Fewer EHCPs and more cash - Labour's plan to fix SEND
Hundreds of thousands of children will no longer receive an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and £4 billion will be pumped into mainstream schools under sweeping reforms designed to fix a Special Educational Needs and Disability (Send) education system which currently ‘doesn’t work’, the Government announced yesterday.
Those with the most complex needs will still keep their support plans, but as of 2030, the proportion of children receiving an EHCP will fall year-on year.
An EHCP is a legal document setting out the support children with Send are legally entitled to.
The number of EHCPs has risen sharply in recent years at huge cost to the Government, while parents’ experience of the overall system is widely regarded negatively.
Education Secretary Bridget Philipson said the reforms will “take away that fight that so many parents” often face in accessing SEND provision.
Speaking at a school in Peterborough as she unveiled the Schools White Paper policy document yesterday, Ms Phillipson said: “Forget the misinformation you might have heard.
“EHCPs for children with the most complex needs will stay, guided by nationally-defined and evidence-based specialist provision packages.”
Pressed on concerns around children losing support, she said the Government will “take away that fight that so many parents have had over such a long period of time to get the support that should be much more readily available to their children”.
She said the reforms will allow access to earlier support for children as part of a £4 billion investment into Send provision in mainstream schools to make it more inclusive.
The policy documents propose a new plan with a legal footing for all children with Send called individual support plans (ISPs), which have multiple tiers of support – targeted and targeted plus. Children will not need to have a diagnosis to access these.
The new system will be dependent on need, not diagnosis, Ms Phillipson told reporters.
“Some autistic children do need specialist provision,” she said. “For some children with autism, with the right level of support within mainstream they can thrive, can achieve.”
“This is dependent on individual need, not an arbitrary definition,” she added.
Children with the most complex needs will still have EHCPs, which will underpin new specialist provision packages.
Assessments for the new system, which will be consulted on for 12 weeks, will start in September 2029 with no changes to current support before “at least September 2030”.
When the new legislation comes into effect, children with EHCPs will be reassessed at the end of their education phase and it will be decided whether they need a specialist provision package. If they do, a new EHCP will be developed.
Regardless of whether they have a new EHCP developed, the child’s school will have a statutory duty to draw up an ISP.
The policy document states that all children moving from an EHCP to an ISP will “retain the right to request a mainstream placement, and no child will move from a special school or college unless they choose to do so”.
The number of EHCPs issued has been soaring and stood at 638,745 as of January 2025 for young people aged up to 25, up from 353,995 in 2019, which has led to spiralling costs for councils and large deficits.
Under Government projections, around one in eight children with Send who currently have an EHCP will transition to new plans between 2030 and 2035.
While the percentage of pupils with an EHCP is predicted to keep rising until 2029/30, the Department for Education (DfE) has estimated it will drop to around 4.7 per cent of all children by 2034/35.
This would be down from 5.8 per cent currently for 2025/26.
Children currently in year three or above will keep their EHCP until at least age 16.
Those in year two or below will be reassessed when they transition to year seven.
Ms Phillipson said the plans will take children with Send “from sidelined and excluded to seen, heard and included”.
Schools watchdog Ofsted will monitor how schools are implementing ISPs, and where they are not meeting standards it could lead to new school management.