How to Maintain SEND Maths Support When TA Budgets Are Cut

A 2026 Sutton Trust poll found that 71% of English school leaders have cut Teaching Assistants due to budget pressures. That is a staggering figure, and when I first read it, my immediate thought was: what does that mean for the children who relied most on those adults? For many pupils with SEND, a TA was not a nice-to-have. They were the person who spotted when a child was shutting down during a maths session, who quietly repeated an instruction in a different way, who made it possible for a child with dyscalculia or maths anxiety to stay in the room rather than retreat.

At almost exactly the same time, the 2026 SEND White Paper introduced the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, a ring-fenced pot of money that schools can use directly to purchase early interventions for pupils with additional needs. These two things arriving together is significant. Schools are losing the human resource they depended on, and simultaneously being handed a mechanism to fund alternatives. That combination is worth paying close attention to.

Maths is one of the subjects where TA support has historically mattered most for SEND pupils. Times tables and number fluency in particular sit in a tricky place: they require repetition and low-stakes practice, but for children with maths anxiety or working memory difficulties, that repetition can feel humiliating if it is delivered in front of peers or in a way that highlights what they cannot yet do.

When I looked into how schools have typically bridged this gap, what stands out is how much of the heavy lifting came from one-to-one or small-group TA time, often outside the main lesson. Short, regular fluency sessions. Gentle, consistent re-teaching. A familiar face removing some of the emotional charge around numbers. Without that, those pupils can quietly fall further behind, not because they are incapable, but because the conditions that helped them learn have disappeared.

From the schools and SENCOs we speak to, that is exactly what they are worried about. Not a dramatic cliff-edge, but a slow drift: children who were making progress, now without the structure that made progress possible.

The Inclusive Mainstream Fund introduced in the 2026 SEND White Paper is designed to give schools direct purchasing power for early interventions, without waiting for an EHCP process or local authority approval. In practical terms, that means a SENCO or senior leader can identify a need, choose an appropriate intervention, and deploy it.

What counts as an eligible early intervention will depend on how your local authority interprets the guidance, so it is worth checking that carefully. But the intent of the fund is clearly aimed at schools being proactive rather than reactive: catching children before they need a statutory assessment, not after.

For maths fluency specifically, that window between Year 4 and Year 6 is critical. By Year 7, gaps in times tables knowledge compound quickly. The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is a real opportunity to act in that window.

I want to be straightforward about something: digital tools are not a substitute for a skilled, empathetic TA. They cannot notice when a child is about to cry, or adjust their tone in response to a child's body language. Anyone who claims otherwise is overselling.

But there is something that well-designed maths software can do that even the best TA sometimes cannot: it removes the social dynamic entirely. For a child with maths anxiety, practising times tables with a person watching, even a kind person, can be stressful. Practising inside a familiar game format, on their own terms, with no judgment attached, can feel completely different.

What we keep hearing from the teachers and SENCOs we talk with is that the barrier is rarely cognitive. Children with dyscalculia or high maths anxiety often understand more than their performance suggests. The barrier is emotional. Repetition feels like failure when it is visible. Done in a low-stakes, engaging environment, the same repetition becomes just... playing.

As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, "The children who struggle most with maths are often the ones who've learned to avoid it. Our job is to make it feel safe enough that they'll actually try."

XTables Champions was built with that specific problem in mind. The app uses game formats that children already know and enjoy, with a strong multiplayer element that turns fluency practice into something social and fun rather than solitary and remedial. The design is SEND-friendly throughout, including for neurodivergent learners who need lower sensory load and clear, predictable interfaces.

It automates the repetition cycle that a TA would previously have managed, freeing up whatever teacher or SENCO time remains to focus on the relational, observational work that only a human can do.

If you are a SENCO or Year 4-6 teacher trying to figure out how to protect your SEND pupils' maths progress in this environment, here is what I would suggest thinking about.

First, map the gap honestly. Which pupils were receiving regular TA-supported maths time, and what happens to that time now? Name the specific children and the specific sessions that have disappeared. Vague concern is harder to act on than a clear list.

Second, check your school's position on the Inclusive Mainstream Fund with your senior leadership team. Understand what early interventions it can be used to fund and what the purchasing process looks like locally.

Third, look at what digital intervention tools are genuinely designed for SEND learners, not just tools that claim to be accessible because they have an audio button. Look for evidence that the product was built with neurodivergent children in mind from the start, not retrofitted.

Fourth, involve the children. Ask them what feels hard about maths, and what would make it feel less hard. Their answers are often more useful than any assessment data.

If you are a SENCO, Year 4-6 teacher or primary school senior leader in England trying to protect maths progress for your SEND pupils in the face of TA cuts, we would genuinely like to hear from you.

XTables Champions is a small, founder-led company and we are at an early stage, which means when you get in touch, you speak to people who care about getting this right, not a sales team running through a script. We are building something specifically for the children who find maths hardest, and every conversation with a school helps us do that better.

Visit xtableschampions.com or drop us a message to talk about how XTables Champions might support your neurodivergent and maths-anxious pupils this year.