16th September 2025 • My Family Our Needs

The children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has released a report recommending Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) be split into three tiers of support. The report states that EHCPs should be restricted to pupils ‘whose needs sit across all three sectors’ with other levels of plans created for those with one or two needs. However, the report also said that ‘no child with an existing plan should lost their plan’.

This report comes at a time when the Government is finalising its plans to reform the system of support for special educational needs and disabilities.

The recommendations laid out in the report are a response to a survey by the commissioner’s office of most schools in England. The survey found the experiences and progress of children with SEND was a top concern for 53% of primary schools and 40% of secondary schools.

Respondents to the survey said that the main barrier in implementing EHCPs was the mismatch in funding and need. Lack of specialist staff was cited as the second biggest barrier.

The report called for a new approach to SEND with support being provided through what they called a ‘children’s plan’. Children who require specialist educational support would receive an educational plan. Children with health and educational needs would receive an education and health plan (EHP) and those with care and educational needs would receive an education and care plan (ECP).

This will all be supported by a ‘single national threshold’ for assessment of needs, instead of allowing councils to set individual criteria.

The report stated that EHCPs ‘should be only for children whose needs span across education, health and care’. But they should be issued automatically for those with life-long, life-limiting or life-determining conditions ‘without a long assessment process’.

It also states that in carrying out reform, Government should recognise the arduous journey of those who have existing plans. The report stated ‘in such a low-trust environment, any reform will be met with significant and understandable resistance, and it will be difficult to deliver with consent.

‘As such, the vision for this system set out in our recommendations is a longer-term one. No child with an existing plan should lose their plan. No child should have to move schools. We need more support, no less, more easily, more locally.’

The report also stated that interventions set out in the new plans should not be done to make a profit. It stated, ‘no one should be making a profit from providing services for the most vulnerable children’.

This all comes after the Government’s strategic SEND advisor, Dame Christine Lenehan, told Schools Week earlier in the year that officials were considering shaking up the EHCP system that would lead to a narrowing or new support structure. This has since been softened, with the Government saying that ‘effective provision’ will be removed.

Georgina Durrant, author of SEND Strategies for the Primary Years and National Inclusion Lead at Twinkl, said, ‘In theory, I think it could simplify things. But my worry is that families are already exhausted from fighting for support. Changing the goalposts again, especially in a system where trust is already so low, feels risky. The report says no child will lose their plan, which is reassuring. […]

‘Schools are doing their best, but they’re picking up the pieces left by years of underfunded services. I feel a bit more optimistic that this could be a real chance to rethink how we support children. But it needs to be backed by proper funding, specialist staff (not just ‘access to’ as it says in the report), and a system designed around actual children.

‘The ones masking. The ones missing school. The ones falling through the gaps because their needs don’t tick the right boxes.’

Sam Keys, Headteacher at a school in Sunderland, said, ‘Families have spent years navigating a complex, exhausting system – and trust is already fragile. Even if no child loses their existing plan, introducing new tiers risks creating another layer of bureaucracy at exactly the point where people are crying out for clarity and consistency.

‘What also jumped out at me was the emphasis on schools being the bug for meeting a much wider set of needs. Schools are already carrying so much, and unless there’s proper investment in specialist staff and external services, it risks reinforcing the gap rather than closing it. ‘Access to’ isn’t the same as having people on the ground.’

The full report and a summary version are available here.

In other news, in Scotland, almost 350,000 disabled people have had their disability benefit transferred from Personal Independence Payment (PIP) to Social Security Scotland.