2027 security test |
| Provision map | Baobab | Provision mapping, annual reviews and IEPs built from an uploaded EHCP | No public pricing found (unverified) | UK-hosted, according to its directory record; vendor pages unreadable on the day | You want a published price before you book a demo |
| The plan in the classroom | TeachMate AI | Outcomes and actions from an anonymized EHCP, a pupil passport, a one-page profile | Pro £7.99 a month; the SEND tools sit on Pro | UK and EU; "We do not use your data to train AI models" | You cannot strip the plan of everything that identifies the child |
An EHCP is an education, health and care plan, the legal document a local authority in England writes for a child whose needs go beyond what a school ordinarily provides. A SENCO, the special educational needs coordinator, does not write the plan. The SENCO writes most of what surrounds it: the school's request for an assessment, the yearly review report, and the provision map that shows who gets which support and what it costs. If you work in the United States, the nearest equivalent is the IEP, and our list for IEP writing is the one you want.
Why are SENCOs looking at AI for EHCP paperwork this term?
Because there has never been more of it, and the transfer deadline falls in February. England had 718,838 EHC plans in January 2026, 12.5% more than a year earlier, and local authorities received 162,702 requests for an EHC needs assessment during 2025. Only 46.1% of new plans were issued inside the 20-week legal limit (Department for Education, published June 25, 2026).
Every one of those plans needs a review each year, and the reviews for children changing school carry a hard date. For a child moving from primary to secondary school in September 2027, the local authority must review and amend the plan by "15 February in the calendar year of the child's transfer" (SEND Regulations 2014, regulation 18). The date for a move from secondary school to a post-16 institution is March 31. So the Year 6 review meetings are happening now.
The reform program does not lift this work soon. Schools Week reports that the government "will not introduce these changes until 2029" (Schools Week). The paperwork you have this term is the paperwork you will have next year.
What do the rules let AI do with an EHCP?
Draft and organize, under an approved tool and a professional's eye. The Department for Education updated its data protection guidance on generative AI on October 14, 2026. It tells staff to "check that the type of tool being used is approved by your school", and says that if pupils' personal data goes into a tool, the school must make sure the data is "protected within the tool and not used to further train" the AI (Department for Education).
Guidance developed by Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching with the department goes further on statutory documents. As Schools Week reports it, staff should be "extremely cautious" about entering a child's SEN information, and AI should not be used for "writing statutory documents like EHCP contributions without a significant professional review" (Schools Week). Dan's three-question Stranger Test sorts which parts of a plan can go to a machine at all.
Lawyers have said where the risk lands. Barristers at 3PB expect "challenges under public law where algorithms or AI tools are used to generate EHCPs without adequate human oversight" (3PB, July 4, 2025). Wiltshire Council, which uses an AI assistant to help draft plans, tells families that "All EHCPs are reviewed, edited, and finalised by qualified SEND professionals" (Wiltshire Council).
How this list was built
We started from the aieducator.tools directory and counted. On November 13, 2026 the directory's public API returned 138 listings, 26 of them in the special education and accessibility category. We then searched every listing's name, tagline, description and feature list for "EHCP", "provision map" and "annual review". Two matched: Sendix and Baobab. The other three picks are general tools with a specific job in this paperwork.
Three more counts from the same 26 listings. Five declare UK hosting, nine the United States, four the European Union, one Singapore and one Australia, and six leave the field unknown or blank. Twelve say they collect student data, ten say they do not, four do not say. Five carry an independent 9ine security assessment, against 36 of all 138 listings; the security assessments page shows which.
No vendor paid to appear. Prices and data terms were read on each vendor's own pages on November 13, 2026, and where a page would not load we say so.
What we left out. Search for an "AI EHCP tool" and one of the first products you meet is Agilisys's EHCP Agent, which is sold to councils, not schools: its page reports "40+ councils signed up" and says "The caseworker reviews, refines, and signs off" (Agilisys). A SENCO cannot buy it. Tes Provision Map is a real alternative to Baobab, but it is not in the directory and its product page names no AI feature (Tes). We found no tool, in the directory or in this week's searches, built to draft a school's needs assessment request.
One discrepancy turned up on the way. The directory record for Sendix lists pricing as "contact", a "Zero Retention architecture" and an MIS link through Wonde. Sendix's own pages, read the same day, publish a price, state that "this is not a zero-retention service" (terms) and say "Sendix doesn't connect to your MIS" (data protection page). Where the two differ, this article follows the vendor's current pages, and the record has been flagged for correction.
Best for the annual review report: Sendix
Sendix is the best fit for the annual review report because that report is the one job it is built around. The vendor's page describes the sequence: the tool reads the plan, the reports and what staff know, sets out the evidence for and against each outcome with the source beside each line, and suggests a status for each outcome from "working" to "achieved". Staff record their own view. Where the evidence points to a change, "You keep, edit or reject each one" (Sendix). The draft follows your school's own review template, with the child's views first.
