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9 min read August 25, 2026

Which UK SEND event is worth your time? A practical guide for SENCOs and school leaders

Tes SEND Show, nasen LIVE and Bett’s SEND Village do different jobs. This practical guide helps SENCOs and school leaders choose the right event, prepare properly and turn a useful day out into action back at school.

A large special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) event can give you useful ideas, new contacts and a clearer sense of what other schools are trying. It can also give you a tote bag, twelve supplier conversations and no clear idea what to do on Monday morning.

The difference usually comes down to choosing the right event for the job you need it to do.

Tes SEND Show is the strongest fit for broad, SEND-specific discovery and practical supplier conversations. nasen LIVE is better suited to focused professional learning, expert sessions and peer discussion. Bett is the widest technology event of the three, with a dedicated SEND Village for schools that want to connect SEND practice with the wider education technology market.

Those are useful starting points. They are not a league table. The best event depends on the question you are trying to answer.

The short comparison

  • Tes SEND Show: Best for SEND-specific ideas, resources, supplier conversations and networking. The main risk is collecting information without deciding what deserves follow-up.
  • nasen LIVE: Best for focused continuing professional development (CPD), sector insight and professional discussion. A paid conference is poor value if you arrive without a learning goal.
  • Bett UK, SEND Village: Best for wider edtech, accessibility and school technology conversations. SEND is one part of a very large event, so the general noise is higher.

Event details change each year. Treat the dates, prices and attendance figures below as a guide to the current editions, not as permanent facts.

Start with the job, not the event

Before booking, write one sentence answering this question:

What do I need to understand, decide or bring back to school?

Useful answers might be:

  • We need a better way to keep SEND records current when staff change.
  • We want to improve parent and pupil involvement in support planning.
  • We need to compare tools for managing SEND documents and evidence.
  • We need practical ideas for supporting regulation, accessibility or inclusive literacy.
  • We need to understand what current SEND reform means for our setting.

If you cannot write a specific answer, you are probably attending because the event exists rather than because it solves a problem. That is an expensive way to browse a hall.

Tes SEND Show: best for concentrated SEND discovery

The Tes SEND Show is built around the SEND community rather than being a small SEND section inside a wider education exhibition. The organiser describes it as a two-day event for practical SEND CPD, networking, resources and specialist suppliers. The 2026 programme includes 42 CPD-certified seminars, three free-to-attend theatres and more than 150 exhibitors.[1]

The 2026 London show is scheduled for 9 and 10 October at the Business Design Centre. Entry to the exhibition and several programme areas is free, although individual seminar places carry a fee. The organiser lists £19 plus VAT for early bird seminar bookings, £23 before the show and £25 at the show itself.[2]

Choose Tes SEND Show if you need to:

  • see a wide range of SEND resources in one place;
  • compare how different suppliers describe the same school problem;
  • find practical sessions for a team with mixed levels of experience;
  • speak with organisations that work across mainstream, special, early years, further education (FE) or local authority settings;
  • gather ideas before starting a more formal procurement process.

The risk is volume. More than 150 exhibitors can be useful, but only if you decide in advance which problems you are investigating. Pick a small number of sessions. Mark the stands or organisations you genuinely need to speak to. Leave space to think.

Do not confuse a friendly demonstration with evidence that a product will fit your school. Ask to see the part of the workflow that tends to go wrong: incomplete records, staff handover, review dates, permissions, exports and corrections.

nasen LIVE: best for focused CPD and shared learning

nasen LIVE has a different shape. The 2026 event ran as a face-to-face day at The Vox Conference Venue in Birmingham, with a programme covering SEND practice, reform, accessibility, alternative provision, parent partnership, inclusive literacy and staff wellbeing.[3][4]

The standard member ticket listed for 2026 was £109, with lunch and refreshments included. nasen also described a sector exhibition with more than 60 organisations and reported that the previous year’s event had sold out.[3][4]

Choose nasen LIVE if you need to:

  • spend a day on professional learning rather than general product browsing;
  • understand how policy and system changes may affect practice;
  • hear from people working across different parts of the SEND system;
  • bring a leadership question into a room where discussion matters as much as the slides;
  • leave with a small number of ideas that can be tested with colleagues.

This is the event I would prioritise for a special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) who already knows the operational problem and wants better thinking around it. It is less useful if your only objective is to collect supplier brochures.

Before booking a paid CPD event, agree what would make the day worthwhile. That might be one change to your annual review process, one improvement to parent communication or one decision about how your team handles evidence. Without that, the day can feel productive while changing very little.

