The Government’s SEND proposals – what you need to know

The Government has said it will create an inclusive education system for all children, starting with a Universal Offer of high-quality support for all pupils backed by new national inclusion standards. 

This includes: 

• High quality teaching 

• Calm and inclusive environments  

• Early identification of needs 

• Support put in place at an early stage.

The Government expects that the Universal Offer will meet most children’s needs, and teachers will be trained to meet these expectations. 

For those children with additional needs, three further levels of support are being proposed. 

As well as the Universal Offer, the Government will also establish three layers of support for children and young people with additional needs. 

At these levels, schools will have a legal duty to develop an Individual Support Plan for every child with SEND. Children in the Specialist provision level would also receive an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

The layers are flexible, so children can move between them as required. They won’t have to move through them in order.

1. Targeted

• Support delivered by a child’s school, which could include reasonable adjustments, small group support, help with managing sensory needs or changes to the curriculum.

2. Targeted Plus

• As well as support from the child’s school, as outlined in the Targeted layer, Targeted Plus will also include more specialist support through Experts at Hand. This improves access to education and health professionals, such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists.  
• Children may also be supported by Inclusion Bases.  
• Targeted Plus will also involve outreach from Alternative Provision or specialist settings.

3. Specialist 

• Children with the most complex needs will be able to access specialist support through a Specialist Provision Package (SPP) which would form the basis of what is in a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

An ISP is a digital record of your child’s needs, outlining the day-to-day support your child should receive and how this support will be delivered. Both teachers and parents will be able to access this record.  

The Government is proposing that every child with SEND will have an Individual Support Plan (ISP). Schools would have a legal duty to produce these, rather than the local authority. 

An ISP will be reviewed at least annually to ensure it’s still meeting your child’s needs. It will transition with your child as they move through the education system, such as from primary to secondary school, or secondary school to college. 

Specialist Provision Packages (SPPs) will provide evidence-based, nationally defined packages of support for children and young people with the most complex needs. 

The Department for Education has designed seven broad packages, which can be found here at GOV.UK: Specialist provision packages. These packages will cover different types of needs, and children could access support from more than one package if needed. 

The EHCP would guarantee a child’s legal entitlement to the support in their Specialist Provision Package, alongside social care and health provision in school. 

EHCPs will be developed within your child’s education setting, working with parents. Local authorities will have overall responsibility for EHCPs, but schools will be accountable for delivering the support on a day-to-day basis, through your child’s Individual Support Plan. 

The Experts at Hand programme will aim to provide mainstream schools with better access to education and health professionals such as educational psychologists and speech and language therapists.

It will support local authorities and health boards to work together with schools to provide this support. The exact offer will be defined by the local authority.

The Government has pledged around £1.8 billion over the next 3 years for local areas to design and implement this new service, based on local needs.

The government is proposing that schools and colleges introduce dedicated spaces called inclusion bases, so that specialist support can be offered in mainstream settings. These would replace or update former SEN units and resourced provision.  

They provide specialist support, acting as a bridge between mainstream and specialist provision.

There would be two types of inclusion bases: 

• Support bases – run by schools and trusts to provide support in the Targeted layer.
• Specialist bases – Local Authority-funded bases, offering specialist support for complex needs.

Early years settings will be strengthened to provide earlier, high-quality SEND support for families. There will be further investment in Best Start Family Hubs to fund a dedicated SEND practitioner in every Hub.

Early years staff will also receive training on identifying and supporting children with SEND, through the national training programme.

There will be a fast track assessment process for Specialist Provision Packages for disabled children under 5 with complex needs.

The proposals focus on creating a skills-focused system to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training. They propose to do this by: 

• Embedding best practice in transition planning across all schools and colleges, strengthening the focus on supporting young people with SEND to prepare for adult life.
• Ensuring young people with an EHCP continue to receive support up to the age of 25. Consideration will be given to whether other young people with SEND should receive ongoing support, even if they don’t have an EHCP. 
• Increasing support to enable young people with SEND to access supported internships and apprenticeships, and stronger partnership-based transitions from school into further education.

Under the reforms, schools now have a legal duty to provide a written record of support for every student with SEND through an ISP. 

School settings will be held accountable and responsible for delivering educational provision and supporting children to learn, rather than the local authority. The government intends that this will allow schools to be more flexible in responding quickly to updates to plans in response to children’s changing needs. 

The Government is also updating the SEND Code of Practice, to provide clearer details on the role of local authorities and their partners in delivering changes to the system. There will also be updates to Ofsted inspections to ensure inclusion is considered. 

Where parents have concerns with the delivery of ISPs, they can raise this through the school complaints procedure. 

Families will be able to appeal to the SEND Tribunal about disability discrimination against a child or young person in a school, including whether reasonable adjustments should have been made.

Families whose child has a SPP, and therefore an EHCP, can appeal to the SEND Tribunal if there are issues with the support their child is receiving, including if they believe the package identified for their child would not provide sufficient support. 

The Tribunal will also hear appeals against local authority decisions about whether a child meets the new threshold for specialist provision.