How will the schools white paper help children with SEND?

After months of speculation, debate and delay, the Government has published its schools white paper, saying it “sets out a vision for education for the next decade, for a generation of children who will live into the next century”.

In her speech, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that the white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, is a blueprint for opportunity for all children, as the “disadvantage gap is still wide, children with SEND are sidelined, and bright children from ordinary families are still not achieving all that they should.”

She added: “The SEND system designed ten years ago for a small number of children is now broken. Parents end up fighting tooth and nail for entitlements on paper that don’t see them getting additional support. Children’s educations and lives have suffered.

“Today’s plans will take children with SEND from sidelined and excluded to seen, heard and included. Every child will get the brilliant support they deserve, when they need it, as routine and without a fight.”

It all sounds promising in principle, but as always, the devil is in the details. So, what will the new reforms mean for children with learning disabilities and autistic children?

What are the main takeaways?

There will now be a new legal requirement for schools to create Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for all children with SEND, drawing on a national framework of high-quality interventions that are personalised by the teachers and specialists who know children best.

These will have flexible, multiple tiers of support – Targeted, Targeted Plus and Specialist – on top of the universal offer. Children will be able to easily move between layers as needs are identified and develop, and they are not sequential.

This will be supported by the new ‘Experts at Hand’ service, which will create a bank of specialists, such as SEND teachers and speech and language therapists, in every local area for schools to draw on.

Children who need more intensive or complex support than schools can routinely provide will be offered a wider legal entitlement through an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

Both EHCPs and ISPs will be digitised to reduce bureaucracy and increase transparency.

Will EHCPs be retained?

The DfE says that EHCPs will be retained and improved, with the legal entitlement based on a Specialist Provision Package, similar to the clinical pathways used in health, to improve the quality and consistency of support across the country.

Draft packages will be published later this year and will be created by an independent panel of education, health and care experts, in discussion with children and families – for example, those with physical disabilities requiring personal care assistance or severe learning difficulties. They will be based on evidence and delivered nationwide.

Those children who currently hold an EHCP but are deemed to be better supported with an ISP will only see this change after 2030, once the new inclusive mainstream system has been fully built, and only then, as children naturally move between phases, such as from primary to secondary.

It says that ISPs will be in place for children transitioning from an EHCP before they move to the new system, so there will be no break in support. In addition, children with EHCPs will have an ISP that sets out exactly how the package will be delivered day to day by their school.

Ambitious about Autism, however, said that it was concerned that limiting EHCPs to only those with the most complex needs relies heavily on mainstream schools becoming genuinely inclusive, yet much of the detail on how to achieve this remains undefined and none of it has been proven to work at scale.

Chief Executive Jolanta Lasota added: “We need to see tangible evidence of improvement before any attempt is made to change or remove existing rights and protections.”

What does it mean for families?

In its guidance for families, the DfE says its reforms are built around five principles:

1. Early: support as soon as needs are identified, not after a long fight.
2. Local: learning close to home, alongside peers, rather than travelling long distances.
3. Fair: settings resourced to meet commonly occurring needs and clear legal rights and national standards to secure support for children who need it.
4. Effective: evidence-based approaches that work.
5. Shared: education, health/care and family support working together.

The white paper says that every child who has a special school place in 2029 will keep it until they finish their education.

Parents of children in mainstream education transitioning from an EHCP to an ISP as they move from primary to secondary will still be able to choose the school they wish to move to. The school complaints process will be updated, with an independent SEND expert added to the complaints panel when there are concerns about a school granting an ISP or the content of the ISP.

Georgina Durrant, SEND expert & Thought Leader at Twinkl, says one of the important things for families to remember is that the white paper only includes proposals at this stage and does not change the law.

She adds: “The legal rights surrounding EHCPs remain exactly the same, and local authorities continue to have the same statutory duties.

“The introduction of Individual Support Plans for every child with SEND is a significant proposal. If implemented well, ISPs could give over a million children a legal entitlement to personalised support for the first time. But we need to be honest about the scale of change this would require in schools, and the level of training, capacity and specialist input needed to make it meaningful.

“The Year 3 protection is a crucial part of these reforms. It gives families with older children the confidence that their child’s support won’t suddenly shift during the transition. That breathing space is essential if we want families to engage meaningfully with the consultation rather than feeling panicked or rushed.”

What does it mean for schools?

As already announced, all teachers and support staff will be trained to meet the needs of children with SEND using a new £200 million training budget.

In addition, there will be a £1.6 billion Inclusive Mainstream Fund over three years, which will give schools, colleges and early years settings funding to deliver an improved inclusion offer.

There have been concerns that there will not be enough staff to carry out this part of the reform, but Phillipson said she was setting out plans today to reach its target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers, which it committed to in its manifesto. She added that retention numbers in teachers is the “best they’ve been since around 2010″, so the government is making progress, but there is more to do.