It also checks the wording of an existing plan. Sendix says a suggested fix is "drafted only from evidence already in the file" (Sendix).
Watch out for: Sendix is young, and says so. Its trust page states that until an independent penetration test, booked for January 2027, is complete, "we release real pupil data to no more than 3 organisations in total". A Cyber Essentials assessment "is under way; no certificate has been issued". The same page reports "No published accuracy evaluation yet" (Sendix trust page, updated October 26, 2026). It does not build a provision map.
Pricing: "£20 per plan a year", with a minimum of £300 a year for a school and £2,000 for a trust, excluding VAT. Founding schools get the spring term free for up to 10 annual reviews, an offer open to 10 schools (pricing, checked November 13, 2026). On the directory it holds a rating of 5.00 from one review.
Safety: Sendix says three sub-processors handle the data, "all processing in the UK", and that the model sees extracts "with the pupil's name, UPNs, NHS numbers, postcodes and dates removed, not whole plans". Its terms add two limits worth reading before you sign: "Identifier removal is not guaranteed anonymisation", and real plans need a signed data processing agreement first. Your data protection officer still has to complete the school's half of the impact assessment.
Choose something else when your problem is tracking provision across the whole register, not one child's review.
Best for the provision map: Baobab
Baobab is the best fit for the provision map because it is the only directory listing that names provision mapping as a feature. Its directory record says you can "Upload an EHCP, instantly track all outcomes and provisions, create IEPs at a click", and the vendor's own page description lists "Living EHCPs, provision mapping, IEP creation, annual reviews, SEND finance tracking, statutory returns" (Baobab's directory page).
That is all we can report at source. On November 13, 2026 Baobab's website returned an empty page to our reader on every address we tried, so its feature detail, price and privacy terms are unverified here.
Watch out for: you will be uploading whole plans, so everything in the Safety line below matters more for Baobab than for any other tool on this list. Ask for the data processing agreement before the demo, not after.
Pricing: no public pricing found; the directory record says only "paid". Unverified at the vendor's site.
Safety: the directory record, which the vendor supplies, declares UK hosting, that student data is collected, that it is not shared with third parties and that deletion can be requested. None of this was confirmed on Baobab's own pages on the day. Ask which AI model reads the plan, where it runs and whether plan text is used for training.
Choose something else when you need a published price or a published security statement to get past your trust's procurement step. Tes Provision Map maps interventions and produces cost reports without, on its product page, any AI at all, and for many schools that is enough.
Best for turning the plan into classroom targets: TeachMate AI
TeachMate AI is the best fit for the step after the plan is written, because it has tools named for that step. Its SEND page lists an EHCP Outcome Generator ("Generate outcomes and actions from an anonymised EHCP"), an EHCP to Curriculum Plan tool, a Pupil Passport with Targets and a One Page Support Profile (TeachMate). These turn a long plan into the single page a class teacher will read before the first lesson.
We found no TeachMate tool for the needs assessment request or the annual review report.
Watch out for: the word "anonymised". Taking the name off a plan does not anonymize it; a year group, a diagnosis and one incident can still point to one child. TeachMate's own guidance says "do not enter pupil information unless you need to" (TeachMate data protection, dated August 13, 2026). Paste the outcomes, not the plan.
Pricing: Pro is £7.99 a month, or £59.88 for the first year paid upfront. The SEND tools are marked Pro, apart from the IDP Writer for Wales. The vendor says whole-school plans start "from as little as £2 per teacher, per month" (pricing, checked November 13, 2026). Directory rating: 4.60 from five reviews.
Safety: TeachMate says customer data "is stored and processed within the UK and EU" and "We do not use your data to train AI models". Inputs and outputs are kept for 28 days. The directory lists an independent 9ine assessment.
Choose something else when the job is the statutory document itself.
Best for the needs assessment evidence in a Google school: Gemini Notebook
Gemini Notebook is the best fit for building the evidence trail because it answers from the documents you give it and shows where each answer came from. Google describes it as "grounded only in the information you provide" (Google, updated August 20, 2026), with "clear inline citations" (Google, updated November 10, 2026). It is the tool Google renamed from NotebookLM in July 2026.
The test a local authority applies to a request is short: whether the child "has or may have" special educational needs, and whether they "may need" provision through a plan (IPSEA). Your evidence has to show both, in order, across two or three cycles of support. Load the reports and review notes, ask for a dated timeline of what was tried and what happened, and check every line against its citation. Then write the request yourself.
