Published on 23 February 2026, the UK government’s 'Every Child Achieving and Thriving' White Paper sets out a 10-year plan to overhaul England's Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system, focusing on early intervention, increased mainstream inclusion, and a new three-tier support structure.
The purpose of the reforms is to improve the support in the UK for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, ensuring that more children and young people with SEND can achieve and thrive in local mainstream settings and to reduce pressure on local authority budgets.
The white paper doesn't change the law immediately. It provides a framework for consultation and gradual implementation over several years, with the first major changes to come into effect in 2030. There will now be a period of public consultation on the proposals until 18 May 2026 after which draft legislation to go through parliament.
This article outlines the key reforms to the SEND system detailed in the white paper.
The government has pledged an additional £7 billion of spending on SEND compared with 2025-26. Department for Education budgets will increase above previously planned funding at Autumn Budget 2025 by £3.5 billion in 2028-29 to support investment in the sector:
The inclusion bases will offer greater levels of specialist expertise and will become a core component of the local education offer, with an aim of bridging the current gap between mainstream and specialist education.
The government expects every secondary school to have an inclusion base, with an equivalent number of places in local primary schools. Schools will be brought together in local groups and will pool funding, share resources and work together to improve and expand the help and support available to children to achieve this.
A key change set out in the reforms is the introduction of a new type of document called an individual support plan. These plans will act as a record of a child or young person’s barriers to learning and will set out the provision to be put in place to overcome those barriers.
The purpose of individual support plans is to ensure that every child with SEND receives a baseline level of support. All schools and colleges including maintained nursery schools will be legally required to have these plans available, and will be available for all children with SEND, regardless of their level of need.
A child’s individual support plan will be used to determine which of the three new layers of support they will receive on top of the universal offer.
Support will be delivered through a universal offering plus three layers of additional support. The aim of this layered approach is flexibility. Children will be able to move between levels as their needs develop.
The universal offer will set a new baseline for mainstream education settings for children and young people with SEND. It will include evidence-based support prioritising early intervention, high-quality teaching with a curriculum designed for all learners, accessible provisions beyond the classroom and inclusive environments with continuous improvements to accessibility. Skilled teachers and educators will be trained to meet these expectations, working closely with other education leaders. Schools will be required to proactively plan the support they provide through a new duty to produce an inclusion strategy, which will replace the current duty to produce SEN Information Reports. The £1.6 billion of additional mainstream funding is intended to support this transition.
Mainstream settings will provide targeted support. This may include small group interventions to develop language skills, or pre-teaching key vocabulary to help access the curriculum. Each child or young person receiving targeted support will have their needs and provision captured in a digital individual support plan, reviewed regularly with carers and parents to ensure that targeted support removes the specific barriers to learning that persist in spite of the universal offering.
This level of support will be available for children and young people who need more specialist support to thrive in inclusive mainstream settings and will include access to the Experts at Hand service. It will also include access to inclusion bases within mainstream settings.
Each child or young person receiving targeted plus support will have an individual support plan outlining their specific needs and expectations for ongoing support.
Targeted plus support may involve time-limited support in a specialist setting, which will allow pupils a short time placement for their needs to be assessed and addressed, before reintegrating back into a mainstream setting.
Children with the most complex needs will be eligible for new nationally defined specialist provision packages. These will be designed by independent experts and panels of professionals in the education health and care sector and will outline exactly what a child is entitled to receive.
In the future, only children and young people who need the overall package of support detailed in a specialist provision package will be entitled to an education, health and care plan.
From 2030, the government’s intention is that only children with the most complex needs will qualify for new education, health and care plans. These plans will remain, but will be reformed. Under the new system:
For current education, health and care plans holders, no changes will occur before 2030, and transitions only occur at natural points i.e. end of primary or end of secondary, and only for those currently in Year 2 or below.
The government has pledged up to £15 million of investment by 2028 to support the creation of a new evidence-based digital library of resources to guide how schools are meeting the needs of children with SEND, to facilitate curriculum adaptation and provide new guidance on reasonable adjustments to help support settings in understanding children’s needs.
£4 million funding will support a new research led project by UK Research and Innovation to improve the identification of SEND and to develop and roll out approaches for early identification, strengths and needs assessment, by 2028.
A new national curriculum is planned from 2028 with a focus on literacy, numeracy, oracy, and digital/media literacy. The aim is to give pupils a broader foundation of knowledge and skills, with Progress 8 also being reformed to reflect this wider focus - which measures student progress from the end of primary to the end of secondary school.
There is also a spotlight for Regional Improvement for Standards of Excellence teams, also known as RISE teams, on key stage 3 with a KS3 'alliance' to support innovation and spread best practice across the country to facilitate the transition from primary into secondary schools.
The 'Every Child Achieving and Thriving' White Paper sets out the process of reform in a “sequenced, phased and manageable way” with three overlapping phases:
It's hoped that the reforms will strengthen the support available to children with SEND and reduce the current delays embedded in the SEND system.
Full details on the proposed changes to the SEND system can be found in the government’s open consultation.
If you would like to discuss anything mentioned in this article please get in touch with Ben Tarrant or Jessica Hedges.