Bett UK and the SEND Village: best for the wider technology picture

Bett is much larger than the other two events. The organiser lists Bett UK 2027 for 20 to 22 January at ExCeL London, with more than 37,000 attendees, over 700 exhibiting companies and more than 400 speakers.[6]

The SEND Village gives SEND a dedicated space within that wider event. Bett’s SEND page lists more than 50 exhibiting companies with SEND products and says more than 750 institutions were looking for SEND products, with 77% described as influencing purchasing decisions.[5] Those are organiser-reported figures, so treat them as a description of the event’s intended audience rather than independent market research.

Choose Bett if you need to:

  • understand how SEND tools sit alongside the wider school technology stack;
  • involve an information technology (IT), digital strategy or multi-academy trust (MAT) colleague in the conversation;
  • explore accessibility, assistive technology and inclusive design beyond one SEND workflow;
  • compare the language used by larger technology suppliers with the needs of actual school staff;
  • look at how systems connect, share data and support decisions across a school or trust.

Bett can be valuable for school leaders who are thinking beyond one product category. It can also be overwhelming. The SEND Village is the sensible starting point, but do not stop there if your question involves identity, data, devices, integrations or trust-wide governance.

If you are attending to assess software, make sure the conversation returns to the daily work of a SENCO. A system can look impressive in a theatre and still leave staff rebuilding records in Word documents and email threads.

Questions worth asking any supplier

Use the same questions at every event. That makes comparisons much fairer than relying on whoever gives the most polished demonstration.

Ask what happens to existing information

  • Can you show how the product handles an incomplete Portable Document Format (PDF), Word file or scanned document?
  • What happens to content that does not map neatly into the new structure?
  • Can staff review warnings and unmapped content before anything becomes part of the live record?
  • What does the school keep as the original source?

Ask what staff can trust

  • Which information is taken from the source and which wording is generated or interpreted?
  • Can the system preserve pupil, parent, staff and professional voice separately?
  • What does the tool do when there is not enough evidence?
  • Can staff correct an approved document without losing the history of what changed?

Ask about running the workflow

  • Who owns the next review and how is it made visible?
  • Can staff find the current version quickly?
  • What permissions apply to teachers, support staff, leaders and external professionals?
  • Can the school export a usable copy if it leaves the service?
  • What support is included during setup, migration and the first term?

Ask for evidence, not adjectives

Replace questions such as “Is it easy to use?” with “Show me the first ten minutes for a new member of staff.”

Replace “Is it secure?” with “Where is the data processed, who can access it, how long is it retained and what happens on exit?”

Replace “Does it save time?” with “Which steps disappear, which steps remain, and how have you measured that?”

A supplier should be able to answer these without hiding behind general claims. If the answer depends on a feature that is still being developed, ask for the date, the current workaround and what you can test now.

How to turn one event day into useful work

Before the event

Write down one problem, three questions and the people who need to be involved in the decision. Check accessibility and travel arrangements early. If you are attending with colleagues, divide the programme rather than all sitting in the same sessions.

During the event

Take notes under four headings: problem, evidence, risk and next action. Keep supplier claims separate from what you personally observed. Photographing a slide is not the same as understanding whether the idea fits your setting.

Within a week

Hold a short debrief. Record:

  • three ideas worth investigating;
  • one thing that does not fit your setting;
  • one supplier or approach that needs a proper test;
  • the owner of the next action;
  • the date when you will decide whether to continue.

If nobody owns the follow-up, the event was professional development, not school improvement.

Which event should you choose?

Choose Tes SEND Show when you want the broadest SEND-specific view and practical supplier access, especially when free exhibition entry matters.

Choose nasen LIVE when you want a focused day of CPD, discussion and sector insight, and you have a clear question worth paying to explore.

Choose Bett when your question sits at the intersection of SEND, accessibility, digital strategy and wider school technology. Bring the colleague who understands the rest of the technology estate.

MeritDocs is built around the same practical test that should be applied to any SEND documentation tool: can staff turn scattered information into a current, reviewable record, keep professional judgement in the process and export what the school needs later? The product is less important than the workflow. A good demo should make that workflow clearer, not distract from it.

This guide will be reviewed annually. Event dates, ticket prices, programmes and exhibitor lists change, so check the official event page before booking.

Sources

[1] Tes SEND Show [2] Tes SEND Show frequently asked questions (FAQs) [3] nasen LIVE 2026 [4] nasen LIVE event update [5] Bett SEND Village [6] Bett UK

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