Watch out for: limits and location. Schools on Education Fundamentals or Standard get 100 notebooks, 50 sources in each and 50 chats a day, according to the same two Google pages. And the second states: "Your organization's data region settings don't apply to data processed and cached by Gemini Notebook."
Pricing: free as a core service in every Workspace for Education edition, including Fundamentals (checked November 13, 2026). Directory rating: 4.84 from 90 reviews.
Safety: for Workspace customers, Google says uploads, queries and responses "won't be reviewed by human reviewers and won't be used to train AI models" (Google, updated October 26, 2026). That covers the school account only. The same tool on a personal Gmail account runs under different terms.
Choose something else when your school is a Microsoft school, or your data protection officer has not approved Notebook for pupil records.
Best for the same job in a Microsoft 365 school: Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is the best fit for a Microsoft school because the chat version is already paid for and sits inside the school's own tenant. Microsoft says Copilot Chat is "available at no cost for users with a Microsoft 365 A1, A3, or A5 license" and can "summarize or analyze files" (Microsoft). Upload the educational psychologist's report and the speech and language report, and ask what each recommends, quoted, with page references you then check.
Watch out for: two things. Copilot Chat is a general chat window, so ask for page references every time and check each one. And Agilisys, which sells a rival to councils, puts the limit bluntly: Copilot "doesn't know what an EHCP is". That is a competitor's claim, but the caution is fair: do not expect it to notice that a line in Section F, the part of the plan that lists provision, is too vague to enforce.
Pricing: Copilot Chat is free on the licenses above. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on, which brings Teams meeting recaps, is listed at $18 a user a month for education, a price Microsoft's page dates to October 2025 (checked November 13, 2026). Directory rating: 4.67 from 12 reviews.
Safety: Microsoft says "Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs" (Microsoft, updated November 3, 2026). The same page says "Customers outside the EU may have their queries processed in the US, EU, or other regions", and none of the pages we read gives a UK-only commitment. Put that sentence in front of whoever signs your impact assessment. Our list of tools that keep pupil data in the UK explains what hosting does and does not settle.
Choose something else when you want Gemini Notebook's inline citations, or the meeting notes. For recording a review meeting, read the consent check in our note takers list first.
What about ChatGPT, Claude, MagicSchool, Khanmigo, Quizlet and Diffit?
None is a first choice for this paperwork. ChatGPT and Claude on a personal account are the wrong place for a child's reports whatever their settings, because the department's guidance starts with whether your school has approved the tool. Use them for a blank review agenda or a template letter with no child in it. MagicSchool's directory record lists an IEP generator, which is built around the American document. Khanmigo and Quizlet are study tools for pupils, and Diffit adapts reading texts; all three help deliver a plan and none drafts one.
Which AI tool should you start with?
Start with the document that is due next, and answer four questions in order.
- Which document is it? Request, review report, provision map or classroom summary. The table at the top gives one tool for each.
- Will a child's real records go in? If yes, the tool needs a signed data processing agreement and your data protection officer's approval before the first upload. If you can do the job with outcomes alone, do that.
- Does your school already hold a license? Gemini Notebook and Copilot Chat cost nothing extra on a school account. Try the job there before you buy anything.
- Who checks the output, and do they know the child? If the answer is a new colleague, the draft is not ready to send.
For the wider role, our list for SENCOs covers the classroom tools, and tools a school can approve sets out the data check.
Worked example: a Year 6 transfer review, planned
This is a plan, not a report of one. A SENCO has a Year 6 pupil with an EHCP and sets the annual review meeting for Thursday, December 10, 2026. The dates come from regulation 20.
- By November 26. Give "At least two weeks' notice of the date of the meeting" and circulate the advice gathered "at least two weeks in advance of the review meeting". Before that date, load this year's reports into the approved tool and ask for the evidence for and against each outcome in the plan. Read every line against its source. Add what only you know.
- December 10. Hold the meeting. The draft is a starting point for the conversation; the child's and parents' views are recorded in their own words, by a person.
- By December 24. The written report "must be prepared within two weeks of the review meeting". Edit the draft into the school's recommendations and send it to everyone invited.
- By January 7, 2027. The local authority must notify its decision "within four weeks of the review meeting".
- By February 15, 2027. The amended plan naming the secondary school is due.
One measure tells you whether the tool earned its place: did every person invited have the advice two full weeks before the meeting?
What should a SENCO keep off AI?
The judgment. Whether a child has a special educational need, what provision they require and where they should be placed are decisions for people, and the guidance reported by Schools Week names "deciding whether a student has a special educational need" among the calls that should not be handed to a machine.
Our view: let these tools find the page, line up the dates and draft the paragraph you will rewrite. Keep the sentence that says what this child needs. If you lead special education in a US district, the same split applies to your compliance work, and the special education directors' list covers it.
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, bestselling author and founder of The AI Educator.