Special schools and alternative provision will take on a dual role: continuing to provide high-quality education for children with the most complex needs, while also serving as outreach hubs to support mainstream settings.

Independent special schools will also be brought under a new regulatory regime to ensure they deliver the high-quality support set out in the Specialist Provision Package, at a fair and reasonable price.

Ofsted will inspect all settings to see how well they support children with SEND – including whether the right support is in place and whether high expectations are being met. The DfE will support and intervene when local authorities and Integrated Care Boards fail to meet expected standards.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said that schools are running on empty, so the government must not put more expectations on schools without real additional resources, and the funding currently announced is not enough.

He added: “The NEU has been calling for funding for more resources for inclusion in mainstream schools, so we welcome the announcement of the Inclusion Grant. However, it is too small. It only equates to a part-time teaching assistant for the average primary school and two teaching assistants for average secondary schools. This is not enough to make schools more inclusive.

“The Experts at Hand specialists will need capacity and resource but will provide schools with the additional support and advice that we have long been calling for.”

Where do we now stand on legal rights?

The white paper says that the SEND Tribunal will continue as an important legal backstop in the system, with parents retaining the ability to appeal decisions such as whether a child should be assessed for a specialist provision package, which specialist support package the child should receive, and which school the child should attend.

There will also be strengthened mediation services and an improved complaints process, which the Government hopes will allow concerns to be resolved earlier and more collaboratively, so that cases that do go to Tribunal are heard more quickly.

The National Autistic Society, however, said that they are deeply concerned that reforms to EHCPs and the SEND Tribunal may risk autistic young people missing out on the school place that is right for them. It added that parents of autistic children need to know their child will get the most suitable school place and, while improved mainstream inclusion will help more children get the support they need, for many, a place in a specialist school will be the only option.

There are also questions about which legal rights will apply to children without EHCPs to ensure the specific provisions identified in ISPs are implemented, as well as accountability from local authorities.

Cerebra says it fears that these reforms will make access to EHCPs much harder, leaving schools to decide what provision a child needs. It adds that the Government should not remove rights at all, and it definitely should not legislate to remove rights based on an untried and untested model.

It also opposes the reduction in powers of the SEND Tribunal, which is a key mechanism available to parents to hold local authorities to account.

The charity added: “We are deeply concerned that the proposed changes set out in the White Paper will have the unintended consequence of traumatising even more families because, we believe that the changes are fundamentally about saving money, rather than meeting children’s special educational needs.”

What happens next?

There will now be a 12-week consultation seeking the views of everyone with an interest in the reforms, including children, young people and families, teachers and leaders, and schools and trusts.

• Further reading: Easy Read Version of consultation

The national SEND training programme begins for all staff in 2026/2027, and draft Specialist Provision Packages will be published in Autumn 2026. Final Specialist Provision Packages will be published in 2027/28.

 

Additional responses to the white paper

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said: “Children with additional needs and their families deserve clarity, so I welcome this commitment for a system that wants to prioritise children’s rights – instead of one that has failed them for far too long.

“Families will understandably be anxious about what this moment of change will bring, but this is an opportunity to move to a system that acknowledges that every child, at some point in their lives, will require help and support. It’s an opportunity to rebuild trust with families and offer children greater ambition, instead of telling them they are the problem.

“Under these plans, no child should fear losing support. I will be working closely with ministers and families over the coming months to make sure that becomes a reality.”

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Chair of the Education Committee, Helen Hayes MP, said: “While the current system may be broken, it is not beyond repair. In our inquiry last year, the Education Committee saw examples of genuinely inclusive SEND support both abroad and at home. This is not a pipe dream: we can build a mainstream education system that works for every child. But it will require hard work, proper resourcing and a real desire to rebuild trust with parents, many of whom understandably feel let down by a system in which they have to fight for support at every stage.

“Parents of children with SEND are already living with unbearable anxiety and fear about the future for their children. They will need reassurance that the changes that are proposed to EHCPs will still mean that their child will receive the right support for them, and that this support will be properly accountable. As I scrutinise the White Paper, I will be looking for cast-iron guarantees that children’s rights will be strengthened through these reforms, not eroded.”

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Amanda Allard, Council for Disabled Children, said:  “We welcome the scale of vision contained in the white paper which has the potential to create an education system that fully values children and young people with additional needs and their families.

“We also welcome the commitment to retain statutory education, health and care plans for children and young people whose needs cannot be met through this new model. We know that many parents will welcome the legal requirement for schools to create individual support plans for all children with SEND.

“At the same time we know they will be concerned to understand how accountability will work.  The consultation launched today is an opportunity to clarify those details, ensuring families have clear routes to action where these ambitions are not being delivered.”

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