SEND Reform – A Summary for Parents

As a parent, you want to know what will change inside your child’s classroom, how quickly that support will appear, and what you can expect from teachers, specialists and the local authority.

The Government’s consultation, “SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First”, proposes a single national approach that aims to deliver earlier support in mainstream schools. According to the consultation, there will be a clearer and more tightly defined route for children with complex needs, and a culture where inclusion and high standards belong together. The intent is that families should not have to fight for ordinary help and that children can learn in their local community wherever that is right for them.

At the heart of the proposals sits a structure that is simple to describe and designed to be consistent across England. According to the proposals, every mainstream setting will give children a universal offer as standard.

In addition, there will be three layers of additional help for children in need of additional support. Targeted Support will cover common and predictable needs that every school or college should be ready to meet quickly using evidence informed approaches. Targeted Support Plus, the second layer, brings in coordinated input at a higher level from professionals, for less common needs while your child remains in mainstream school. The third layer is Specialist Support. EHCPs will guarantee statutory entitlements for those children with the most complex needs.

A New Individual Support Plan

The consultation introduces a new Individual Support Plan to make day to day support visible and actionable. This will be a digital, living record, created by your child’s school with you, and it will set out the needs of your child, the support to be delivered, and the outcomes being worked towards.

As a child’s needs change, the plan is designed to change with them, rather than sitting on an annual cycle. In practice, this means teachers and support staff can adapt strategies during the term, specialists can add guidance straight into the plan, and you can see what is supposed to happen each week. I welcome that focus on daily delivery, although I would like to see a clear route to a remedy when a plan is agreed but then not enacted in the child’s timetable.

What is Targeted Support?

As an example, let’s take a small group session to build vocabulary and language. In this scenario adjustments can be made to reduce working load for the child such as bite size instructions and visual prompts, alongside environmental changes to lower sensory stress for the child. These are the kinds of responses the consultation expects to be part of the mainstream inclusion offer, available promptly without a statutory process. For many children, these adjustments bridge the gap between coping and real engagement with learning.

How Does Targeted Support Plus differ?

When needs are less common, the school should coordinate time from the right professionals while your child stays in their class. That might mean a speech and language therapist modelling strategies for the teacher, an occupational therapist advising on seating and equipment, or a specialist teacher helping to adapt materials. The Individual Support Plan then records what will be done, by whom, and when. The goal is simple. Support arrives while learning continues. It is practical and prompt, not months away. Whilst I support this approach, for Targeted and Targeted Plus, I am concerned that without adequate funding for schools, these ambitions will not be met and parents will be left feeling let down, again.

What are Specialist Provision Packages?

Where a child requires carefully specified teaching, therapies and adaptations, the reforms propose Specialist Provision Packages with nationally described content and national costings. The package comes first, then the placement, then the EHCP to secure delivery in law. This sequence is intended to reduce dispute about the content of an EHCP once a plan is issued and to remove regional variation in what is described and funded. I support that clarity, and I would like the final model to explain how elements from more than one package can be combined without delay where a child’s needs profile is complex and overlapping.

Experts at Hand

The Government is underpinning its plan for reform of SEND with national training and with an Experts at Hand offer that brings professional advice and services into mainstream settings.

As an illustration of what this means in practical terms, during a normal week a therapist joins a lesson to model strategies. The therapist delivers a short cycle of targeted sessions in school rather than off site, following which a planning meeting takes place, where teacher and specialist agree what will change in the child’s timetable. The Individual Support Plan then captures the actions so you can see the proposed outcome. The aim is speed and practicality, providing specialist detailed input to children in a timely manner.

Inclusion for all Children

Inclusion is at the heart of these Government proposals. The consultation simplifies language by introducing Inclusion Bases, with Support Bases commissioned by settings or trusts for targeted interventions and Specialist Bases commissioned by local authorities for specialist interventions. The benefit for families is continuity. Your child can remain part of their class and community while receiving structured help in a designated space. Generally speaking, I support this proposal but will be looking for more operational detail on admissions, staffing and quality assurance for these bases, because those decisions govern consistency across all areas.

Enforcement

It appears that the intention will be to reduce recourse to the SEND Tribunal save in the most complex and serious of cases. It is suggested that parents will have to follow a school’s complaints procedure if suitable provision is not being made for their child. I do have questions around this in terms of the increased workload on schools but, more specifically, how the system will truly enable parents to enforce the provision to which their child should be entitled.

Giving Parental Choice

The consultation sets a strong expectation that children learn close to home, supported by better trained staff and faster access to specialists. The direction is one education system where inclusion is normal and where families do not have to argue for ordinary help. I agree with that ambition, and I would like the final proposals to set out clearly how parental preference and local planning of capacity in schools, already stretched, will work together when placements are decided.

Equality Act protections remain, for the benefit of SEN children. The duty to make reasonable adjustments continues. The Government proposes refreshed guidance on those adjustments, alongside a revised SEND Code of Practice and national inclusion standards. In practice, schools and colleges must continue to remove barriers that place disabled pupils at a substantial disadvantage, through adapted teaching, environmental changes and assessment adjustments. These legal protections matter now and will continue to matter during and after the transition, once the SEND reforms are implemented over the course of the next 10 years.

Funding

The consultation links investment directly to earlier help and practical support in classrooms. It sets out £1.6 bn over three years for mainstream inclusion, more than £200m over three years for national training across children and young people age 0 to 25, and £1.8 bn over three years for Experts at Hand, with a wider uplift in education budgets later in the decade.

For families, the important message is that help should arrive earlier and more consistently in mainstream first, with national standards and specialist packages bedding in as the decade progresses, including an evidence programme for inclusion standards funded up to £15m by 2028. The Government repeats the statement that additional funding is being provided now, so this is in place before the changes are implemented.

Conclusion

My view is that the direction of travel is right. Earlier support without a fight, expertise where children are, and specialist help that is defined and guaranteed, are what families ask for. Where I want more clarity is on enforcing the Individual Support Plan when delivery falls short, on the balance between parental preference and local planning, and on the operating model for Inclusion Bases. Those are the levers that decide whether your child experiences change this term or next year, and they are the points I will be watching as the consultation moves to implementation.