To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size, including those based in the EU, EEA or internationally
• work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)

Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK, and most of the funding spent within the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

Projects must:

• start by 1 October 2026
• end by 30 September 2027
• last up to 12 months
• have total costs of between £200,000 and £500,000, inclusive of VAT

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service. This lets you incorporate the results of your exploration and design and demonstrate that you can produce in quantity to acceptable quality standards.

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.

We are seeking projects that are developing solutions with a credible route to real world adoption and impact, which will enable one or both of:

• earlier and more accurate identification of children and young people in the UK who have, or are likely to have, SEN
• consistent, high quality assessment of each child’s individual strengths and needs

This could include, but is not limited to, projects that:

• develop tools designed for deployment by frontline services, especially at universal review points, for example, the health and development reviews and the reception baseline assessment (RBA) in England
• enable identification of children’s needs at the earliest stages of life, particularly prior to entry into formal education
• refine and test high potential approaches to ensure they are ready to be scaled at pace across national education systems
• mitigate current inconsistencies in SEN identification or assessment across different local authorities and educational settings
• develop innovations based on the predictive value of prematurity indicators or early speech and language assessments
• use health data or operate in health settings. However, there must be a clear link to education, either by products having utility in educational settings or improving educational outcomes

Applications should demonstrate how the proposed work will move beyond concept development and into delivery, adoption and impact. In particular, applicants must:

• demonstrate a credible and practical route to real use, including plans to commercialise or otherwise embed the solution within existing systems or services
• develop a tangible output, such as a product, tool, framework, service model or platform, rather than undertaking purely exploratory or conceptual work
• set out clear plans for delivery, spreading and scaling, including who the end users are and how they will access or adopt the solution. Where relevant, innovations should be compatible with existing school and health processes and systems, and forthcoming SEN reforms where appropriate
• demonstrate a clear plan for establishing the usability and validity of tools across different geographic regions and age groups. This should include appropriate child, parent and carer, teacher, and SENCO co-design or engagement
• commit to working collaboratively with UKRI and the Department for Education (DfE), or the equivalent body in the devolved administrations, to support potential adoption, integration and wider take‑up of the solution following the project
• develop projects which, where relevant, have the potential to “grow with the child”. That is, having lasting utility over time, rather than being applicable to a single development stage or narrow period of education

All funded projects will be required to work in accordance with the UKRI preventing harm (safeguarding) in research and innovation policy.

You must define your goals in your application and outline your plan for phase 1. You must demonstrate a credible and practical route to market, so your application must include a plan to commercialise your results.

At this stage contracts will only be given for phase 1. In a potential phase 2 we will ask successful applicants from phase 1 to continue the development of their solutions.

To ensure public funding is directed towards genuine innovation and addresses specific market failures, we are not funding projects that:

• focus on fundamental or purely academic research without a clear, near-term route to commercialisation or deployment
• do not have a clear plan for involving relevant users and beneficiaries, such as parents and carers, teachers, SEN coordinators, healthcare professionals in the design and testing phases
• replicate existing commercially available SEN assessment tools without demonstrating significant technological or operational innovation
• fail to demonstrate rigorous compliance with UK data protection legislation and other relevant and applicable statutory guidance, such as the SEN Code of Practice and Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance in England
• are not original, in scope or duplicates someone else’s work
• would directly duplicate other UK Government or EU funded initiatives you have already been funded to deliver
• are covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions
• do not have UK children and families as their direct or indirect beneficiaries

UKRI will hold an online briefing at 2pm on Monday 29 June: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find a subcontractor or to discuss your application, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Digital or Health teams.