All schools in England will have to create an Individual Support Plan (ISP) for every child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) that clearly set out the help a child will receive. The support will follow a national framework and be tailored by teachers and specialists. The government says that extra funding will make services like speech and language therapy and small group teaching easier to access.

EHC plans for complex support

The government has said it will offer a wider legal entitlement beyond the ISP. This will see education, health and care (EHC) plans detail more intensive or complex support than schools can routinely provide.

No child will lose support already in place

The government has said that no child will lose effective support already in place:

• Every child with a special school place in 2029 will keep it if they want it until they finish education.
• Children with EHC plans in mainstream schools will not be moved to ISPs until at least 2030. And this will only happen when moving between school stages. For example, from primary to secondary.
• Children with an EHC plan in mainstream settings who will be best supported in the future via an ISP, will only begin to transition from 2030. This is once the new inclusive mainstream system has been fully built. This will only happen as children naturally move between phases, like from primary to secondary
• ISPs will be in place for children transitioning from an EHC plan before they move to the new system. This will mean there is no break in support.

Funding pledge

As part of the changes, the Department for Education (DfE) will create a set of national inclusion standards to iron out regional differences in support. It will provide schools and colleges £1.6bn over three years to fund extra support. A further £1.8bn will fund local authorities to hire specialists for schools to call on. And another £200m will pay for additional teacher training.

Read the Government’s Proposals >

Read the Information Sheets >

Read CONTACT’s summary and views on ISP and EHCP Proposals >

Read and respond to the consultation >

‘Not the end of the journey, but a critically important landmark’.

Today’s publication of the White Paper “Every Child Achieving and Thriving” is a milestone on a long journey, one which provides a vision and hope for much-needed improvement in the support for disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs. 

This publication is not the end of this journey, but a critically important landmark. We are pleased to see the scale of its vision and commitment of resources for transforming our education system and ensuring it values children and young people with additional needs and their families.

Building inclusion and belonging in education

The starting point for this transformation is a new vision for inclusive mainstream education. We welcome the adoption of the UNCRDP as a guide for interpreting inclusive practice, promoting a consistent, rights-based approach. Currently, there is too much variation across schools in how children’s needs are recognised and supported. Unaddressed needs, late intervention, and children, young people, and their families feeling excluded from education are persistent challenges. Addressing this is long overdue, and delivering it across all schools is a huge ambition.

The consultation sets out a comprehensive range of measures to drive this shift, including new statutory expectations for schools, guidance on applying reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act, and a new model of Inclusion Bases to provide more specialist support within schools. New funding streams, curriculum changes, revised school incentives, and staff training will support this change. Schools will have a statutory duty to produce Individual Support Plans, developed in partnership with parents and carers, setting out each child’s needs and provision. If implemented well these measures have the potential to transform inclusion in all schools and early years settings.

Underpinning this will be new National Inclusion Standards developed by teams of experts, setting out what schools need to do and providing practical guidance for staff. These standards aim to ensure that educators understand their role and how to meet the needs of children and young people in their settings. It will not be enough for the standards to look good on paper; they must be real and felt in classrooms in every school.

Wrapping specialist support around schools

We welcome the explicit recognition that schools cannot do this alone. The new model of specialist support, Experts at Hand, aims to provide timely access to specialist expertise through training and group interventions, and is an approach we have long advocated for. We believe it has the potential to transform how multi-agency support is integrated with education, breaking down organisational barriers, upskilling professionals, and making support available sooner in education settings.

We welcome the commitment of investment in training additional specialists and funding for local areas to develop this model. However, we know from our work in local systems and from bringing experts together on this issue that this model must be jointly owned and developed by education providers, the local authority, and NHS partners from the outset and in the long term.

The government must use the consultation to clarify how it will ensure that Integrated Care Boards and health providers are full and equal partners with local authorities in this model, working with a range of partners to ensure input from therapists, psychologists, social care (including Family help and/or Short Breaks), and mental health specialists is there when its needed.

Specialist support and retaining EHCPs

For children and young people with more intense needs that cannot be met through targeted support, statutory Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) will continue, and parents and carers will still be able to appeal to the Tribunal when they disagree with a Local Authority about whether their child requires an EHCP.

There are proposals to change how EHCPs work, with teams of experts working with parents to develop a Specialist Support Package that will set out how evidence-based provision is forming the basis of EHCPs. The White Paper also proposes changes to special schools, including a new curriculum, clearer expectations, a focus on value for money, and limits on inappropriate profit in the independent special school sector. It proposes a new mechanism for deciding specialist placements.

We know many parent carers have felt deep concern that accessing the right specialist support may become harder and that routes to challenge decisions could become less accessible.  The Department for Education must work with families and the sector to get this absolutely right.

The proposals to strengthen information, advice, and support services are an important step, and must be built on with further accountability mechanisms to ensure clear routes to request support, transparent processes for resolving disagreements, swift intervention when the right support is not provided, and a clear escalation process if issues persist.

Looking to the consultation

Overall, there is much to welcome in this White Paper. Delivering transformation at this scale will require time, effort, and sustained commitment. Legislative changes will not take place before 2029, and children’s current entitlements will not be reviewed until the third phase of implementation.

The government has also promised that no child in a special school will be required to leave unless their parents choose to do so. These safeguards are vital to ensure that rebuilding the system does not destabilise existing provision.

It will also be important to consider the read-across to other areas of reform that will impact the lives of disabled children and their families, including the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the government response to the Law Commission Review of disabled children’s social care, and the Family Help reforms.

The consultation is a crucial opportunity to test these principles and flesh out crucial details in areas such as local joint working and rights of redress. We look forward to supporting the government and working with everyone across the sector to ensure the vision is implemented effectively.

The stakes are too high for this transformation to fall short.

The Disabled Children’s Partnership pressed government to engage widely and meaningfully with families and young people – and experts in the sector – as it develops its plans to reform the SEND system. As members of the Partnership, SMA UK continued to speak up with the DCP against suggestions that would remove or weaken rights and protections.

Children and young people with special educational needs want the same, ordinary things, that other children take for granted.

Children and young people with special educational needs want the same, ordinary things, that other children take for granted.