What an educational brief contains, and who writes it

Why this comes up more than it used to

In December 2025 the government cancelled or paused most of the planned special and alternative provision free schools. Eighteen were cancelled outright. A further 59 were left waiting on a decision, and only 15 of the 92 planned were definitely going ahead. The places themselves were not cancelled. The Department said it would still deliver all 10,000 of them, and handed councils £3 billion over four years to create specialist places in schools that already exist. The Schools White Paper in February 2026 pointed in the same direction.

So the work has moved. There are fewer trusts starting a special school from a blank page, and many more schools and councils trying to turn a wing, a block or two or three classrooms into a working provision. I think that is the harder job. You inherit the corridors, the doors, the glass and whatever the room was used for last year, and you still have to make it work for pupils nobody had in mind when it was built.

What a brief actually is

It is a document that says what the provision has to do and who it is for. The pupils, how the place will run day to day, and what the space has to make possible. Plain English, written for your leaders, your estates team, the architect if there is one, and whoever approves the budget.

It is not architecture. There are no drawings in it and no fire safety decisions. It might say that a pupil needs to be able to get away from the group without leaving the base. Whether that turns out to be a second room, a partition or a different layout altogether is for your architect and estates team to work out.

It is also not a behaviour policy. A policy says what the staff will do. The brief says what the building has to let them do. Many places have the first and not the second, and that is usually why the policy and the space have stopped agreeing with each other by about November.

The part nobody owns

There is normally a project lead, someone from estates, a budget, sometimes an architect. They are all good at their jobs. But ask who has written down what the provision has to do for the pupils and you often get a pause.

What happens then is that the room gets picked because it was free, and the rest of it proceeds on reasonable guesses about a group of children nobody has met yet. Then the pupils arrive, and their needs are more complex than the forecast allowed for. In my experience they almost always are, and the forecast is usually written by people who will not be working in the room.

My own school was designed before I arrived, to the specification of the day, which had been written with mainstream in mind. I spent about three years adapting it, some of that major building work. That is where most of what is in this guide comes from.

What goes into a brief

Eight things, roughly in this order.

Who it is for. The pupils over the next five years, not just the ones starting in September. Needs, ages, numbers, and what matters most for them. And who it is not for. People skip that part and then regret it. If you are a council, this is also where you work out whether what you actually need is a base, resourced provision or something bigger, and getting that wrong costs more than anything else on the list.

How pupils come in and go back. Why the provision exists, what gets a pupil through the door, what has to be true before they leave, and how they get back into lessons. On a base, entry and exit decide whether you end up with specialist provision or a sanction room under another name. Without it written down, whoever runs the base ends up taking whoever is sent, through no fault of their own.

How it will run. Staffing and supervision. How staff call for help. Start and finish times. How pupils get to lessons and back. What happens at break and lunch, which is where the day most often comes apart. How staff brief in the morning and debrief at the end of the day, because there is more to record than in a mainstream classroom and staff need time in the day to do it. And how you work with parents, because there will be far more contact with them than anywhere else in the school.

All of that has consequences for the space, which is why it belongs in the brief and not in a document written after the builders have gone.

What each space has to do. Not room names and square metres. What has to be possible in there. A pupil needs to be able to come away from the group while the others carry on working. A reluctant reader will not read out loud if other pupils can hear, so you need somewhere small enough for that, where staff can still see in. There has to be somewhere for staff to write up an incident without being overheard. A parent who has been called in needs somewhere to sit that is not the corridor.

What each door has to do. Who it keeps out, who it lets through, and how quickly staff can get through it with their hands full. This is where I see most designs fall down, and the answer depends on your layout. A base in the middle of a school, one at the front with its own entrance and one in a separate building are three different problems. There is more on this in the guide to designing a base.

The avoid list. Short, specific, and it saves real money. Glass in doors that will be kicked, because once it is broken the door may no longer meet its fire rating. Ceilings you can reach, because a smoke detector pulled off its base puts a fault on the fire alarm. Storage units round the walls that can be pulled over or forced. Window sills deep enough to sit on, because a sill a pupil can sit on is a sill a pupil can stand on. Laptops kept out in open spaces, because they will not survive there. The list is different in every building, which is why it has to be written walking round yours.

How it grows. Numbers in year one, year two, year three, the staff who have to be in place for each step, and what has to be true before you take the next one. Filling faster than you can staff it is the most common way I have seen a good design come apart.

How you will know. The few things leaders and governors look at from the first term, so that if it starts drifting somebody notices while it is still cheap to put right.

If you are converting something you already have

Most of you will be.

Pick the room last. It is almost always picked first, before anyone has asked who the provision is for, and it is the most expensive mistake in the whole process. Write down who it is for, the entry and exit, and how the place will run. Then walk the building and see which space can actually do it. Sometimes the honest answer is that none of them can without work, and it is far better to find that out on paper.

Then walk a day through it. Walk it on foot, before anything is ordered. First pupil in the door to last member of staff out. What happens when a pupil needs the toilet or a drink of water. Who goes with them, and which room are they leaving. What happens if a pupil becomes distressed in each room, one room at a time. Most of the gaps show themselves that way, and at that point they cost nothing to put right.

If you are building new

If your project is one of those still going ahead, the DfE gives you the employer's requirements for the building, the output specification and the technical documents. They are thorough and they are about the building. What they cannot tell you is what your pupils need, because nobody at the Department has met them. The brief is the part only you can write, and it feeds into the employer's requirements rather than replacing them.

When to write it

Early, and before the layout is settled. Changes cost very little while the layout is still on paper and a great deal once the building work has started. In an existing building that means before anybody decides which rooms you are getting.

If you are already past that, a brief still helps, but reviewing the plans is quicker and cheaper. Read the drawings you have against the pupils they are for, and list what has been left out while there is still time to change it.

Who should write it

Someone who has run this kind of provision and seen a design fail. That could be your head or SENCO, though during the months when the design decisions get made they usually do not have the time. It could be somebody in your trust or council who has done it before. It could be an independent adviser.

The job title matters less than whether the person has stood in a room with pupils like these on a hard day.